Woman of the Week – Bernice Sandler

Bernice Sandler was a women’s rights activist known best for her work to create Title IX, a federal civil rights law that states that no person can be denied access to an educational activity, sport or chance for financial assistance on the basis of sex.

She was born Bernice Resnick in 1928 to two Jewish immigrants from Russia and Germany. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and attended Erasmus High School. She went to Brooklyn College and graduated in 1948 with a degree in psychology. The college opened in 1930 and was intended as a place for the children of immigrants and working class people to get a (at the time) free college education.

Source: McClatchy-Tribune/Alamy

She completed her graduate work at the City College of New York, which had only recently started to admit women. She received her master's of clinical and school psychology in 1950. She went on to work several odd jobs from research assistant to guitar instructor and nursery school teacher. She and her husband Jerrod Sandler moved around a lot during this time.

She tried to get a tenure track position at a university several times over the years. She had a hard time finding full-time teaching work. When she was teaching part time at the University of Maryland, she was told she was not considered for full-time work because she “came on too strong for a woman,” according to her obituary in the New York Times. Another told her she was “just a housewife who went back to school.”

That became fuel for her fire to create Title IX. She joined the now-defunct Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) as the chair of the Action Committee for Federal Contract Compliance from 1969–1971. This group focused on using legal action and lobbying to make things better for women. In 1970, the group began a historic class action suit on behalf of all women in higher education.

They filed an administrative complaint with the Labor Department against all colleges and universities, citing an across-the-board pattern of discrimination against women in the academic world from admission quotas to discriminatory faculty hiring practices and salary discrepancies.

Sandler attached 80 pages of documentation she compiled to the complaint. One example, from the Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine, showed that the school admitted only two women each year, no matter how many applied. She also found many institutions had no female faculty and regularly denied scholarships to married women.

Over the next two years, she filed complaints against more than 250 schools. Many other women in the group filed complaints as well.

She shared her research with Representative Edith Green (D-OR) and Representative Patsy Mink (D-HI). Both elected officials were attempting to address the lack of equality in higher education. Green held a week of hearings on sex discrimination in the House of Representatives during the summer of 1970 and invited Sandler to be on the subcommittee staff and make record of the hearings.

Testimony during the hearings came from multiple perspectives of women in higher education who had been discriminated against. The record became the basis for the legislation that would become Title IX.

With the backing of Senator Birch Bayh, (D-IN), the legislation had support from both sides and could be brought forward.

President Richard Nixon quietly signed it into law in 1972. The law has had a dramatic effect on college athletics. Many schools that never offered women’s sports now have expanded programs with teams for both male and female athletes. Scholarship opportunities were also revised and expanded to include female athletes.

Once Title IX was passed, Sandler spent the rest of her life combating the discrimination that followed and making change happen. She spent nearly 20 years as the director of the Project on the Status and Education of Women at the Association of American Colleges. She delivered more than 2,500 presentations and served as a consultant to numerous colleges and universities.

She died on Jan. 5, 2019 and remains known as “the godmother of Title IX.”

But, it’s about more than just sports. Title IX applies to all realms of education, including STEM. According to the National Center for Education Statistics as of 2017, women still earn only 18% of bachelor’s degrees and 26% of master’s degrees in engineering and computer and information science; however, progress has been made.

In an interview from January 2019, NASA astronaut Mary Cleave noted that without Title IX, she probably wouldn’t have had the chance to pursue her career.

“Title IX passed, and within 10 years I was getting hired to work in a space shuttle, and I couldn’t even get hired as an airline stewardess 10 years earlier,” Cleave said in an interview with The Hoya. “Title IX blew the lid off of so many occupations for women. It made a huge difference.”

Women made up only 7% of the STEM workforce in 1970. That number doubled to 14% by 1980 after Title IX passed. As of 2017, women made up about 24% of the STEM workforce.

The law continues to grow and change. In the 1990s, the U.S. Supreme Court issued three decisions interpreting Title IX to require schools to respond appropriately to reports of sexual harassment and sexual violence against students. An April 2011 letter issued by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights stated, "The sexual harassment of students, including sexual violence, interferes with students' right to receive an education free from discrimination and, in the case of sexual violence, is a crime.”

This became known as the “Dear Colleague” letter and illustrates an institution’s responsibility to act when a case of sexual harassment or violence is reported.

Between 2010 and 2016, the Obama administration issued guidance to include transgender students under Title IX. Many of those policies were reversed by the Trump administration.

The Supreme Court will soon decide if transgender people are protected under workplace discrimination protection but it remains to be seen where the Title IX laws fall.