The Mia Hamm Foundation is committed to furthering the groundbreaking growth of female participation in sports that has occurred under Title IX, the landmark 1972 legislation that bans sex discrimination in academics and athletics at educational institutions across the country.

Title IX and College Athletics: Title IX governs the overall equity of treatment and opportunity in athletics while giving schools the flexibility to choose sports based on several factors, including student body interest and gender ratio. Title IX does not, then, necessarily concern itself with individual cases, with whether women can participate in wrestling, for example, or whether exactly the same amount of money is spent on women's and men's basketball. Rather, Title IX concerns itself with the big picture, with ensuring that women have equal opportunities to men on the whole. As such, determining an institution's compliance is a matter of an all-encompassing and program-wide, as opposed to sport-by-sport, review.

Undoubtedly, Title IX has been essential in increasing the amount of women that not only participate in athletics at the college level but that receive scholarships to do so. Nonetheless, the need to encourage young girls to get excited about sports and, by extension, realize the goals of Title IX persists. Through our annual grant application process, the Mia Hamm Foundation works to do just that. To find out more about Title IX and its impact on women’s sports, please visit the Title IX website. Similarly, if you are interested in other organizations that are committed to the goals of Title IX, we encourage you to visit the Women’s Sports Foundation.