Previous |
Next Only 9 Women Are Elected to the National Academy of Sciences |
May 04, 2007, 04:25 PM ET
Where Have All the Women Gone?
While record numbers of women are playing college sports, the proportion of female college coaches is shrinking, according to an article in today’s Chronicle.
The reporter, Robin Wilson, notes that “back in 1972, the year Title IX of the Education Amendments was enacted, more than 90 percent of all women’s teams were coached by women.” Last year, however, “nearly 60 percent of women’s intercollegiate teams were led by men, the highest proportion ever.”
So, why aren’t there more female coaches? Ironically, Title IX itself may be to blame.
“Indeed, as the law has raised the profile of women’s sports, the job of coaching female players has grown more lucrative, more prestigious, and more demanding,” and therefore more enticing to men, Wilson writes. At the same time, many women, turned off by the major time commitment and “all-out dedication” required by such jobs, are abandoning them for more family-friendly jobs or not taking coaching jobs to begin with, she notes.
The statistics are somewhat misleading: “The number of women coaching female teams has actually climbed in recent years, from 3,008 in 1998 to 3,690 in 2006,” writes Wilson. But coaching is still a man’s world, she adds:
The number of men coaching women’s teams has climbed much faster. Over the past eight years, men have captured nearly three-quarters of the new head-coaching positions created by the surge in women’s sports teams.
Although more men are coaching women, the opposite is not true. Fewer than 2 percent of men’s intercollegiate teams have female head coaches.
The good news is that the National Collegiate Athletic Association is taking an interest in the problem. “We know people are leaving or deciding not to enter the field because they don’t think they can keep it all in balance,” Carol A. Cartwright, president emeritus of Kent State University, told Wilson in an interview. At Cartwright’s urging, the NCAA has asked colleges to consider “how they might make life easier for coaches with families,” Wilson writes.
Still, despite a growing awareness of the gender issue, few athletics directors have been able to do much to remedy it. Jim Livengood, of the University of Arizona, where nine of the 11 women’s teams are coached by men, expressed concern for the future of college athletics:
“I find fewer and fewer females who want to go into coaching.”
“Sometimes when you’re watching Rutgers play Duke, with two great female basketball coaches, or Pat Summitt at the University of Tennessee, you think: These are the people who have been in the game. But who are going to be the next Pat Summitts?”
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.