It is almost 2027, and 1970s-era sexism is still wrong even if you call it “progress.”
In January 1976, a Maryland newspaper investigation revealed what girls were still facing in public schools nearly four years after Title IX became law. The excuses sound remarkably familiar.
There is something about looking back at the 1970s that makes you want to ask a few questions.
We remember the music, the bell-bottoms, the platform shoes, the sneakers, and the girls walking through school hallways with books tucked under their arms. We remember a generation growing up while women were fighting to open doors that had been closed for far too long.
But there was another story unfolding in those same hallways.
Girls were being encouraged to dream about their futures while school systems continued steering them toward certain careers. They were expected to develop their talents while athletic opportunities remained unequal. And when women began asking why, school officials had explanations.
Not enough money. Not enough staff. Complicated regulations. Changes take time.
By 1976, the question was no longer whether girls deserved equal educational opportunities. Federal law had already addressed that. The question was how long girls would have to wait for schools to deliver them.
1. A newspaper investigation asked what was happening to Title IX
On January 8, 1976, journalist Cathy Timmerman published an article in The Montgomery Journal titled “Getting a Running(?) Start on Title IX.”
The investigation examined how Montgomery County, Maryland, was implementing the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs receiving federal financial assistance.
Title IX had been signed into law in June 1972. Its implementing regulations took effect in 1975.
Yet women advocating for girls’ educational opportunities were still identifying discriminatory practices.
The article brought together the perspectives of school officials, the League of Women Voters, and the Montgomery County Commission for Women.
What emerged was a picture of a school system beginning to make changes while advocates questioned whether those changes were happening quickly or thoroughly enough.
2. Girls were still being steered toward certain careers
Geni Dunnels of the League of Women Voters described reports of girls being directed toward lower-status professions through school career counseling.
Think about what that meant for a girl who loved science.
She might have the grades, curiosity, and discipline to become a dentist, engineer, or physician. But the adult responsible for helping her imagine her future might have a much smaller list of possibilities in mind.
A boy could be encouraged to pursue a profession because he showed promise.
A girl might first have to overcome somebody else’s assumptions about what women were supposed to become.
And that is one of the quieter ways discrimination works.
You do not always have to tell a girl she cannot do something. Sometimes you simply never tell her that she can.
3. The textbooks were teaching lessons of their own
The investigation also examined sexist stereotypes in educational materials.
Peter Treibley, the county’s Title IX official, acknowledged that some materials depicted women as nurses or clerical workers while portraying men as doctors.
Now, there is nothing wrong with being a nurse or working in an office. Those are valuable occupations.
The problem comes when children repeatedly encounter a world where men occupy the positions of authority and women appear primarily in supporting roles.
A girl could be sitting in a classroom, learning her lessons, while absorbing another lesson nobody bothered to announce.
Some futures were presented as ordinary for boys. Others were presented as ordinary for girls.
And when those expectations appeared in textbooks, they carried the authority of the school itself.
4. Girls’ athletics were still being treated unequally
Athletics was one of the clearest areas of concern.
Women advocates pointed to unequal opportunities, inadequate facilities, and restrictions on girls’ participation in certain sports.
Judith Vandergriff of the Montgomery County Commission for Women raised concerns about girls being excluded from sports they could participate in.
This was not simply about winning trophies.
Sports teach young people how to develop physical skills, handle pressure, work with teammates, recover from losses, and discover what their bodies can accomplish.
For generations, boys had been encouraged to develop those abilities through organized competition.
Girls deserved those opportunities too.
A girl should not have to prove that her athletic development is as valuable as a boy’s before her school agrees to invest in it.
5. There was a law, but who was responsible for making it work?
Here is where the investigation becomes especially interesting.
Treibley acknowledged that he was handling Title IX responsibilities alongside other duties, including equal employment matters.
He described himself as a one-person department with numerous responsibilities.
Budget limitations were among the obstacles he identified.
Meanwhile, women’s advocates questioned whether the school system was demonstrating sufficient urgency. They pointed to other jurisdictions that had devoted more focused attention to implementation.
This is a familiar institutional problem.
An organization announces a commitment. A policy is adopted. Someone is assigned responsibility.
But if that person lacks sufficient time, staffing, or authority, how much can actually change?
And who bears the consequences while everyone discusses the difficulties?
In this case, girls were still attending school every day.
Their education was happening in real time.
They could not put their childhoods on hold while adults worked out an implementation schedule.
6. Women were asking school leaders to take responsibility
Vandergriff criticized the school system’s progress and argued that meaningful change required leadership.
She believed administrators needed clear direction from the superintendent.
That observation deserves attention.
When discrimination is built into ordinary practices, individual teachers cannot always correct it alone. Athletic budgets, course availability, school facilities, instructional materials, and district policies involve decisions made above the classroom level.
A girl might speak up about unfair treatment.
Her mother might complain.
A teacher might agree.
But if the people controlling resources and policies do not act, the problem can remain.
Sometimes the obstacle is not that nobody knows what is wrong. It is that the people with the power to correct it have not made correcting it a priority.
7. Schools were making changes, but advocates wanted more
The investigation did not describe a district doing absolutely nothing.
Montgomery County had begun introducing coeducational physical education, opening previously sex-restricted courses, and addressing stereotypes through teacher training.
Those developments deserve recognition.
But the women questioning the district’s progress were asking whether those steps were sufficient.
And there is a difference between beginning to comply with a civil rights law and ensuring that students actually receive its protections.
A new policy does not automatically change an old habit.
An announcement does not guarantee a girl will be encouraged to take advanced mathematics.
A promise of equal athletics does not automatically produce adequate facilities, equipment, coaching, or opportunities to compete.
Implementation is where the promises become real.
8. The girls could not get those school years back
This is the part I keep returning to.
An adult can sometimes change careers at 35, return to school at 45, or discover a new passion at 60.
But childhood opportunities are tied to particular seasons of life.
A girl who misses the chance to play on a school team at 14 cannot simply return to that same season when she is 40.
A girl who is discouraged from studying a subject may spend years believing she lacks an ability she was never properly encouraged to develop.
That does not mean her future is ruined. Girls and women have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable determination in overcoming obstacles.
But their determination should never become an excuse for the obstacles.
We should not measure discrimination only by whether a girl eventually succeeds despite it. We should also ask what she might have accomplished without it.
9. The women who challenged these practices deserve to be remembered
One of the most valuable parts of this 1976 article is that it preserves the work of women who refused to let the issue disappear.
They examined what schools were doing.
They identified unequal opportunities.
They questioned administrators and pressed for accountability.
They understood that a law written in Washington meant little to a girl sitting in a classroom if the protections never reached her.
And they did this while women were still confronting discrimination in their own workplaces and communities.
There is a tendency to tell the history of women’s rights as though progress simply arrived with the passage of legislation.
But laws do not implement themselves.
People have to insist that institutions follow them.
10. When people say it was no big deal, remember what was at stake
Looking back, some people may wonder why girls and women made such an issue of school athletics, career counseling, textbooks, or dress codes.
But consider the other side of that question.
If these opportunities were so unimportant, why had girls been denied or discouraged from pursuing them?
If unequal treatment was so insignificant, why did correcting it require federal legislation, administrative regulations, legal challenges, and years of advocacy?
The 1976 investigation does not establish that every school official dismissed girls’ concerns. It documents something more specific: advocates were still confronting unequal opportunities while officials described the practical difficulties of implementing reform.
And those difficulties had consequences.
Girls were growing up while the adults responsible for their education worked through questions that should never have required girls to prove their worth in the first place.
What we can learn from the girls of 1976
The lesson is not that nothing has changed. Much has changed, in significant part because women and girls challenged discrimination.
The lesson is that we must examine what happens between recognizing a right and delivering it.
When an institution tells women and girls that progress takes time, it is reasonable to ask what the timeline is, who is accountable, and what protections are available in the meantime.
Because the people waiting are not hypothetical.
They have names, ambitions, talents, and lives unfolding right now.
A girl’s childhood is not a waiting room for somebody else’s commitment to fairness.
Historical source and further reading
Cathy Timmerman, “Getting a Running(?) Start on Title IX,” The Montgomery Journal, January 8, 1976. Preserved by MoCoRunning.
Read the historical newspaper article
For additional historical context, see the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX resources.
Editorial note: This article distinguishes the newspaper’s documented findings from the author’s reflections on institutional responsibility and girls’ educational opportunities.
