For the eleventh year in a row, HSU met all three requirements for gender equity in athletics – funding, scholarships and participation – mandated by the CSU.
HSU had 197 women athletes, compared to 203 men in 2009-10; grants-in-aid for women represented 48 percent of the total, compared to 52 percent for men, and the budget for women’s sports was 47 percent, compared to 53 percent for men.
“Gender equity in sports is something we take very seriously and because of that, we’ve never fallen out of compliance in the past ten years,” HSU Athletics Director Dan Collen said. “It’s something we’re very proud of.”
In 1993, the CSU and the California National Organization for Women (CA NOW) officially called for an increase in participation, funding and grants-in aid and scholarships for female athletes on NCAA member campuses.
The guidelines required that participation by male and female athletes be within 5 percent of the number of NCAA-eligible women and men undergraduates; grants-in-aid be within 5 percent and funding be within 10 percent.
In response, some CSU campuses such as Sonoma, Hayward, Chico and San Francisco State cut their football teams to attempt gender equity in the mid 1990s, making the equity numbers closer by decreasing men’s athletic participation. But HSU decided to increase women’s athletic participation by adding women’s soccer and rowing instead.
“We said, let’s not drop men’s sports, let’s just add women’s sports,” Collen said. Both men’s and women’s sports now compete on the regional and national level.
Since 2000, CSU campuses have submitted an annual report monitoring their progress. Campuses that don’t meet their goals two years in a row are required to submit a corrective plan of action to the CSU.
Since 1993, female athletic participation across all NCAA member campuses has increased by more than 125 percent. Funding for grants-in-aid has increased by 596 percent. In 1993, CSU NCAA member campuses allotted $2.5 million for grants-in-aid. Last year, that number had risen to $17.4 million.
To view the full report, visit http://calstate.edu/pa/News/2011/Story/WomenAthletes.shtml.