There are boys in the La Costa Canyon High School knitting club. Instead of playing video games, these boys use needles and yarn to knit beanies. Meanwhile, UCSD's new chancellor is Marye Anne Fox, the first woman to head the UC system's world renowned local campus, often cited for its cutting edge efforts in scientific research.

While the latter event certainly outshines the news that boys are knitting, both actually represent milestones in a 30-year effort to break down gender stereotypes that have hurt both genders in pursuing education.

Fox, at 56, certainly grew up during a time when it was difficult for women to pursue fields like hers (organic chemistry) and aspire to be a professor, let alone a top-ranking college administrator. It wasn't long ago when we would have thought it impossible that UCSD, USD and CSU San Marcos would be headed by women leaders. But they are.

In 1972, at a time when public universities openly discriminated against women applicants, Congress passed what is popularly known as "Title IX," a federal law prohibiting schools receiving federal funds from engaging in bias based upon gender.

Since that time, much has changed concerning gender stereotyping in education.

Today, girls wear jeans and baseball caps to school, and boys often sport earrings and dyed hair.

At the college level, student movements for equality go even further. Students at San Diego State University asked officials to provide gender-neutral restroom facilities. And moves are afoot at SDSU and elsewhere to allow students in residence halls to live with roommates of the opposite sex – not on the same floor, but in the same room.

However, even in the years since passage of Title IX, both women and men still face obstacles, such as verbal and physical abuse, when they venture into activities that others have deemed the exclusive province of one gender or another. While the playing field is more level than it was in the past, there's still a ways to go.

The California Postsecondary Education Commission recently released a study on gender equity in sports. In surveying school districts throughout California, it's clear that the gender gap has closed in many sports. However, significant disparities still exist in traditionally male-dominated sports, such as football and wrestling. Thousands of boys play these sports, but only a relative handful of girls participate.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that homophobia is a factor that hampers girls participating in all sports, especially traditionally male-dominated contact sports. The publication found that college female athletes, both straight and gay, reported that they suffered abuse at the hands of fans, other players and coaches. It is not unusual to still be taunted with derogatory terms.

Given the rape and abuse charges leveled against the University of Colorado football team by a former female place-kicker, it's obvious that women are still not welcome in traditional boys' contact sports. But athletes, like everyone, should judge others based upon ability, not gender, and that's exactly what Title IX intended.

California law requires school districts to treat students fairly when students embrace unconventional gender roles. The Education Code requires schools to protect students from bias based upon the student's gender, which can be the student's actual sex or perceived sex. The law protects primarily students who define themselves as transgender, and requires schools to protect transgender students from abuse arising from their failure to conform to gender stereotypes based upon their identity, appearance or behavior.

The law also protects the boys who knit and the girls who wrestle. Neither should have to suffer verbal or physical abuse from staff or students. The law is little more than an extension of Title IX, and is consistent with federal and state court rulings that indicate schools must not tolerate abuse toward students based upon their gender or sexual orientation.

But to three members of the board governing the Westminster School District in Orange County, changing school policies to reflect state and federal law conflicts with their religious views. By failing to adhere to the policy, the three board members may put the district at risk of losing all state and federal funding for the 10,000-student district. The board members claim that the law will allow boys, perhaps claiming to be a "girl trapped in a boy's body," to seek access to the girls' shower-room.

In the few cases where schools have accorded transgender students and teachers use of gender-specific facilities, the students and teachers have undergone counseling, hormone replacement therapy and, in the case of teachers, gender-corrective surgery. To think that a boy would be willing to suffer not just mental but physical mayhem to gain access to the girls' locker room is absurd.

But to place in jeopardy a school district's $40 million in state and federal funding, thus depriving students of their education, is felonious.