The Heritage Foundation is at it again – this time the organization is focused on eliminating women’s sports, calling Title IX a failed experiment. Never mind those four-time World Cup soccer champions, or all the CEOs and women in upper-management who played sports in school. According to the Heritage Foundation, competitive sports are contrary to women’s nature. They should do yoga and dance and other healthy, community-based activities to keep them from acquiring masculine traits. If you’re not fuming yet, read on.
The first time The Heritage Foundation caught our attention, guest blogger Haley Lickstein, CEO of Haley Lickstein Media and Women Connect4Good board member, pulled the fire alarm and wrote, “The Heritage Foundation and Trump are coming for birth control, IVF, your ability to get divorced and go to school.” And much of what she warned about has happened.
Another one of our favorite bloggers, Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, called out Project 2025, which she calls “The Heritage Foundation’s wish list.” She recently wrote, “The playbook called for eliminating the Department of Education (check), ending DEI (check), replacing tens of thousands of career civil servants with political appointees (check), defunding Planned Parenthood (check), and banning no-fault divorce (working on it). It painted a vision of the American family so narrow that even Norman Rockwell’s paintings wouldn’t pass muster.”
In her “Here’s the Thing” Substack newsletter, Saujani also wrote about our latest beef with the Heritage Foundation, “Title IX’s Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity,” written by Scott Yenor, chair of American Citizenship Initiative. In this tropified version of women in sports, Yenor cites theories of the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, a foundational figure of second-wave feminism and author of The Second Sex, which challenged centuries of assumptions about women, freedom, and equality. He claims that Title IX is a device of feminist social engineering to create competitive, powerful male-type psyches produced by competitive sports contrary to their feminine natures, and the harm to men’s sports programs that are cut to comply with Title IX.
Not True—none of it!
The Department of Education website lists Title IX as one of the education amendments of 1972: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, 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.” While sports is not mentioned, it accidentally got plugged in as a way to level the playing field. And it has been a remarkable success for women and girls—would the US women’s basketball team have won eight consecutive Olympic gold medals, beating out France on their home turf in 2024 without a women’s sports program, beginning with Title IX?
In their 2025 Impact Report, The Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF) reported, “Title IX changed the game; 3.4M girls play high school sports today – which is 12x higher than when Title IX was passed in 1972; 44% of NCAA athletes are women, compared to 15% of collegiate athletes pre-Title IX.” In another report, they list the drawbacks to Title IX. Few elementary and high schools receive federal funding, so Title IX mostly applies to colleges.
Also, WSF reports, “The penalty for non-compliance with Title IX is withdrawal of federal funds. Despite the fact that most estimates are that 80 to 90 percent of all educational institutions are not in compliance with Title IX as it applies to athletics, such withdrawal of federal moneys has never been initiated.” There are requirements for having a Compliance Coordinator on staff and filing complaints for noncompliance, but then they are cited as “In compliance conditioned on remedying identified problems.”
The WSF Title IX report goes on to explain that programs are judged in their entirety, not one sport against another, as Yenor asserts. And “The courts have ruled that ‘boys are more interested in sports than girls’ is not an acceptable defense to lack of equitable participation opportunities.” However, women’s sports programs do get blamed when men’s non-revenue-producing budgets get cut in favor of funding football and other revenue-producing men’s sports, even though it is out of compliance with the intent of the law.
Why we care!
Participation in sports directly correlates with women’s leadership. This is not theory, not cancel-culture, not gender-defined roles. This is FACT!
The first-of-its-kind study of women in their 20s through 80s showcased the impact of having greater access to sport for millions of girls. The report, “Play to Lead: The Generational Impact of Sport on Women’s Leadership,” serves as a powerful proof point:
- Half of women (49%) credit the skills acquired through sports for their leadership development.
- 69% of women who played sports held at least one formal leadership role outside the family
- 71% of women who had a formal leadership role held titles like Manager, Director, President, or C-suite Executive.
- The longer girls play sports, the more likely they are to hold formal leadership roles.
- 67% of women believe they have carried the skills and lessons from sports into adulthood.
- Top skills learned—
- 73% Teamwork
- 53% Learning from Mistakes
- 51% Handling Pressure
- 46% Pushing Physical Boundaries
Bottom line: “Youth sports fuel women’s leadership… ‘Play to Lead’ is more than a research report; it is a call to action for all to prioritize youth sports participation, proving that the skills, traits and experiences girls learn from sports transcend the field of play, and have the ability to build a vibrant leadership pipeline that benefits society and bolsters the economy.” That’s a win-win for everyone.
We must all speak up for the things we care about and Yenor’s attack on Title IX and girls playing sports struck a nerve on many fronts.
Jess Piper, a rural Missouri blogger, former teacher, wife of a football coach, and mother of five children, wrote, “Give Them an Inch…And they’ll take away women’s sports…” as a warning about what has happened and what is threatened for the future. Piper wrote, “Project 2025 told us what they wanted to do to government, and a new report published by the Heritage Foundation tells us what they think about women. We are not partners in public life, but people to be managed and separated and minimized.” Most important, Piper told of her daughter, who played high school and college sports, and how she benefitted from Title IX opportunities:
She excelled at softball and I can tell you that the Title IX that insists that girls have the same right to a competitive sport as boys made a difference in her life. A competitive sport gave her confidence. It gave her stability. It gave her lifelong friendships. It gave her the ability to understand teamwork and her own role in life.
Softball made her the person she is today. Competition made her better prepared for her adult life. She understands persistence and grit. She knows what it’s like to win and lose. She handles both well thanks to elite competition.
That personal story says it all. For more stories and how Women’s Sports Foundation has multiplied that impact in communities to help girls and women who need support through a multitude of opportunities, check out their website, speak out loud to your elected representatives, and join the effort to keep the pipeline to leadership flowing into the next generation of women leaders who play to win.