The Terp Behind Title IX

On the academic side, women such as Sandler faced their own struggles. They were expected to enter traditionally female fields like K-12 teaching and nursing; they were barred from more lucrative, typically male domains like engineering or business. Even when they earned degrees, few companies were willing to hire women, Sandler discovered. 

When she finished her doctorate at the College of Education, she sought one of seven open full-time faculty positions there. Though she was well qualified, a male faculty member told her, “You come on too strong for a woman.” The rejections kept coming as she pursued other jobs. One interviewer said she was “just a housewife who went back to school.” Another said he couldn’t hire her because women stayed home when their children were sick.

“Knowing that sex discrimination was immoral, I assumed it would also be illegal,” Sandler wrote in 1997. But she could find only a little-known executive order, which wasn’t being enforced, to support her cause. She rallied members of Congress to her cause and made that directive the foundation of legislation she shaped to explicitly prohibit sex discrimination in employment and education, and joined the Women’s Equity Action League as it filed a class-action lawsuit against universities across the country. 

On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law. It states, in part: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”