Do ‘Women in STEM’ Programs Violate Title IX?

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Rochester Institute of Technology has a persistent and yawning gender gap—what some have called its “infamous gender ratio.” It is nearly two-thirds male, a number that has remained relatively stable for years, sometimes raising eyebrows among prospective female applicants.

That’s why RIT introduced a slate of programs and scholarships aimed particularly—and in many cases, exclusively—at women. They include a Women in Engineering at RIT (WE@RIT) group, as well as a series of summer and after-school programs designed to encourage high school girls to apply to RIT and enter STEM fields.

Such programs have also invoked the scrutiny of civil rights investigators. Critics of single-sex initiatives have filed complaints with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, arguing that they violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education. Fourteen of RIT’s programs were the subject of one such complaint, filed in 2018, and a subsequent four-year investigation that closed just last month.

The complaint was dismissed, but only after RIT opened the programs to men. Officials also closed two of the programs during the course of the investigation, though a spokesperson for RIT said that was unrelated to the probe.'