According to surveys by the National Collegiate Athletics Association, less than 40 percent of athletes on NCAA varsity teams are women. The undeniable fact is that women are less interested in competitive sports than men. At the high school level, too, females are less likely than males to go out for teams. A survey conducted last year by the Independent Women's Forum found that rates of participation in varsity sports were much lower at a select group of all-women's colleges than at undergraduate institutions generally. It is not that female students simply pine away in college libraries.
Women also outnumber men in particular academic fields -for example, nursing.
Nonetheless, feminists are determined to punish male athletic programs to prove some abstract ideological point. And they are succeeding. An NCAA survey last year found that over the previous five years, schools had coped with budget pressures by cutting over 200 male teams and reduced their varsity rosters by over 20,000 male athletes, while increasing female participation by only 5,800-so nearly four male athletes were kicked out of sports programs for every new woman. Not at all. So we may soon see the push for gender quotas move on from the locker rooms to encompass the classrooms as well.