Designing a data pipeline to analyze gender equity in college sports

Spring 2025 Massive Data Fundamentals final project

Policy context

Gender disparities persist as a complex challenge in the United States. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Congress enacted legislation that made sex-based discrimination illegal in certain environments (NWLC, 2022a). Specifically, in 1972, Congress passed Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational institutions that collect federal funding (NWLC, 2022a). Title IX both protects students from sexual harassment and discrimination and requires schools to fairly distribute sports offerings (NWLC, 2022b; Casciani, 2021).

Over the last fifty years, Congress and the Department of Education have continued to update the guidance and protocols for Title IX to better monitor its compliance (Office of Civil Rights, n.d.). In 1979, the Department of Education established that an individual institution’s intercollegiate athletics program must fulfill one of three defined criteria to be recognized as compliant:

  • The number of male and female athletes is in proportion to the institution’s respective student enrollment counts

  • The institution currently expands and has historically expanded participation opportunities “demonstrably responsive to the developing interest and abilities” of the underrepresented sex (Office of Civil Rights, n.d.)

  • If expansion of opportunities for the underrepresented sex has not been apparent, “the interests and abilities of the members of that sex have been fully and effectively accommodated by the present program” (Office of Civil Rights, n.d.).

Several years later, Congress enacted the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) in 1994 to make it easier to track Title IX compliance in higher education institutions’ athletic programs (NCAA, n.d.; NWLC, n.d.). The EADA requires colleges and universities that

  1. obtain federal aid and

  2. sponsor athletics programs

“to report annually to the Department of Education on athletics participation, staffing issues, revenues and expenses” (NCAA, n.d.). The data is then made publicly available by the institution and by the Department of Education (NCAA, n.d.; GAO, 2024).

Because of the EADA, we know that the gender gap in sports continues to exist within higher education institutions. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that during the 2021-2022 academic year, women’s athletic participation rate was disproportionate to their total college enrollment rate (42% vs. 56%) (GAO, 2024). In contrast, men were overrepresented in athletic participation: their participation rate was 58% compared to their enrollment rate of 44% (GAO, 2024).