Title IX literally changed the face of higher education. It remediated the exclusion of education from the earlier Civil Rights Act and made sex discrimination in education illegal. For many of women, affirmative action got our foot in the door, and Title IX allowed us to stay by giving us recourse when we faced harassment and discrimination in the tenure process. But enforcement took unexpected turns when athletics, not at all envisioned by the bill’s creators, became the main focus. After initial floundering, the government created compliance protocols for athletics, and only for athletics. Much progress has been made, but even in athletics, as the dramatic disparity in the NCAA bubble last year showed, there is much work to be done. And the question of why STEM seems to have benefitted so little from Title IX and whether Title IX could be used more effectively in STEM and related fields remains to be answered.