- Person
- Bernice Sandler
- Lived
- 1928–2019
- Field
- Education equity
- From
- American
The story
Bernice Sandler was born in Brooklyn in 1928 to Jewish immigrants from Russia and Germany who raised her to see social justice as part of their faith. As a young psychologist she ran into antisemitic quotas, and when she finally earned a doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1969, she was passed over for all seven open faculty posts in her department. A colleague explained that she came on too strong for a woman.
She went looking for the law the university had broken and found there was none. Federal civil rights law then exempted educational institutions from its ban on sex discrimination in employment. But in a report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights she found that President Lyndon Johnson had amended an executive order in 1967 to forbid sex discrimination by federal contractors. Nearly every college held federal contracts.
Working through the Women’s Equity Action League, Sandler filed formal complaints against about 250 colleges and universities and organised a letter-writing campaign by academic women to Congress. In 1970 Representative Edith Green used her material to hold the first congressional hearings on sex discrimination in education, and hired Sandler as the first congressional staff member assigned to women’s rights. With Representative Patsy Mink and Senator Birch Bayh, Green carried the legislation, and on June 23, 1972, Title IX became law: no person may, on the basis of sex, be excluded from or discriminated against in any education programme receiving federal money.
The effects reached every American school and campus, from admissions and hiring to protection against harassment. In sport alone, girls’ participation in high school athletics grew from fewer than 300,000 in the last year before Title IX to more than 3.4 million today. Sandler spent the rest of her life making the law work, coining the phrase chilly climate for the subtle discrimination women still faced. She died in 2019.
Why it matters
Title IX guarantees girls and women equal access to education and school sport in the United States, benefiting millions every year.
About Bernice Sandler
Brooklyn-born educator known as the godmother of Title IX, the 1972 law that bans sex discrimination in federally funded education and opened schools, universities and sport to millions of women.
Sources
- Bernice Sandler Jewish Women’s Archive
- Bernice R. Sandler, Ed.D. Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame, Maryland State Archives
- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 U.S. Department of Justice
- NFHS Begins Yearlong Celebration of 50th Anniversary of Title IX National Federation of State High School Associations
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.