WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Most Catholics, in observing the 30th anniversary in January of one major issue affecting women -- the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion -- may have overlooked another 30th anniversary involving women, namely, the federal Title IX requirements of the Higher Education Act signed by President Richard Nixon in June 1972 that banned sex discrimination at all schools receiving federal funding.

Anyone who missed that anniversary can revisit the issue now that a fderal advisory panel on Jan. 30 recommended to Education Secretary Rod Paige that he ease some Title IX rules. The panel's final report is due Feb. 28.

Title IX is "a matter of social justice," said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity College, a Catholic women's undergraduate school in Washington; its graduate programs are coeducational.

McGuire played basketball as a Trinity student underneath the school's chapel, dribbling around pillars and heaving line-drive shots at low-ceilinged baskets. "Some of the places we play are still like that," confided one current Trinity student.

Trinity recently dedicated its new Center for Women and Girls in Sports, which cost $20 million -- a drop in the bucket compared to the $1 billion spent over the past dozen years for new stadiums for men's pro sports teams in the Washington-Baltimore corridor.

Because it is a single-sex institution, Trinity isn't bound by Title IX but still is solidly in favor of it, and hosted a Title IX conference Feb. 4 in its new athletic center.

A Women's Sports Foundation evaluation of Title IX last June gave a C-plus grade to the measure's effectiveness. It noted that 847 percent more women play high school varsity sports today than 30 years ago, and 374 percent more women play college varsity sports, but the overall numbers are still 30 percent below their male counterparts.

The foundation report added that men still get 36 percent more of the college scholarship money available, and that the percentage of women head coaches in women's college sports has been cut in half over those three decades, from 90 percent to 44 percent.

Under current Title IX rules, athletic opportunities are supposed to be apportioned according to the percentages of men and women enrolled at a school.

Currently, women make up about 56 percent of all college students. One proposal that could have cut women's opportunities to 47 percent of all athletic opportunities available even if women make up a bigger percentage of enrollmenttied 7-7 among members of the federal panel advising Paige, but the proposal was still advanced to Paige. The Women Sports Foundation estimates such a move would result in the loss of $122 million in athletic scholarship money for women.

But the panel did OK one proposal that would omit students over age 23 in the student count; women's sports advocates say the "nontraditional" older student is usually female. And it approved another proposal that would split the participation numbers in the same sport 50-50, even if more played on the men's team than the women's team.

Some critics of Title IX call it a quota. But there were quotas before Title IX, according to attorney Kristen Galles, a former varsity softball player at Jesuit-run Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., who spoke at Trinity's conference.

"'Only men are allowed,' the law schools said," Galles commented. "The medical schools said, 'No women are allowed.' ... Less qualified men were given these opportunities."

She added that the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink finished first in her class at the University of Hawaii -- only to be rejected when she applied to medical school. Mink then looked for a law school that would accept her so she could advocate on behalf of women.

Speaker Megan Hull, who had to sue Brown University in Rhode Island over Title IX noncompliance, said she learned during her legal fight that "it's not about money. It's about deciding to spend resources a certain way." Eight court rulings have upheld Title IX. Hull sued after the school cut two men's and two women's teams -- including its league championship volleyball team -- too late during her senior year of high school for her to apply to a new college.

USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan criticized the "bloated" college football programs that consume 85 men's scholarships, and the "malarkey" of "men's wrestling vs. women's sports. It's a case of smaller men's sports and women's sports going against college football."

Brennan noted hat 10 of the 15 members of Paige's advisory panel came from Division I-A schools. She added few of the Division I-A schools, and none of the Division I-AA, Division II and Division III schools make money on football. "There is a difference between 'revenue-producing' and 'profit-producing,'" she said.

Trinity students who spoke during the conference said they appreciate the value of sports in their lives.

At Bainbridge (Ga.) High School, where boys' sports ruled the roost, "I was a quiet, meek, submissive 'chick' who could be bullied into submission, or just elbowed out of the way," said junior Kate Meighan. Now, she's captain of Trinity's crew team, and won the respect of teammates when she dressed down the Georgetown men's crew team after they blocked access to Trinity's equipment shed along the Potomac River.

"It wasn't about the winning, but about the determination we have," said senior Ernestine Blango, an immigrant from Sierra Leone who never played sports until enrolling at Trinity. "I couldn't run a mile" during soccer practice as a freshman, Blango added. "Now, I've run a marathon."

Women athletes in schools "don't get pregnant, they don't do drugs, they stay out of trouble," McGuire said, adding that, thanks to Title IX, "we have more women elected officials, more women leaders, more women CEOs."

Copyright (c) 2003 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops