Title IX Enforcement Is Collapsing Just as Revenue Sharing Creates New Gaps

Title IX requires gender equity in federally funded education programs, including athletics. But enforcement has effectively collapsed at the exact moment when the new revenue-sharing model is creating the largest gender pay gap in college sports history. The House v. NCAA settlement allocates roughly 90% of back-pay damages to football and men's basketball players, with only 5% going to women's basketball and 5% to all other Division I sports combined. Eight female student-athletes have filed legal challenges arguing this violates Title IX, but the legal landscape shifted dramatically in February 2025 when the U.S. Department of Education rescinded Biden-era guidance on how Title IX applies to athlete compensation. Without clear federal guidance, universities are left guessing whether Title IX requires proportional revenue sharing across genders. Women account for 54% of the undergraduate student body in Division I but only 47.1% of athletic participation, already a participation gap. Men's programs receive more than double the allocated resources of women's programs, and these disparities are more pronounced in the Football Bowl Subdivision. If revenue sharing flows overwhelmingly to football — a sport with no women's equivalent — the funding gap will widen to an unprecedented degree. Enforcement has collapsed because the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the federal agency responsible for Title IX compliance, is chronically under-resourced. A Washington Post investigation found that OCR took at least a year to respond in 10 Title IX compliance cases, and in five others, there was no communication for five or more years. Women hold roughly 20% of athletic director positions, meaning the people making resource allocation decisions are overwhelmingly men. The structural problem is that Title IX was written in 1972 for an era of amateur athletics and has never been updated to address a world where athletes receive millions of dollars in direct compensation. Congress would need to amend the law or pass new legislation, but no consensus exists on how to do so.