Epilogue: The Sea Change of Title IX

By the 1960s, the women's liberation movement was on the rise, sports were on the rebound, and the call for intercollegiate activity became louder. The growing size of most women's sports programs rendered the structure of the WAAs ineffective, and across the nation such organizations were being disbanded in favor of a more centralized and authoritative administrative model.⁴⁷

Locally, the Wisconsin Athletic Recreation Federation of College Women (WARFCW), founded in 1958, led to the creation of the Wisconsin Women's Athletic Conference (WWIAC) in 1971. On a national level, the Commission for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (CIAW) was formed in 1967, followed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) in 1971. The AIAW was dismantled in 1982, and schools migrated their affiliation to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Today, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is affiliated with the NCAA.

The increasing size and complexity of Wisconsin's sports program, coupled with the responsibilities of supporting intramurals through the Women's Recreation Association (the WAA's successor), proved too much for the physical education department to bear. To relieve pressure on the department, a club sport program was developed in 1970, headed by Katherine (Kit) Saunders. Continued financial strain, however, made it apparent that the club sports solution would be a temporary one.

As all this was coming to a head, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 was passed. Essentially comparable to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it disallowed discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs. Athletics is only one element of this picture, but it quickly became the most visible and controversial aspect of Title IX.