Women's Educational Equity Act

The Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA) was proposed by Patsy Mink, a congresswoman from Hawaii, and was passed by the United States Congress in 1974. It was designed to ensure that women had equal access to education and public educational resources. Mink believed the act was necessary because lawmakers were trying to weaken Title IX, a 1972 law that prohibited any gender-based discrimination in educational institutions that received federal funding. While the Title IX statute was far-ranging, it was only thirty-seven words long. The WEEA worked to outline some of the ways Title IX needed to be applied in schools. It focused on using federal funds to counteract sex-stereotyping and to provide career counseling for women. It offered a process by which schools and other educational institutions could get grant money to develop programs specifically for and about women, such as women’s studies opportunities.

Background

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to end many kinds of discrimination, most notably employment-based discrimination against people based on their religion, sex, color, country of origin, or race. However, it did not require equal educational opportunities for people based on their sex. Neither did a follow-up law called Title VI, which prohibited any discrimination based on country of origin, race, or color by institutions that received federal funds. In the early 1970s, feminists petitioned Congress to include sex as a protected category.

Title IX was the response to those requests. In 1972, Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, and other representatives in Congress worked to pass Title IX, which is the colloquial name for one of the Education Amendments of 1972. That specific statute states that publicly funded educational institutions need to offer the same opportunities to women as they do to men.

The most direct outcome of Title IX had to do with women’s sports. Before Title IX, many schools did not have sports programs for women. If they did have them, they were either donation-based or they had minimal funding from the institution. After Title IX, institutions that received federal funds had to prove they were complying with athletic equality requirements.

However, the intention of Title IX was to change educational opportunities for women far beyond sports. It was also intended to require schools to fight sexual discrimination, harassment, and violence on campus and to make sure women had equal access to the same variety of fields of study that men did.

Very early in the existence of Title IX, states and institutions began to push back against the requirements. Because Title IX itself was so short, it became clear that the actual implementation of the law would end up being worked out in the courts over an extended period of time. Mink, a woman known for championing equality on all fronts, took up the task of outlining some of what Title IX would mean for educational institutions in real life. One of the results of this work was the Women’s Educational Equity Act

Overview

Mink first proposed the Women’s Educational Equity Act in 1973. It gained popularity and public support after tennis star Billie Jean King spoke to Congress on November 9, 1973. She discussed the ways that sports opportunities were denied women, focusing on the fact that many schools did not even have teams for women or that, when they did, the teams received significantly less funding than those for men. As a woman who excelled in a sport, she was able to speak to the benefits women would stand to gain if they had more athletic opportunities.

While the Women’s Educational Equity Act was not a bill specifically focused on sports, King’s support helped it gain traction. It was still defeated in the House of Representatives, but Senator Walter Mondale from Minnesota, attached it to a more sweeping Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It passed both chambers of Congress as part of that larger Act and became law on August 21, 1974.

The WEEA makes specific provisions for a few things. Mostly, it provides federal grant money for educational institutions that develop programs undoing the stereotypes that, at the time, often determined a woman’s course of life. Mink herself expressed frustration when she looked at the curriculum her daughter had in elementary school. Most of the books portrayed men as doctors, scientists, engineers, and in other powerful roles. Women were usually discussed in the context of caring for the home, having and raising children, or in limited professional roles, such as nurses and teachers.

To combat ideas like these, the WEEA provides funding for people and programs designed to: (1) obtain career counseling for women, so they could find a career that would fulfill them and use their gifts and intelligence and not just take on a role assigned them by society; (2) provide community educational programs for women, so that women who had missed out on educational opportunities or who did not want to attend traditional post-secondary programs could still receive training; (3) support women’s studies programs, so women and others could understand the history of being a woman and the societal expectations around womanhood; and (4) counter the kind of sex-stereotyping Mink had encountered in her daughter’s curriculum, so women could see themselves playing a wide variety of roles from a young age.

In 1984, under United States President Ronald Reagan, Congress revised and rewrote the Women’s Educational Equity Act. They worked to make the Act even more explicit and to make its goals even clearer. Jean Benish, Reagan’s Secretary of Education, put a new review process in place for grants related to the WEEA. The goal was to make the whole process equitable and fair for all who applied, and to include even more women’s issues as eligible for grant money.

Always a small program, the WEEA has not been funded by the federal government since 2010, though Title IX still stands and has been updated. The reason for this lack of funding is unknown, though there are always competing financial needs in an ever-growing nation.

Bibliography

Bell, Diana. “Patsy Takemoto Mink’s Title IX Legacy.” Library of Congress, 23 June 2022, blogs.loc.gov/teachers/2022/06/patsy-takemoto-minks-title-ix-legacy/. Accessed 14 June 2023.

“H.R.11149 - Women’s Educational Equity Act.” Library of Congress, 1974–1974, www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/11149. Accessed 14 June 2023.

“The U.S. Department of Education Releases Proposed Changes to Title IX Regulations, Invites Public Comment.” The U.S. Department of Education, 23 June 2022, www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-releases-proposed-changes-title-ix-regulations-invites-public-comment. Accessed 14 June 2023.

“Title IX Overview.” Library of Congress, guides.loc.gov/patsy-mink-papers/about/title-ix-overview. Accessed 14 June 2023.

“WEEA Program.” WEEA Equity Resource Center, www2.edc.org/womensequity/about/program.htm. Accessed 14 June 2023.

“Women Who Made Legal History: Patsy Mink.” The University of Chicago D’Angelo Law Library, 31 Mar. 2021, www.lib.uchicago.edu/about/news/women-who-made-legal-history-patsy-mink/. Accessed 14 June 2023.

“Women’s Educational Equity Act: A Review of Program Goals and Strategies Needed.” U.S. Government Accountability Office, 27 Dec. 1994, www.gao.gov/products/pemd-95-6. Accessed 14 June 2023.

“Women’s History Month Spotlight: Patsy Mink.” Alameda Unified School District, 3 Mar. 2023, www.alamedaunified.org/departments/communications/ausd-news-page/news-details/~board/ausd-news/post/womens-history-month-spotlight-patsy-mink. Accessed 14 June 2023.