(Radio Iowa) – Women’s sports are reaching new heights in popularity and revenue. An Iowa State University researcher credits Title Nine, the 1972 federal law that bans discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities, for not only increasing interest in women’s sports, but for changing career choices for women. Karen Kedrowski is director of I-S-U’s Center for Women and Politics.

“Women’s sports are enjoying much more support. There are many more opportunities for women and girls to participate in sports,” Kedrowski says. “There are many more opportunities for women to receive college scholarships in order to play sports and, of course we have seen this even penetrate as far as the Olympics level where you know women for the last couple of summer Olympics have actually been a majority of the American team.” But Kedrowski says Title Nine has had enormous impact in other ways.

“It has opened up fields of study to women,” Kedrowski says. “It has opened up scholarship opportunities aside from athletic scholarships to women. It has ensured there are no gender quotas used to keep the number of women low in certain professions.” Fifty-two years after the passage of Title Nine, women now earn a majority of all high school diplomas and a majority of all college degrees, including PhD’s.

“We also know that women are a majority of those or have reached parity in medical and law schools and are very close to reaching parity in dental schools,” Kedrowski says, “so in terms of opening up professions to women and really changing the nature of college campuses it has had a huge impact.” Nationally, 58 percent of college students are women. Kedrowski says the rising rate of women earning a college degree is having an impact in politics, too.

“It has certainly helped think about women run for public office or becoming involved in local government because they no longer lack the official credentials that we see of how people run for office,” Kedrowski says, “where we expect them overwhelmingly to have college degrees.”

All six members of Iowa’s congressional delegation have college degrees. According to the Pew Research Center, 94 percent of all U-S House members and all but one U-S Senator have a four-year college degree.