![AIAW logo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/AIAW_logo.jpg)
The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was founded in 1971 to govern collegiate women's athletics in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and to administer national championships (see
AIAW Champions
The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was founded in 1971 to govern collegiate women’s athletics and to administer national championships. During its existence, the AIAW and its predecessor, the Division for Girls' and Women' ...
). It evolved out of the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (founded in 1967). The association was one of the biggest advancements for women's athletics on the collegiate level. Throughout the 1970s, the AIAW grew rapidly in membership and influence, in parallel with the national growth of women's sports following the enactment of
Title IX
Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
. The AIAW functioned in the equivalent role for college women's programs that the
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
(NCAA) had been doing for men's programs. Owing to its own success, the AIAW was in a vulnerable position that precipitated conflicts with the NCAA in the early 1980s. Following a one-year overlap in which both organizations staged women's championships, the AIAW discontinued operation, and most member schools continued their women's athletics programs under the governance of the NCAA.
History
Women's intercollegiate athletics were organized on a national basis in 1941, the year the first national collegiate championship was held in the sport of golf by the Division for Girls' and Women's Sports (DGWS) of the
American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation. During the late 1950s and the 1960s, many colleges around the country had started women's sports teams that competed with other schools in their respective geographic areas. In 1956 the Tripartite Committee was formed by representatives of three organizations: the
National Association for Physical Education for College Women
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
, the
National Association for Girls' and Women's Sport
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
, and the
American Federation of College Women.
[Hunt, Virginia: "Governance of Women's Intercollegiate Athletics: an Historical Perspective." PhD Diss. University of North Carolina - Greensboro, 1976. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1977.]
Upon the recommendation of the Tripartite Committee, the National Joint Committee on Extramural Sports for College Women (NJCESCW) was formed in 1957 to guide and administer women's intercollegiate athletic programs.
In 1965, with the desire to consolidate governance of women's intercollegiate athletics under one organization, the NJCESCW disbanded and agreed to let the DGWS assume control over competition and extramural events.
The first action the DGWS took was to establish the ''Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (CIAW)'' to assume responsibility for designing, sponsoring, and sanctioning women’s intercollegiate sports and championships. The purposes of the CIAW were (1) to provide the framework and organization for women's intercollegiate athletic opportunities and (2) to sponsor
national championships
A national championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or contest within a league of a particular nation or nation state. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the best team, indi ...
for college women under the authority of the DGWS.
The AIAW developed from the CIAW in recognition of the need for institutional membership and elected representation. Formation of the AIAW was approved by the DGWS Council and the AAHPER Board of Directors in 1971, but the CIAW continued to operate until early 1972, at which time the AIAW officially came into existence, with over 280 schools as members.
At that time the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) had no interest in women's athletics, and administrators of the AIAW had no interest in the NCAA either. The NCAA was seen as being commercially driven and neglecting the meaning of the
student-athlete. There were distinct differences between the two associations in the AIAW's early years. For example, student-athletes playing in AIAW programs were allowed to transfer freely between schools, and to prevent unfair advantages, programs were initially forbidden to offer scholarships and recruit off-campus. The AIAW continued the rules established by the CIAW, which were intended to prohibit unethical practices that were observed in men's sports. To enforce the rules, students receiving scholarships were forbidden from championship participation. The ban on scholarships ended in 1973, following a lawsuit by players and coaches from two colleges in Florida. The AIAW was not without criticism however, as some outsiders and individual members complained that the association devoted too much time, efforts, and funds securing distinction and independence from the NCAA.
The annual
softball
Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...
tournaments and
basketball tournaments received the most publicity and drew the biggest crowds; however, the association organized championships in various other sports. They included mainstream sports like
volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Summ ...
and
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...
but were as far reaching as
badminton
Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players pe ...
and
fencing
Fencing is a group of three related combat sports. The three disciplines in modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre (also ''saber''); winning points are made through the weapon's contact with an opponent. A fourth discipline, ...
. Aside from national championships, individual schools worked together to stage annual state championships.
While in existence, the AIAW organized and administered all competition at the regional and national levels. In 1981-82 the organization offered 41 national championships in 19 sports — badminton, basketball, cross country, fencing, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, indoor track and field, lacrosse, rowing, skiing, soccer, softball (fast and slow pitch), swimming and diving, synchronized swimming, tennis, track and field, and volleyball.
The 1973 Basketball Tournament was the first sign that women's sports could be financially successful. Over 3,000 fans watched the final game between
Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
and
Immaculata
The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception.
It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth wh ...
, and the tournament earned over $4,500 in profits. In 1975 these two teams met again, this time in
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsylva ...
. The first
women's basketball game to be played in the arena drew a crowd of more than 12,000 spectators. The AIAW started to take advantage of corporate sponsorships and television payouts not unlike its male counterpart, but on a smaller scale.
In 1972, the
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...
passed
Title IX
Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
of the Educational Amendments of 1972. Although the impact today is primarily discussed in terms of the impact on athletics, the bill made no explicit mention of athletics. The bill provided that neither men nor women could "be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance".
The task of issuing regulations fell to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). One of its early decisions was that athletic programs would indeed be subject to the requirements of the law. The effect was to require the creation of new women's teams instead of stipulating that women could simply try out for men's teams. Consequently, the regulations required colleges to provide equal opportunities for both genders in collegiate athletics. Any school that received federal funds was required to provide gender equality by the 1978-79 school year. In 1974 colleges started giving
scholarships
A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need.
Scholarsh ...
to female student-athletes. That year (aside from the exceptional Wayland College basketball team in the 1950s),
Ann Meyers
Ann Meyers Drysdale (born Ann Elizabeth Meyers; March 26, 1955) is an American former basketball player and sportscaster. She was a standout player in high school, college, the Olympic Games, international tournaments, and the professional level ...
became the first female to receive a full scholarship by committing to play for
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
. Title IX is credited with the vast improvement in funding for women's athletics. By 1980, the average university spent over 16% of its athletics budget on women's sports. In the early 1970s that number was less than 1%.
Although the regulations promulgated under the law required additional funding for women's teams, athletic directors did not immediately embrace the requirements. Their concerns included the relative inability for many schools to sufficiently fund the necessary women's teams, making it possible for the budgets for men's teams to be reduced to achieve compliance. The NCAA, which regulated men's intercollegiate sports, raised money to help fight Title IX. In 1974 the Senate passed the
Tower
A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...
Amendment, which decreed that Title IX did not cover football or other revenue-producing sports. The recently formed AIAW responded, hiring a lawyer, Margot Polivy, to fight the Tower Amendment. Their efforts were successful, as a joint Congressional conference committee decided to eliminate the Tower Amendment.
On June 1, 1979, the AIAW assumed a separate legal identity and became a nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia. Then in 1981, following the NCAA's decision to offer championships for women in its top competitive division, Division I, the AIAW suffered substantial losses of members and revenue.
AIAW vs. NCAA
At its peak, the AIAW had almost 1,000 member schools. In the late 1970s, however, schools began to realize that women's athletics could be profitable, and the NCAA decided to offer women's championships. The NCAA's
Divisions II and
III voted to offer championships in 1980; however,
Division I members failed to gain a majority vote on this issue until the 1981 national meeting. This decision was quite contentious. During the tense floor debate, AIAW representatives objected to the motion to sponsor Division I championships, but their objections were met with pockets of "ridicule and hissing". After considerable debate, a vote was called, and the initial result was a tie, 124–124. A recount of the votes revealed the defeat of the motion by a vote of 128–127. However, parliamentary rules permit "reconsideration" of a vote if someone on the prevailing side asks for it. Several delegates on the losing side knew of one institution that had voted against the motion but whose faculty representative favored the NCAA position. When the influencer of the school’s "nay" vote left the room, those delegates prevailed upon that representative to request reconsideration. This time it passed, 137–117.
For the 1981-82 academic year, schools were able to compete in either the NCAA or the AIAW championships. There were a few occasions when a school participated in both tournaments that year (
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
in
gymnastics
Gymnastics is a type of sport that includes physical exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, dedication and endurance. The movements involved in gymnastics contribute to the development of the arms, legs, shou ...
, 1982;
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...
in
softball
Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...
, 1982; indeed the
University of Tulsa won ''both'' the AIAW and NCAA women's
golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
championships in 1982). However, the battle of members had started, as schools whose men's teams were already participating in the NCAA started to integrate their women's teams. Although some schools permitted their individual women's teams to choose, most schools made the weighty decision to support only one of the two organizations. The AIAW had fought for women's rights in the Title IX battle, while the NCAA had opposed those efforts. In contrast, the NCAA was much better funded and had better access to television contracts. The University of Texas, where the last AIAW president, Donna Lopiano, was the women's athletics director,
was one of the stronger holdouts. But when 17 of the top 20 basketball teams agreed to enter the NCAA tournament,
it proved to be the end for the AIAW.
In 1982 the first
NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament
The NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 women's college basketball teams from the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic ...
was held. The NCAA was able to offer incentives, such as payment of transportation costs, to participating members, something the AIAW was not able to do. When former AIAW powerhouses like
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
,
Louisiana Tech
Louisiana Tech University (Louisiana Tech, La. Tech, or simply Tech) is a public research university in Ruston, Louisiana. It is part of the University of Louisiana System and classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activi ...
, and
Old Dominion
Old Dominion most commonly refers to:
*The Old Dominion, a nickname for the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia
** Colony of Virginia
*Old Dominion University, a public university in Norfolk, Virginia
**Old Dominion Monarchs, the athletic teams represe ...
decided to participate in the NCAA tournament, the AIAW tournament lost much of its appeal and popularity.
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
canceled its TV contract with the association, and in mid-1982 the AIAW stopped operations in all sports. Following the last AIAW sanctioned event in 1982, the AIAW pursued a federal antitrust suit against the NCAA. But one year later, after the presiding judge ruled against the organization, the AIAW ceased existence on June 30, 1983.
Under NCAA governance, scholarships increased. However, several problems the NCAA was facing, then and now, began to also affect women's intercollegiate athletics. Examples of these include recruiting irregularities and increased turnover in coaching positions for revenue-producing sports.
Several AIAW championships were televised by the
TVS Television Network
The TVS Television Network, or TVS for short, was a syndicator of American sports programming. It was one of the several "occasional" national television networks that sprang up in the early-to-mid-1960s to take advantage of the establishment ...
in 1979.
See also
*
AIAW Champions
The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women was founded in 1971 to govern collegiate women’s athletics and to administer national championships. During its existence, the AIAW and its predecessor, the Division for Girls' and Women' ...
*
AIAW women's basketball tournament
The AIAW women's basketball tournament was a national tournament for women's collegiate basketball teams in the United States, held annually from 1972 to 1982. The winners of the AIAW tournaments from 1972 to 1981 are recognized as the national c ...
*
List of NCAA schools with the most AIAW Division I national championships
*
Major women's sport leagues in North America
The prominent women's sports leagues in the United States and Canada represent the elite level of women's sports competition for women athletes in North America. The majority of professional women's leagues are found in the United States. Top wo ...
Notes
Sources
*
*
*
*
*Hunt, Virginia (1976). "Governance of Women's Intercollegiate Athletics: an Historical Perspective". Doctoral Dissertation, University of North Carolina - Greensboro. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms (1977), 1-319.
*
*Willey, Suzanne (1996). "The Governance of Women's Intercollegiate Athletics: Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), 1976-1982". Thesis (P.E.D.), Indiana University. Eugene, Oregon: Microform Publications (1997), 1-351.
Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), Southern Region II Records, 1969-1983Compiled by Nell Hensley & Neil Kasiak, Eastern Kentucky University
External links
*
*
ttp://academic.wsc.edu/faculty/staltma1/titleix2.html Title IX (Academic syllabus)br>
"The Union of Athletics With Educational Institutions," Athletics and Education, D. Siegel*
Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women recordsat the
Sophia Smith Collection
The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College is an internationally recognized repository of manuscripts, photographs, periodicals and other primary sources in women's history.
General
One of the largest recognized repositories of manuscripts, a ...
, Smith College Special Collections
*
Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women archives, 1967-1983, 412 linear feet (unprocessed)
University of Maryland Libraries Special CollectionsAssociation for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), Southern Region II Records, 1969-1983 14.1 cubic feet (processed) Compiled by Nell Hensley & Neil Kasiak
Eastern Kentucky University Special Collections and Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Association For Intercollegiate Athletics For Women
College sports governing bodies in the United States
Women's sports organizations in the United States
Sports organizations established in 1971
1983 disestablishments in the United States
1971 establishments in the United States