The US Women’s National Team is a major player in FIFA’s Women’s World Cup, having won two of the last three and four since the women’s World Cup was established in 1991. The US men’s team has gone beyond the Round of 16 only once in the same time span.
Part of the reason for the US women’s dominance is that fewer countries emphasize women’s soccer. Male athletes also have more options in America, with football and baseball capturing much of the attention. Europe’s more popular and lucrative professional leagues also help to make soccer stardom an aspirational ideal.
But there is another factor behind the underperformance of US men’s soccer on the international stage: the perverse incentives of our reigning civil rights regime.
Title IX has actively suppressed the growth of men’s sports since the early 1990s, when enforcement of the 1972 law underwent sweeping changes. Since that time, Title IX has been interpreted as a requirement that the proportion of athletes who are female must be equivalent to the number of undergraduates who are female at every school receiving federal funds.
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