By The Women's Sports Foundation
Published: February 2, 2009
As we celebrate 36 years of Title IX, statistics show there has been enormous progress for women and girls in sports. One important result is in high school girls' varsity sports participation, which shows an increase from 1 in 27 girls in 1971 to 2 in 5 girls in 2006. High school girls’ athletics participation numbers were at an all-time high of more than 3 million girls playing high school sports for the 2007-2008 school year.
Despite this fact, girls still receive over 1.3 million fewer participation opportunities than boys at the high school level. According to a recent Women's Sports Foundation study, girls comprise 49.7% of the high school population, but only receive 41.2% of all athletic participation opportunities. In this study that examines high school girls' and boys' varsity sports participation in the aggregate by state, no state is providing athletic opportunities to its female athletes in numbers that are proportionate to their enrollment in school. If you want to know how any public high school is doing, most states have “open records” laws that require schools to give you that information upon receipt of a written request.
See where your state ranks!