Bread & circuses.

Opponents of race-based preferences are winning in the courts, but, thanks to the Clinton Administration, sex-based preferences have triumphed in the gym. In the name of "gender equity, colleges belonging to the NCAA have cut 20,900 male athletes from team rosters over the past five years. Male wrestling and gymnastics programs face extinction. Although eliminating mens teams does not improve athletic opportunities for women, a 25-year-old anti-discrimination initiative imposes strict quotas on collegiate playing fields.

Back when the Equal Rights Amendment was wending its way through the state legislatures, Congress approved Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibited sexual discrimination in federally assisted education programs. Theres little evidence of discrimination in education today. The majority of students in college now are women, and women earn the majority of masters degrees. But the feminists are not content.

The problem is that, while enjoying enormous educational success, women are not playing sports to the same extent as men. The number of female athletes has increased dramatically since the early Seventies, when young women were not encouraged to play competitive sports and only 300,000 high-school girls did. In my all-girl high school, neatly pressed gym uniforms were the priority for our teacher, who presided over the class in stockings and heels. Apparently, ironing was thought to contribute to our physical fitness. One of my sisters abandoned competitive swimming when our mother pointed out that large shoulders would look terrible in evening clothes.

Today 2.4 million high-school girls enjoy the benefits of competitive sports. However, in both high school and college, the proportion of female students playing competitively has, after an initial surge, leveled off to less than 40 per cent. A sensible person might conclude that this reflects womens natural inclination to be less interested in sports. After all, men made up 60 per cent of the TV audience for the womens NCAA basketball finals. And female students are plenty engaged in other activities. Studies show that high-school girls are more involved than boys in non-sports extracurricular activities like choir, band, and debate and drama clubs.

Despite the evidence that women now freely engage in sports in proportion to their interest, federal courts and the Clinton Administration are forcing colleges to eliminate mens teams in order to create an even ratio in male and female athletics.

The National Womens Law Center celebrated the 25th anniversary of Title IX by filing complaints with the Department of Education against 25 universities whose athletic teams dont have the same male - female ratios as the student body. (Who says girls cant do math?) The Departments own enforcement policies and a recent case involving Brown University will force colleges to adopt a strict proportionality between mens and womens teams or risk losing federal payments.

Although Brown was an early supporter of the womens athletic movement, it was sued when budget-cutting in 1991 led to the elimination of two womens teams and two mens teams, which affected 37 men and 23 women. The court recognized that Brown funded 32 teams, half for men, half for women. However, women accounted for 51 per cent of the enrollment and only 38 per cent of the varsity athletes. Brown argued that it provided athletic opportunities sufficient to meet the interest and abilities of its female students, but the courts ruled that under Title IX schools must structure teams so that the ratio of male to female athletes matches the ratio in the student body. Brown was told to fund any sport women might want to play, regardless of cost, or eliminate 213 slots for men. In April, the Supreme Court denied Browns petition for review.

This interpretation of Title IX has led to the elimination of hundreds of mens programs with no appreciable gains for women. As interpreted by the Clinton Administration and enforced by the courts, Title IX has been four times more effective in eliminating male athletes then in developing female athletes. The NCAA reports that there are now more womens teams than mens among its members, but male rosters remain larger, and so, as one university coach puts it, the "carnage afflicting mens sports continues.

Over the past five years, NCAA Division III programs cut 9,000 male slots while adding a mere 178 female slots. In the last three years, 16 Division I schools have dropped their mens swim teams and more than 60 schools have eliminated mens track programs. There were 133 mens gymnastics teams in 1975; there are only 32 today. In 1972, there were 777 college wrestling programs; there were only 315 by 1996 despite enormous interest at the high-school level. Florida has 253 high-school programs with 6,850 participants, but no college teams at any level.

Recent news accounts indicate that the number of mens high-school teams in Florida might also be facing a precipitous decline. State education officials have notified several schools that under state law and Title IX they risk being eliminated from all athletic competition if they dont recruit more female athletes. Officials at one Florida high school complain that they dont have sexual parity in athletics because 25 per cent of their female students are already or soon to be mothers.

CONGRESSMAN Denny Hastert (R., Ill.), who spent 16 years as a high-school wrestling and football coach, has been leading congressional efforts to enforce the original anti-discrimination intent of Title IX. When higher-education programs are reauthorized next year, he wants Congress to clarify that colleges "shouldnt reduce opportunities for either gender to participate in order to satisfy proportionality. If Hasterts GOP colleagues prove too timid to eliminate reverse discrimination in collegiate athletics, they ought to be benched.