‘None of this was a given’: 50 years of Title IX and fighting for equality in US education

‘These protections weren’t written in stone from the beginning – they were created because of activists’ … Duke students march in a Take Back the Night protest. Photograph: Duke University

In 1969, Bernice Resnick Sandler was a 41-year-old doctoral candidate in education at the University of Maryland, where she was also a part-time lecturer.

But while some of her male peers in her doctoral program received job offers from colleges around the country without interviewing, Sandler couldn’t even get a job interview for a tenure-track position at her own institution, according to 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Sex Discrimination, a book by Sherry Boschert published earlier this year.