The Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA) of 1974 is one of the several landmark laws passed by the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...

outlining federal protections against the gender

discrimination Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong, such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sex ...

women A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional u ...

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

(

educational equity Educational equity, also known as equity in education, is a measure of equity in education. Educational equity depends on two main factors. The first is distributive justice, which implies that factors specific to one's personal conditions should ...

). WEEA was enacted as Section 513 of P.L. 93-380. Introduced in the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...

by Congresswoman

Patsy Mink Patsy Matsu Mink ( Takemoto; , December 6, 1927 – September 28, 2002) was an American attorney and politician from the U.S. state of Hawaii who served in the United States House of Representatives for 24 years as a member of the Democratic ...

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, the legislation was conceived and drafted by Arlene Horowitz, a staff assistant to the education subcommittee on which Mink served. WEEA was intended to combat sex-role stereotyping in elementary and

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

Passage

The legislation was first proposed by Rep. Mink in response to efforts by other legislators to weaken

Title IX Title IX is a landmark 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 education program that receiv ...

, a statute prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities that had passed in 1972.

Billie Jean King Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943), also known as BJK, is an American former World number 1 ranked female tennis players, world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 Grand Slam (tennis), Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 16 in w ...

, a female professional tennis player, used her sports celebrity to speak in favor of the Women's Educational Equity Act of 1973 (WEEA) before it became a law. On November 9, 1973, King testified before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and spoke about problems in women's sports. King stated that the benefit of sports was denied to women in

educational programs An educational program is a program written by the institution or ministry of education which determines the learning progress of each subject in all the stages of formal education. See also * Philosophy of education *Curriculum In education, ...

, such as budgets for women's sports being less than men's sports. King's testimony brought attention to issues in women's sports and helped with the consideration of the Women's Educational Equity Act. Mink's bill was defeated in the House, but Senator Walter Mondale attached the bill to the broader Elementary and Secondary Education Act (H.R. 69) being debated in the Senate, and Mink worked to have this version approved in the cross-chamber conference committee. The WEEA was passed as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Amendments and was signed into law on August 21, 1974.

Content

The Women's Educational Equity Act authorizes grants “…to develop nonsexist curricula, personnel training programs, and vocational and career counseling.” In addition to these grants, the improvement of physical education programs is also included. These funds helped education facilities to meet the requirements of

.Ware, Susan. Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports. The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Implementation

In 1982, Leslie Wolfe, WEEA's director when

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...

was elected to the U.S. presidency, was transferred out of that position and people aligned with Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum were brought in to review grant proposals being considered for WEEA funds. In 1984, Congress rewrote the WEEA legislation making its mission and purpose more explicit and therefore keeping its actions true to its original goal. During the Reagan Administration, the assistant secretary of education, Jean Benish, implemented a review process which included all walks of people and provided a fair and equitable grant review process which was all-inclusive of women's issues. In 1984, Congress rewrote the WEEA legislation making its mission and purpose more explicit. In 2003, the

George W. Bush administration George W. Bush's tenure as the 43rd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2001, and ended on January 20, 2009. Bush, a Republican from Texas, took office following his narrow electoral college vict ...

ended

federal funds In the United States, federal funds are overnight borrowings between banks and other entities to maintain their bank reserves at the Federal Reserve. Banks keep reserves at Federal Reserve Banks to meet their reserve requirements and to clea ...

for WEEA's Resource Center, a mechanism for collection and sharing of information about gender equity programs. The last documented funding for WEEA was in 2010. For the fiscal year 2018, the President's budget does not request funding for WEEA.Online posting. National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity. http://napequity.org/public-policy/current-laws-and-bills/womens-educational-equity-act.

References

United States federal civil rights legislation Anti-discrimination law in the United States 93rd United States Congress 1974 establishments in the United States Women's rights legislation History of women's rights in the United States 1974 in women's history United States federal education legislation 2010 endings 2010 disestablishments in the United States {{US-fed-statute-stub