The Shop Class Stigma: What Title IX Didn't Change : NPR: Forty years ago, former President Richard Nixon signed Title IX, which said no person shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from any education program or activity. Vocational education courses that barred girls — such as auto mechanics, carpentry and plumbing — became available for everyone. But it's still hard to find girls in classes once viewed as "for boys only."
Zoe Shipley, 15, has a passion for cars and tinkering with engines.
"It's just kind of cool to learn how to fix a car or learn about it," she says.
Zoe is also the only girl in her automotive technology course, so she's been teased a lot.
"They would call me grease monkey," she says. "I'm like, so what? At least I have the option to choose what I want to do, you know what I mean?"
That's what Title IX did. The law removed the policies and practices that kept female students from courses and programs once reserved for male students.
