The sixth National Girls and Women in Sports Day will be observed this week in all 50 states.

The theme of the day, officially Thursday, is “Clearing the Hurdles: 20 Years of Title IX,” highlighting events that have transpired since Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1972.

That act banned discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions receiving federal funds.

According to information supplied by organizers of the event (Girls Inc., The National Association for Girls and Women in Sport, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and the YWCA of the USA) Title IX not only increased participation of women in sports, but changed attitudes about women and physical activity.

Participation in interscholastic sports jumped from 300,000 in 1971 to 1.8 million in 1989-90. While boys high school participation dropped in the past two years, the number of girls participating is still increasing.

Between 1972 and 1990, the number of women participating in college sports increased by nearly 600 percent. Still, however, the national average of male-female sports participation is 2-1.

According to WSF President Lyn St. James, while progress was made in the early years of Title IX, inequities still exist. “We have arrived at a comfort level of discrimination that leaves women with fewer opportunities than men,” she said. Men still receive preferential treatement and, when college and universities make cuts in athletic budgets, those cuts can have a disproportionate effect on women’s sports unless Title IX is carefully followed.

In conjunction with National Girls and Women in Sports Day, here are some interesting facts:

Chris Evert, who retired from professional tennis in 1989 with 1,309 career wins (including 18 Grand Slam singles titles), was the first player, male or female, to reach 1,000 wins.

Judy Sweet became the first female president of the NCAA in January, 1991. Athletic director at the University of California at San Diego, she is also the first president from a Division III school since the three-division structure began in 1973.

Nancy Lieberman-Cline is the only two-time winner of the Wade Trophy, honoring the country’s top female collegiate basketball player.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, a U.S. National Bowling Tournament holds the world record for the largest female sports participatory event when 77,735 women competed in the 1988 tournament.

The first national collegiate championship sport for women was golf in 1956.

In its 64-year history, the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters exhibition basketball team has had eight women players, beginning with Lynette Woodard in 1985.

In the 1991 BOC Challenge, finishing 6th overall of 25 starters, Isabelle Autissier of France became the first woman to complete an around-the-world solo yacht race, in 139 days, four hours and 48 minutes.

In March 1991, for the first time in the 73-year history of the Women’s World Figure Skating Championships, three skaters from the same country swept the medals when the United States’ Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold, Tonya Harding the silver, and Nancy Kerrigan the bronze.

The only major sports event that attracts more female than male viewers is the Winter Olympics. During the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, 54-56 percent of the viewers were women 18-and-older, compared with 44-46 percent men in that category.