Who’s Calling the Shots? Women Coaches in Division I Women’s Sportsn.Objective. During the past 30 years, women have become an increasingly small proportion of coaches of women’s sports. We test several explanations for why some institutions have women coaches and others do not. Methods.
Susan Welch, The Pennsylvania State University
Lee Sigelman, The George Washington University
Objective. During the past 30 years, women have become an increasingly small proportion of coaches of women’s sports. We test several explanations for why some institutions have women coaches and others do not. Methods. Taking the 329 NCAA Division I institutions with women’s sports programs as the cases in point, we explore possible explanations for the dearth of women coaches: the resources and prestige of an institution or sport; the gender of the athletic director; and institutional traditionalism. Results. Within Division I schools, women coaches are more frequently found in more prestigious, resource-richer institutions and those that devote more resources to women’s sports. Conclusions. Although the analysis is confined to Division I schools, it appears that more institutional and organizational efforts need to be made to increase the number of women in the eligible pools for head coaching jobs.
Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 mandated equality between men’s and women’s college sports. Since then, as women’s sports have skyrocketed in participation and popularity, the proportion of women’s teams coached by women has plummeted. In 1972, approximately 90 per- cent of the members of the coaching staffs for women’s teams nationwide were women, but by 2006 that figure had dropped all the way to 42 percent (Carpenter and Acosta, 2006; Wilson, 2007). This trend runs directly counter to the progress that women made during the same period in many traditionally masculine occupations (see Wharton, 2000; Padavic and Res- kin, 2002, for a recent review). Although a glass ceiling still exists in many occupations, women’s share of professional and leadership positions in business, politics, and religion has grown markedly since the 1970s and women have made significant inroads into prestigious professions such as medicine and law. Women have also increased their representation and clout in academia. They now constitute the majority of undergraduate students, and their share of graduate and professional students, faculty members,
nDirect correspondence to Susan Welch, Office of the Dean, College of the Liberal Arts, The Pennsylvania State University, 110 Sparks Bldg., University Park, PA 16803 hswelch@psu.edui. Upon request, the first-named author will share all data and coding information with those wishing to replicate this study. The authors appreciate the assistance of Nick Stark and the useful suggestions of Barry Lee, Robert Drago, and Sandra Hanson.
SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 88, Number 5, December 2007 r 2007 by the Southwestern Social Science Association
senior administrators, and college and university presidents has mush- roomed.
So in contrast to their earlier numerical dominance as coaches of college women’s teams, women now occupy only about four of these positions in 10. How can the relative paucity of women coaches be explained? Although useful data on patterns of growth in women’s sports and women’s sports leadership have been compiled (see especially Carpenter and Acosta, 2006) and gender differences in coaches’ ambitions and motivations have often been examined (see, e.g., Hasbrook, 1988; Sagas and Cunningham, 2004; Marback et al., 2005), explanations of the gender patterning of coaching positions remain largely untested.1 Moreover, findings about the situation of women college coaches have rarely made their way into broader analyses of occupational gender stratification (but see Knoppers, 1989).
To enhance understanding of occupational gender stratification in general and gender equity in collegiate sports in particular, we begin by examining longitudinal trends in the presence of women coaches in NCAA Division I (DI) colleges and universities in light of what is already known about changing gender representation in occupations. Then, focusing on four DI women’s sports, we test explanations of why women are more likely to occupy coaching positions in some settings than in others. Although DI teams are a subset of all college athletic teams, the proportion of women coaches in DI (44 percent) is similar to those in DII (36 percent), and DIII (44 percent) (Carpenter and Acosta, 2006:16), and all three proportions have declined over the years.
The Gender Composition of Occupations
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