management system does not track that information. Officials at Energy, 

 NASA, and NSF told us that complaints meriting further investigation were 

 referred to Education if they involved educational institutions or to EEOC 

 if they were related to employment issues. However, officials at Energy, 

 NASA, and NSF told us that they have received very few Title IX 

 complaints each year. (See table 1 for information on compliance 

 procedures required by Title IX.) 



EEOC also has established procedures to review complaints made under 

 Title IX, but the full number of complaints it has reviewed cannot be 

 determined. Officials at EEOC told us that it has received some Title IX 

 referrals, but since EEOC does not have statutory authority under Title IX, 

 it reviews complaints to determine if Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 

 1964 applies. Consequently, EEOC does not track which complaints 

 originated as Title IX complaints, and it cannot determine how many Title 

 IX complaints it has investigated under Title VII. Although EEOC 

 investigates tens of thousands of complaints each year, officials told us 

 that they cannot determine if their investigations involved scientists, or 

 one of the four agencies, because EEOC's database does not track the 

 employee's occupation or the department in which the complaint 

 originated. 



While grantees are required to establish procedures to resolve Title IX sex 

 discrimination complaints, agencies could not determine whether they had 

 done so because grantees are not required to report this information. 

 Despite this requirement, there is some evidence that some grantees have 

 not established these procedures. For example, Education recently 

 reviewed the Title IX compliance status of selected grantees and found 

 several iristances in which grantees had not adopted or published 

 complaint procedures. Recognizing this issue. Education issued a "dear 

 colleague" letter in April 2004 to its grantees reminding them of their Title 

 IX requirements to establish and publicize complaint procedures. Even if 

 grantees have established procedures to address Title IX complaints, they 

 may not be tracking the complaints they handle. Officials from every 

 university we visited told us that they had an internal process to handle 

 Title IX sex discrimination complaints, but a few were unable to provide 

 us with actual numbers because they do not keep these data. Also, some 

 officials told us that most complainants choose to file at the grantee level 

 rather than with the federal government. 



Students and university and laboratory officials we spoke with offered a 

 number of reasons why there have been so few Title IX sex discrimination 

 complaints involving the sciences filed with Education, Energy, NASA, and 



Page 10 GAO-04-639 Gender Issues 



