Women's college basketball is way more fun to watch than men's. Why? Their games are much more strategic and well thought out than mens games. Women's college basketball teams seem to do team-play much better than mens. We became hooked on Oregon State University's women's basketball team about five years ago. They've made it fun. It easy to envision each girl on the team becoming a leader in their fields someday.
Agree with everything in the article.
22
It seems to me in the ultra-competitive world of collegiate and professional sports, where teams are always looking for a way to gain even the slightest edge, if a woman could help them achieve that advantage, they would jump at the opportunity.
There’s nothing systemic here. It’s just the way things are in 2020. Men, as a group, do a better job of leading. It may not always be that way, but that’s how it is today.
81
Says who?
30
That is absolutely false. It actually is systemic...starting with laws that prevented women from voting, from controlling their own bodies, from being paid equally, from being educated equally. Until Title IX, there was a systemic inequality in public universities...women could be denied entry into any medical school, engineering school, business school, etc simply because they were female. It didn’t matter whether they had a perfect ACT or SAT. This IS systemic inequality. One may extrapolate that kind of inequality to understand how women have been blocked from actually having a chance to become leaders, or engineers or doctors.
And what parameters should be measured to rate such leadership...money made, environment polluted, safety regulations avoided, workers sickened, wars started? Maybe women don’t make the best leaders when the end point of success is measured only by the outdated narcissistic standards. Ask all those men who are “better” leaders what they think of their moms. I would guess that many had strong moms leading the way, although they did probably have to be careful to not step on their father’s toes.
125
It seems to me that men, as a group, think that “men, as a group, do a better job of leading,” even when presented with contradictory evidence. This is precisely why “this is just the way things are in 2020.”
Can you not imagine how it is difficult for women to demonstrate excellence in coaching if those in power are hiring based on biases rather than candidates’ actual capabilities?
103
In my community college classrooms I see a lot of the male confidence that is wholly undeserved and plenty of female competence that is well deserved and earned. It's still a lot easier to make it in America as a mediocre white male than it is as any other sort of person.
229
@Bradley Bleck-Try applying to any program that utilizes affirmative action, whether it be employment, education, or federal contracts, as a white male. You'll actually find the complete opposite.
69
@Bradley Bleck Are you implying that the majority of men in college classrooms are mediocre?
20
@Alex
Please don't fall into the media trap of calling government sanctioned racial gender and ethnic discrimination "affirmative action." The candy coating does not fool anyone.
30
Title IX is asinine. Please name me one sport where women can compete on an equal footing with men. In any type of free market setting no women's sport can survive without subsidy (Title IX). The best athletes in ANY sport are men and why wouldn't that translate to coaching a well?
42
Sorry but men do lead. They created this country and its institutions. All the whinning about women not in leadership roles is a big bore. When women create a country or even an auto industry, Hollywood, or Silicon Valley they can control and lead it.
20
A lot of male fragility and mansplaining in the comments here, including a lot of men telling us that women don’t want leadership. Just sigh - must be nice to be a man and know all about women.
65
this is all great, but if males can identify as women and colonise their sports because they feel they are women, it's all ultimately futile. Want more women coaching? Hire a trans woman. Sorted. No more females leading in sport. No female role models for young women to look up to.
We're already seeing mediocre male athletes setting records when they identify as women and compete without (in some states) even having to meet the wholly inadequate testosterone limits the IOC requires.
95
Everyone wants to be a leader. How utterly childish.
Maybe we should remember Socrates in the "Republic."
You never want a leader who wants to be a leader.
38
“Should Sports Teach Girls That The Best Person Wins?”
Sure, and use Trump as a prime example.
They should be taught that only the paranoid survive, and Hillary wasn’t paranoid enough.
6
Uh...sports has always taught that. There's no best team, just the best team that day. And men are more comfortable being coached by men, or having male bosses, and females with their female counterparts. This isn't rocket surgery. So quit it with the liberal stupidity already.
27
life is a competition. nobody lets anybody lead. the leaders take those positions.
17
In 1963 my tennis coach, Thelma Long, took a year off to tour the world in order to coach Margaret Smith (Court) to victory at Wimbledon (which she did). I think she was the first tennis coach, of either gender, to tour with an individual player, rather than with a national (male) team.
4
Women have every right to compete for coaching careers. How many women want to be professional coaches? I don’t think the desire is equal between the sexes. Basketball, soccer, volleyball, swimming and track have career paths that should transform from college participation. Now, quickly name the colleges that have success in those women’s sports? It’s hard. Beyond a few successful programs, none of them cover the cost to field a woman’s team. While a few percent of men in athletic programs go on to be professional athletes, an elite female athlete may look towards the Olympics, or coaching in their field of expertise at the college level. The big three, football, baseball, and basketball are dominated by men. In baseball, high school players are drafted long before a successful college career. There are some woman’s coaches that deserve an opportunity to compete with men for jobs, but I don’t know if they are trying. Would the author suggest a few qualified candidates that have been rejected, and in which sport and why? I would like to know a single qualified woman who applied for a coaching job that had more experience than a man that got hired. If statistics are being quoted, that would be a good place to start.
23
I wonder if there has ever been any data about whether men or women are better at coaching women's teams, or whether there is no effect of gender in the coach.
I don't know the answer to this and cannot speculate. But I believe that if there was such a study and it showed that women's teams do better with women coaches, or even just as well, that would be a greater impetus for rapid change than this kind of pure quota editorial.
7
Sadly, many colleges and universities use Title 9 to claim they have criminal jurisdiction over rapes that occur on campus or rapes involving their students off campus. And use committees and work teams, often working in secret "hearings", to administratively determine guilt or innocence. I am not making this up. The punishment: possible suspension, probation, or some other wrist slap. Yes, and suspension means a sexual predator simply enrolls at another school. The identical criminal offense by anyone just beyond the walls of ivy might get life in prison. Again, I am not making this up. It is a Pulitzer waiting for some enterprising journalist. Again, Title 9, designed to broaden women's sports and activity opportunities on campus, is now being used to endanger women. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out.
8
@Fred Talbott yes, and they oftentimes also deny the accused due process
17
It is just as likely that women are being leaders by seeing what is so completely broken in corporate collegiate athletics and have chosen to take their skills elsewhere.
8
The #1, most popular women's sport is NCAA D1 basketball. The undisputed, best NCAA D1 basketball coach is Geno Auriemma! His teams have won 11 National championships and been in 20 final 4's! His record is 1072-139. That is an 89.3% winning percentage.
Clearly, he needs to be replaced by a woman!
39
I'm sorry. Young men can't determine who the real leaders are? An unfortunately large percentage of the finest male student-athletes in the nation have been raised by single mothers. I think they have a clue. The most successful woman's college basketball program in NCAA history is coached by a man. May the New Year, and the New York Times, spare me 50% of the incessant identity politics in these pages.
45
There indeed is discrimination. But if things stay on course they should get much better.
Many, if not most coaches, were players. And the ones who become coaches tend to have played floor general positions.. Point guards in basketball. Volleyball setters. Those in the middle of the field in soccer. Softball catchers. And on and on.
For the time being, many more males played floor general positions at the highest levels. It is good news that they want to help young women excel. And as more excel, the female coaching pool will grow ever larger.
Highly skilled women coaches will soon be taking over, and an upward spiral should follow.
I coached girls and boys high school basketball. When l got there the boys were the far superior team and were my priority. But I gave both teams equal time and equal effort. My girls players recruited others because they liked the fact that it was all business. They liked the sport and they, too, were all business A gritty soccer player and a top volleyball player signed on. And from then on we had a lot of success. And when the boys and girls teams played at the same time, I turned the boys over to my assistant.
I don't know what she's up to, but I hope the gritty soccer player is coaching somewhere. And if she's coaching an old guys basketball team, I'd hope she'd give me a look.
5
Are many women who want to coach being turned away? I would think that most colleges would be eager to hire female coaches—certainly for women’s sports if less so for men. Is this more of supply problem than a (restricted) demand problem?
14
Winning at sports has nothing to do with how good a person you are. How you participate in sports reflects your character, but there are many wonderful people who have never participated in sports.
6
Not the best “person”, but the best player.
15
The coaching of these sports certainly should be opened up to more diversity. Good people are good people no matter what their sex. But what are sports today anyway?
Consider the real track and field — Greece, Battle of Marathon 490 B.C. where today’s marathons stem from. A fast runner was chosen to run the 40 kilometers to inform Athens of victory over Persia.
You can be sure the fastest person was chosen to run that. In todays marathons, run around the world, women are often held back so they don’t mix with the slow men. Who makes up that stupid rule anyway?
Since we already are entering the age of acceptance of more human rights, for example, transgender persons with all the ramifications that go with it, maybe the concept of separation in sports is no longer valid. There are sports where different physical characteristics succeed; that’s just human fact. Maybe the typical men-dominated sports, example in high school: football, basketball, wrestling and baseball should be heavily augmented with more emphasis spent on sports showcasing the skills of others.
Women are heavily competitive in track & field, gymnastics, cheerleading (dance), shooting, golf, soccer, tennis, map-reading (survival), sailing, etc and there are more than a few ladies better or even way better than men!
Maybe we need to work on that.
1
Women’s sports were designed to celebrate the achievements of extraordinary women - not ordinary men.
10
Do we want to encourage women to invest as much time and energy to sports as men? Shouldn’t we encourage them instead to do more important things?
6
Who cares. It's just women (and men) playing games. Entertainment of no consequence, never has been, never will be.
11
You can be a victim, or you can be a coach, but you can't be both. If you want to coach, don't let anyone stop you. That's self-empowering.
11
Sexism in sports is rampant - it's rampant in all parts of our society. Rampant actually is not the right word - it's so deeply engrained, it's a social norm, practically. Changing this is very difficult. Not only do you have to show people how it prevents society advancing, you also have to get people to unlearn much of what they're fed by the media on a daily, almost minute-by-minute basis. And then there's the disorientation that this unlearning causes - that and the discomfiting loss of power that men will suffer leading to the inevitable backlash. To top it off, so few are actually able and willing to engage in the conversations that will help us unlearn sexist attitudes. This column, however, gives me hope - because it is a part of that conversation. Ultimately, if people can recognize the problem and then acknowledge it, there's hope they can act to address it. It helps if people understand that seeing someone of your gender in any position - coach or CEO, etc - inspires and teaches. People who think it's "tokenism" don't want to acknowledge that reality that we do not live in a meritocracy - people get these positions out of expectation and tracking.
9
Women are told they are special. We're told to be ladylike. I had hoped that some of the idiocy about growing up female would have disappeared by now. I well remember how frustrating it was when I wanted to learn how to use the projector in school but was never given the opportunity. Why? I was a girl and the boys were better suited to learn how.
It gets worse as we get older. Older men don't have explain their wrinkles or gray hair. Women are expected to wear make up, to stay youthful in appearance, and never ever be too assertive. There's nothing like being handicapped by others to hinder advancement.
9
@hen3ry, I have to disagree with your comment. Being ‘expected’ to be ladylike, wear make up, or stay youthful is related to one’s self worth. I’m 56 and my gender does not hinder me from anything. This article is not about how you feel about yourself or the limitations you’ve created for yourself.
14
Isn't leadership EARNED? What sort of takeaway is it for ambitious young girls following their dreams when they see their elder sisters demanding that leadership roles be handed to them on a platter?
There are at least two things wrong with this op ed. First, it teaches little girls that (already privileged) they are entitled to leadership roles. How corrosive of effort is that?
Second, while borrowing the rhetoric of "talent," the three coaches are actually trying to replace ability and merit with gender quotas. They are demanding that they be hired and promoted on the basis of their sex.
15
@Ian Maitland
Isn't leadership EARNED?
Then question that begs to be asked does everybody have the same opportunity to earn leadership opportunities?
America is sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic, and class conscious, so the answer is that no, people don't have the same opportunity to earn leadership positions
11
It's remarkable to hear coaches talking about leadership in a manner that shows they don't understand it. The best person wins? But ifs its a man um....no fair!
Leadership is inspiration. IF you don't have it, no quota system, no "diversity", is going to hand it to you.
An astonishingly tun ear article.
9
"We put girls in sports so that they learn the best person wins." Don't you mean "the best ATHLETE wins"?
The best PERSON may be someone else altogether.
15
Maybe they can just get some of the male coaches to "identify" as female, and everything will even out nicely. I mean, since women are letting non-women play in their leagues...
Meanwhile, I think gymnastics is biased against tall people. We need to give them a quota too.
Really, talk about "First World Problems."
16
What's the appropriate feeder group? We hear women say they should be coaches in pro. baseball and football. Maybe that's ok. But then we hear Afr. Americans say that they are under-represented as NFL coaches, because the primary qualification is that they played the game.
2
Sports make sense as fun and as ways to stay healthy. All people should participate.
Intercollegiate and professional athletics should be paid for by media companies not by schools.
4
It's true and it should be fixed. Not only in coaching, but in teaching. School teachers should be roughly half and half and the disparities there are sufficiently alarming to make this a national scandal.
3
For three decades, Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame has blazed the path for women’s leadership of women’s sports. She should be held up as a model for women’s coaches at the collegiate and professional levels. I’m always amazed by how much press the male coach at UCONN women’s basketball gets relative to her. Time for a change.
1
Coaching as any other discipline begins early in academic careers if you do not have the opportunity to coach or be the assistant coach or on the coaching staff in schools and leagues you never catch-up. Then there is always the built-in excuse of you do not have the experience even if you excelled in the and are a leader in that sport. It does not matter if you are the "unofficial" coach leading practices, drills, identifying a weakness, setting up, calling plays. There needs to be a "combine" for sports coaching just as there is for athletes e.g. NFL and an academic track for coaching as well. It the combine would be tremendously popular and allow women an opportunity to coach and show their skills. I it would also put pressure on colleges to field a group of diverse coaching talent.
Thank you for sharing this information to a larger audience. As a female college coach, it is safe to say that while those of us in the profession are very aware of this issue others outside the coaching/sport profession are not. A few items that were touched on but could be elaborated. 1- look at the "decision makers" ..AD's, College Presidents, NCAA and sport governing bodies. Until the decision makers are more gender equal, it is unlikely that you will see gender equity in coach hiring. 2- Did anyone reach out to the Tucker Institute for Girls and Women in Sport? They the leaders in terms of NCAA data on women in sport and sport coaching. In fact their most recent report was just released grading all D1 universities. 3-we know there is a problem. So how can we start to solve it? Kudos for making those aware, but go the next step and include resouces where girls and women can turn for support/guidance. Wecoach and other female coach networks are extremely important and must start to mentor and reach out to younger girls and women to guide support them, and keep them in the profession. Moms, get out and coach your kids. Parents, ask for female coaches at the elite "travel team/ high performance level.". Encourage you daughters to pursue coaching. Husbands, continue to support your wives and moms that travel countless weeks for games and recruiting. Like everything else, it starts at home. Lastly females in coaching, let's peak up and support each other!
4
If it is government funded sport, Title IX applies. If it is private, the amount of pay has to depend on the sales. If men's baseball sells 10 times as much as women's, that's the way it is.
5
@Ernest Montague That explains revenue not...losing coaches kept on and on...
1
The only way to increase substantially the number/percentage of women coaches is to establish a program of affirmative action to hire women for coaching jobs in preference to men.
However, as noted by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the only way to stop discriminating on the basis of race (or, presumably, gender), is to stop discriminating on the basis of race (or gender).
10
Even that is a fallacy! The “best person” doesn’t always win, even in sport. It’s now also the person with the most money. It takes money to play many sports. For girls, when it comes to soccer, it’s the reason the US women’s team is nearly all white, cause soccer is played by girls with families that can afford to pay to play in leagues etc, get coached, and win scholarships etc. so, even that “best person” part is a sham!
6
@Freak, your argument fails completely when applied to different sports, e.g. basketball, which is heavily African-American. Basketball is highly invested in travel teams, notably the AAU, and, regrettably, corruption permeates even that level
1
Title IX was passed in 1972. The idea that the number of women coached an ADs is just awaiting for women to acieve equivalency in coaching and administrative skills is absurd. College and university administrators, most often men, lead the searches, along with other athletic department staff, also mostly men. Trustee boards may be more gender diverse than forty or so years ago, but clearly not enough to move the needle significantly when they do have input. Remember, pre-NCAA takeover of women's sports, the coaches were overwhelmingly women.
3
Perhaps data generated by peer-reviewed research would be helpful, asking individual women why they do not coach. Opinions can be turned into hypotheses that can be tested by the research. Then we would have some facts from women on which to base our thoughts and policies.
101
@Steve Tarr: See 37 years of peer-reviewed research at www.acostacarpenter.org.
Also see the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport: www.cehd.umn.edu/tuckercenter/
15
As a white male, the “male bashing” has become wearing with all the bias bordering on a new, media sanctioned, socially acceptable racism. We’re being forced to accept being socially stigmatized for the acts and entitlements of a very few. And no, I’m not a nationalist or a Republican.
27
I find it hard to be sympathetic after a lifetime of being told I wasn't smart enough, tough enough, creative enough or that I was too emotional to accomplish much of anything simply because I'm a woman. I found it a bit "wearing". And no, I don't hate men. In fact, I rather like most of them.
14
@Ted Wampus
Because someone disagrees with you that is not male-bashing white or otherwise. There are many people of color who coach grade school, high school, college, and league and produce athletic standouts then recruited across this country by colleges and professional teams. They rarely receive their shot no matter how successful even with proven track records. One of the things I enjoy about sports is that the win loss records do not lie.
5
@Ted Wampus Women have been dealing with bias and bashing for a long time, and were told to suck it up and deal with it. I understand it isn't fair, but maybe help even the playing field instead of being upset by unfair treatment. I would think that your short experience with it would help give you insight into what half of the population has dealt with for a couple of centuries.
10
The article points to the NFL as a positive example of trying to advance the idea of hiring minority coaches. It cites the Rooney Rule which requires teams to interview minority candidates during a coaching search. That rule has "helped to increase the number of minority candidates by 20 percent".
Yet the rule has come up short. This season there are only 3 African-American coaches (9.3% of all of the NFL head coaches) vs over 75% of the players who are African-American.
One of the leading reasons for this, in addition to no African-American team ownership, is that there is very little, if any, representation within the senior management for any of the individual teams. Teams, like companies, tend to hire people they know and with whom they are comfortable.
The same theory applies to female hirings in sports. Although some progress has been made both at the professional and college levels, it's still overly dominated by males in decision-making positions.
As the article points out, in the business world, certain industries have been making themselves accountable in an effort to bring in more female leadership. In doing so, that new leadership has given the next generation of women something to strive for, knowing they might be rewarded if they are truly qualified and capable.
Sports can do the same thing if, and when, the powers-that-be are willing to let go of their age-old ideas and prejudices and look at who is the best fit for the athletes they coach.
3
@Perspective
You are right. People tend to take their teams with them if they have an opportunity to coach nationally at the collegiate or professional level. Those teams tend to look like their coaching leadership. They become a cottage industry where the assistants, defensive line coaches are then also recruited.
Fair is fair.
I applaud what Title IX has done for women's sports and through sports for women's sense of accomplishment and leadership skills.
However, there is another area where we as a nation have not followed through on gender equality on our college campuses.
Today there are over 10,000 women's studies programs at US colleges and universities that depend, at least in part, on taxes for their funding. The number of corresponding programs devoted to men's studies is 0.
Why do we tolerate such a glaring disparity? It's reminiscent of laws preventing research on guns and violence. What are we afraid of?
Unfortunately, a federal lawsuit may be necessary to do for gender studies what it did for sports: establish that gender equality means just that: equality - at least in funding.
12
Sorry, but not true. There are men’s studies programs at colleges/universities, academic journals and conferences. In fact the NYT in 2015 highlighted a master’s degree program at Stony Brook. www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/fashion/masculinities-studies-stonybrook-michael-kimmel.amp.html
1
The best coaches come from the population of best players. When title IX was introduced the best players were men because men's sports were supported more generously. The changing proportions of women and men coaches should be expected to approach fifty fifty for any activity that is determined exclusively by gender. But with more and more women achieving more success, the proportion of women coaching will increase. This article assumes that if talent and ability are effective, women would dominate coaching for women. It's not a logical presumption.
1
I played various sports in high school and college, I have always wanted to coach. Becoming a mom this coming year, and this article has inspired me to be sure to at some point, even though it will just be a hobby not a career. Thank you.
1
Perhaps it would be a good idea to simply hire the best person for the job regardless of their sex.
182
@Timothy That's in the same category as the old shibboleth about integration. You know, the one about we should all be "color blind"? And we all know how that has worked.
No. Thank. You.
25
@Timothy
Or - perhaps it would be even a better idea to simply FIRE the best person for the job, if he is a man;)
8
@Timothy
That's what people have been claiming for a while, but we've proved that that doesn't work. Look at the status quo!
16
There is no small irony in an article that outlines the success of women in sports then calls for leadership changes. I would have assumed that performance = quality of leadership regardless of the gender or race of the coaches. This movement toward symbolism over qualifications and equality is troubling. At what point do we start to demand that we have more Asians as professional basketball players to send the right message ( I am 1/2 Asian). We should seek a society that provides equal opportunity not success based on gender, religion, race, income, or any other factor not associated with the successful accomplishment of that job
150
@Chris
I think the point is there isn't equal opportunity. Most coaches are former athletes within their respective sport. There are more female athletes but fewer female coaches. You don't think it's pertinent to ask why?
30
@Andy - then the issue would have been framed as a matter of being judged on one's merits
6
@Chris
Competition is a double-edged sword. There are winners and losers. Competition can encourage athletes to achieve their best, but it is destructive in that losing is not accepted as part of it. Accepting one's limitations isn't easy for too many who magnify the implications. and overreact.
The best competition should be competing with oneself, finding one's potential and acting on it.
5
As a smaller part of the larger picture of sex-based inequality, I agree. Over the course of my career, I have found women leaders preferable much of the time. However, there are other forces at work that define us all as part of the human species. Ultimately, I believe that over the course of a lifetime, opportunities should present themselves to all equally. But mind-body forces for young people differ greatly between the sexes (and among individuals). I would not have believed this fully until I was presented with raising a teen daughter and son. While both have their insufferable moments (honestly), my own observations lead me to conclude that between the ages of 13 and 18 boys and girls seem like almost distinct species. The girls, on average, encounter more challenges, many of which are self-inflicted, or inflicted by same-sex peers. Yes, yes there are lots of exceptions. However, these sex-based differences can only partly be explained away by societal forces or discrimination. Unfortunately, our society is set up such that a person has to get their career 'act-together' and 'hit the ground running' between ages 18-21. Biology/evolution works in the exact opposite direction. Changing this ridiculous and artificial time frame for success will be a critical part, in my opinion, for even-handed success across the board. Equal opportunity for all, but let's turn off the stopwatch...it's not a race.
2
My college did not budget for a soccer coach for the women's team and the person who stepped up to volunteer was a freshman...man. After a few weeks we had a huddle and asked ourselves whether we wanted to retain him. The answer was a low keyed no. We continued the year without a coach, organized our own transportation and had a good time. I've looked back at that and wished that more of my female colleagues had that independent spirit.
55
Sounds like a clear case of gender bias
40
@Susan - So no woman volunteered to lead? That seems to be exactly the source of the "problem" described here.
Also, and not incidentally, what shameful gender discrimination against someone volunteering to help your team.
58
@Steve Different team members stepped up to offer tips and suggest players try different positions. I remember the "coaching" as informal and without rancor.
14
How about real equality?
No women's sports. No men's sports.
Just have humans competing against humans.
It'd also solve the transgender problem in sports.
10
@philipe
Because there are real biological physical differences between the two sexes with real consequences for competition. Which is why it's also unfair for males who decide they're women to compete against females.
8
"Sport Should Teach Girls That the Best Person Wins. Not That Men Lead."
Haven't even read the article yet, but your click-bait is just plain wrong. The best person does not necessarily win in anything (look at Trump). Sometimes they do, and hopefully more often than not. But don't run around trying to teach anyone that the key to winning is to "be best".
Sorry, Melania - you just don't get it.
9
Maybe the men are good coaches?
13
This state of affairs was set in motion when the morally dubious NCAA was allowed to take over the AIAW. The AIAW and its predecessors, whilst not unflawed, offered a much better model for women's sports as well as opportunities for women coaches, trainers, and athletic directors.
3
Whenever I watch the local middle school girls soccer team practicing with their male coach I sense that good performance is being reinforced by traditional "daddy's girl" interactions. I have not heard that men coaches get trang on how t avoid this. Sure, kids always compete for the special attention of adult authority figures, but a powerful male figure with a group of young girls arrayed around him is an invitation to the most social pervasive roles. At least on the playing field this sort of thing ought to be avoided. It's not simply that women deserve to contribute their coaching talents to sports; it's that men in leadership roles over groups of women and girls is always potentially toxic.
3
Maybe the disparity exists because there are WAY WAY WAY more men than women who want to make sports the center of their lives, even after they cross into child bearing age. I am disappointed that the authors neglected something so obvious. For all we know, female coaches might actually be overrepresented relative to the numbers of men and women who are trying to become coaches.
Here's an idea. Rather than assuming that discrimination is the explanation for EVERY disparity that exists in the world, maybe the authors could consider the possibility that there are alternative explanations.
37
I (male) have 3 daughters playing sports in elementary/middle school and there is always a struggle finding decent coaches at the rec (and club) level. I’ve ended up coaching a lot of their teams and have had a blast doing it.
Even though I consider myself a good coach, I do like the idea of having my daughters coached by females. So, I’ve attempted to co-coach with women as often as possible. However, in my experience, there are WAY more men who want to coach than women. Even if the organizations are actively looking for female coaches, it’s often hard to find women coaches at the lower levels.
While I’m certain discrimination plays a role in the lack of women coaches at the collegiate level, I also think that a lot more men want to coach, so that likely plays a very heavy factor into the disparity as well.
21
A significant part of the problem here is about pay and schedule, which creates a lifestyle. I coached cross country and track at the Div. 3 college level for 10 years, and before and after that at the high school and middle school level. I have a Master's degree in exercise science and coaching. I would still be coaching at the college level if the salary was livable and the schedule was reasonable. As it was, my first college coaching job as a head coach paid $15,000 for 9 months/year, 3/4 time, coaching three seasons (cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track; head coach for one of the seasons, assistant coach for the other two). I worked and/or traveled almost every weekend from late August until late May. I recruited in the summer, time for which I was not paid. I eventually moved on to assistant coaching at the college level (the pay for which barely covered my commutes) while I worked a full-time job elsewhere. Ultimately I was coaching for the love of it and losing money doing it. I couldn't justify continuing when it was not financially sound, I was taking time away from my family many evenings and half of most weekends, and my spouse's schedule wasn't flexible enough to uphold the arrangement.
Had pay and schedule upheld any kind of reasonable lifestyle, I would still be coaching. I have several female friends who were college head coaches who also left the profession, sadly.
4
Wow! I appreciate this article so much. Really curious to understand if the flood of money in women’s sports is what led directly to more male coaches because it was suddenly paying more. It’s a crazy (but not surprising) statistic to imagine women’s teams *losing* female leadership as a result of money being flooded into the system. Great article and hope it is a step towards change.
3
My son Zach founded a national Soccer league for girls in Armenia during his Peace Corp stint. GOALS (Girls Of Armenia Leadership Soccer). In a male dominated society it has a woman CEO and is still going strong. The premise being that teaching girls to play soccer and learning about team work and leading will carry over into their lives. We have to do this in every country. Women have been treated as a minority for long enough. Now is the time to break all the glass ceilings and put women into powerful positions at every level of society. We finally gave them the vote last century, let us give them leadership positions this century.
2
The 'best' person does not always win. What competitive sports need to teach is that sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, but you always give it your best shot. It's true in life as well. If you give your best shot and you lose, well, someone else was better that day, or month, or year, whatever, but there's nothing to be ashamed of, kudos to that person. I coached my three daughters and tried to teach them to play tough and leave everything on the court, or field. Sometimes we won, and sometimes we lost, but we always fought hard. I'm very proud of them.
9
The best person does NOT always win.
9
Let's see if I understand the author's mind here:
1. Create separate events for women's sports because men will always win at sports
2. Create a law that demands equality in investment of university funds in women's sports because there will never be equality of interest among male and female spectators
3. Create a law to allocate coaching jobs in women's sports to women because teams are hiring male coaches with experience competing at men's sports
4. Create a law to ensure equal coverage of women's and men's sports in all news media
5. Create a law that ensures sponsors pay men and women equally for endorsements, i.e., Rapinoe and LeBron will be getting the same contract from Nike
We'll see how that works out for everybody.
27
Sport should teach people that sometimes the "leaders" are leaders for good reason, and sometimes for bad reasons, and that the world is a great big useless pile of meaninglessness.
Wait, it already does! Great!
4
Simple: women don't want the role. Women have been admitted on an equal basis to medical school for decades but the proportion of women practicing surgery (particularly surgery in high-risk/high-reward specialities) is nil. Not small. It is nil as in I have never seen a woman surgeon in my given speciality since 1982. In the interim, there has been an influx of women entering specialities considered more "feminine" such as ob/gyn and pediatrics. Women as a group don't respond well to being told what they are supposed to do and what to want. I am sure in the fullness of time, they'll meander over to coaching but as in other human endeavors, this isn't prone to central planning.
69
@Uncommon Wisdom
You undermine your argument by putting pediatric medicine into the surgical category. No general pediatrician is a surgeon. None. Nil. Pediatric surgery is a sub-specialty, like pediatric cardiology, pediatric ophthalmology, etc.
Also, men are blind to the behaviors that so-called high risk/high reward environments bring out in them. Cowboy docs with large egos are a huge turnoff. Women would rather just get the job done and go home, we don’t need constant external validation of our worthiness and superiority.
13
@Shiloh 2012
All that being said... woman are still not moving into the highest paid medical fields by their own choice.
Is that a sexism problem? Or a natural difference in the sexes?
10
@Shiloh 2012 UW did not actually say what you claim as the basis for dismissing his post.
16
The author posits;
"Now about 40 percent of women’s college teams are coached by women. Only about 3 percent of men’s college teams are coached by women."
Then (immediately) claims;
" That means that men have roughly double the number of opportunities to coach."
Nonsense. The author offers no proof whatsoever that women are excluded from any of these positions.
Equality of opportunity is not equality of outcome. And Ms Hutchins most definitely used the word "opportunities".
22
When women sports were underfunded, women coached and got paid poorly. When women's sports became popular and well-funded and there was money to be made, the men jumped in and took those spots.
Why are we surprised?
When male teachers and headmasters worked, they were paid a living wage. When rural towns chose not to pay a man, they hired a woman for half the money. When women "computers" during the Manhattan Project and early days of NASA did all the math and computer science, they were poorly paid and treated relative to men. Then "computer science" was born and men are paid more than women to do the same job.
11
On a somewhat related issue, will men and boys who identify as women and girls continue to be allowed to compete against biological females beating them in all sports? They take scholarships, awards and opportunities from females who have spent their entire lives training in their sport. Martina Navratilova and others have spoken out against this.
22
A few reactions to this piece.
The virtues honed in competition are usually shallow virtues.
We need fewer "leaders" of both sexes.
We need more people who are sensitive to others and who are comfortable with who they are.
The true competition is in living the moral life; that is enough competition.
Sports should be considered a form of play and conducted in a manner that helps people learn to be sensitive to others.
Males and females should be encouraged to play together.
6
I have an anecdote about female leadership. My town is known for theater. The high school has won multiple state championships in competitive theater. We also have a park district theater group. The high school program was run by a truculent, emotionally abusive director. The park district program was run by a supportive, yet no less demanding woman. When I graduated, I vowed never to do theater again because of my experience. The park district has produced many actors who've gone on to do great things--because the female director inspired a love of theater.
2
What's interesting to me is that in that Harvard Business Review study, the areas in which female leaders outperformed were things like "drives for results," "communicates with power," "bold leadership," whereas the only two areas where men outperformed were "technical expertise" and "strategic perspective."
If this is true it would seem to throw a wrench in the "confident men vs competent women" theory.
1
Hey, not to burst your bubble, but that Harvard study is about business teams, with sales as a metric. It has nothing to do with athletics.
10
Right or wrong doesn't come into it
no one gives up power. it must be taken by force
You should legislate everything so that it's all even. The men's world cup should be broadcast at the same time as the women's, with split screen coverage so that you must watch the same amount and pay the same attention to both men's and women's. The women's tennis grand slams must be best of 5 sets going forward. The audience will not be allowed to leave the stands until both sexes play their matches. Mixed doubles will be banned because clearly it's sexist (someone will pen an opinion about them being underpaid somehow).
In fact, you must now publish an opinion from three male authors including a PhD candidate to counteract any semblance of sexism or bias.
29
“Sport Should Teach Girls That the Best Person Leads”. Ok. Agreed.
Not only at the coaching level, but at all levels, yes? And, if as many folks (especially on major university campuses) insist that not only sexual orientation but gender itself is a choice, a socially constructed thing, and that, given this, the lack of population-proportional representation of female head coaches (this article’s emphasis) therefore MUST be due to something nefarious, like discrimination or oppression (and we all know who the culprit is: white men!), then how is it, and why, are there “women’s sports” and “men’s sports”, and “women’s teams” and “men’s teams”?
How about opening up at least the top level of all sports to all who can compete or qualify, regardless of how they look, who they choose to sleep with, or whatever gender they identify as? What’s good for the goose must also be good for the gander, and vice-versa, and in-between, yes?
7
When I was younger, most men scorned female sports as an inferior version of what the big boys did.
Now there's money to be made.
7
I thought upon reading the headline that this article dealt with the sudden onslaught of male-bodied transgenders into female sports--such as Cece Telfer (who, for the previous three years, had competed on the male team and placed poorly), competing his/her last year of college on the women's team and 'winning' the women's 400 m hurdles NCAA championship in 2019. These and other incursions into women's sports by male-bodied transgender athletes such as Rachel McKinnon have been deeply dispiriting for female athletes. Add to that overwhelmingly male coaching and it's clear that female sports are suffering from male domination on multiple fronts. Women's sports should be for women--period.
19
I've gotten so sick of the college sports industry in the US. This is just one of its many problems. We really need to rethink it and its relationship with the core purpose of colleges and universities - educating and preparing young men and women to be thoughtful, productive, well-rounded members of society.
10
Yes, and let's extend this thinking to the NFL and the NBA where black athletes dominate and whites sit on the bench, if they're on the team at all. They have feelings too! Silly is as silly does.
39
"We teach them they’re in a meritocracy — until we leave them on their own come adulthood."
Yes, God forbid we EVER leave women on their own. The best way to create leaders is, of course, to make sure they never have to fend for themselves. *sigh*
29
It's not the case that because more men are currently coaches, women have fewer opportunities to be coaches. Those coaching roles currently occupied by men are not reserved for men.
6
Maybe the answer is to determine the winner of the competition based on who complains the most.
14
Here's an even better aphorism:
Sport should be for the participant, rather than the stadium.
[De-emphasize blood-in-your-eye varsity sports (and the educational and financial scandals and gang assaults that go with them) and instead engender and institutionalize sports for the participant, for the camaraderie and health and joy of movement.]
3
The biggest problem of sport, whether male or female, is that it’s founded on a culture of ruthless exclusion rather than inclusion. From primary school to professional ranks it’s a process of culling the “unfit.” So, of all those enthusiastic Mini Mite hockey players, 99.98 percent will never have professional careers. Even those who reach the elite Major Junior hockey rank face a 95.4 percent elimination rate before the survivors move up to the next tier. The question we should be asking is why so many public resources in educational institutions and minor sports organizations are actually devoted to an edifice that is structured to deny most of them future participation. Public funds are providing feedstock for vast commercial entertainment industries in which minuscule numbers of athletes will ever participate. We should be putting those resources into programs that provide girls and boys with access to inclusive, participatory sports with which they can engage over their entire lives, not just until they are discarded because their largely inherited physical abilities are “inferior.”
9
Not the best person, but the best competitor. Failing to win a competition doesn't have anything to do with personal value, male or female. "Be Best" set a very bad model for what it means to do the best you can. There is satisfaction in competing, whether you win or not, if you have done your best.
5
"We put girls in sports so that they learn the best person wins."
This is a small criticism. The best "person" doesn't win in sports; the best "athlete" does. It's a nuance, but an important one.
18
@Robert Wood-I too read that. As someone who never excelled in team sports, statements like these growing up significantly impacted my self-esteem, sense of self, and self-worth. The "best person" is not someone that wins at a silly game, and people that don't play sports or don't win are not worse than anyone else.
12
One stat this article doesn’t include is that women are underrepresented as coaches at all levels - starting with teeball and U6 youth soccer. Interview requirements, transparency and other governance will be helpful for college sports. So will more moms getting out there and coaching their kids, making female coaches normal across the board from a young age. I played a lot of sports growing up. At school age I was only ever coached by two moms and zero female teachers. Hopefully it’s gotten a bit better since then as more moms today grew up playing sports. I sure can’t wait to coach my kids (boys or girls) soccer and basketball in the future.
2
Another impassioned article with no statistical basis other than the general population's gender breakdown. It's impossible to tell whether the conclusion is valid, and it makes the advocates look like angry simpletons, of the sort of which the world is too well supplied. Inter alia, we need to know:
1. The gender breakdown of collegiate coaches, by seniority and achievement, and
2. The preferred coaching qalifications by college and team.
###########
Suppose, arguendo, that 80% of qualified coaches are men. The statement in the article "that means that men have roughly double the number of opportunities to coach" becomes fatuous. In a gender-neutral world, men should have four times the opportunity to coach as women. By contrast, assume only 20% of qualified coaches are men. Then men would have over three times the opportunity to coach than they should have.
Without data and analysis, advocacy becomes cant, and far from proving its conclusion, it tends to refute it, on principle.
Unless you believe gender trumps qualification and pool size. In that case, you would, for example, take half of the more difficult surgical specialist positions in the US, and award them to women. Many of those women would find a dearth of patients willing to trust their lives to their comparative inexperience.
One hopes sincerely the supply of female and male candidates for all jobs will equilibrate over time. That hope, however, is no substitute for data and sound analysis.
26
Great video and story. We need more equality in all leadership roles; sports, politics, professorships and business. Just recently the US women’s soccer team coach was replaced by a man. Really? No great women soccer players to replace her. Good for the NYT and the authors for this piece.
3
Carla Williams, UVA Athletics Director.
I'm fed up with people saying "strong woman". It's nothing about being strong, it's about being able.
4
Agree with the main point of the column - as a man who has had excellent women managers throughout my career in technology. But I also note that we need a definition of "win" in the sports world that says "we win when we do *our* best" -- prepare intelligently, play competitively, avoid major injury to ourselves and our opponents, shake hands at the end of the event (win, lose, or rainout), and entertain our fans. It is an approach to sports (and to business) where women are often the most talented leaders.
3
I've been a high school women's soccer coach for nearly 30 years, and have had many helpers and assistant coaches along the way. When these assistants are women, we are almost always better off for it. They do add a level of support that men do not. I encourage my players to get into ciaching, because of this, and the fact there is leadership within the ranks. Our teams would be stringer with more women coaches, no doubt.
1
Personally, I would like to see less emphasis on sports and more on academics.
I wouldn't mind if all the male coaches didn't have jobs.
I am in high-tech. We don't have enough Americans and are bringing in people from India and China on H-1B visas.
At the same time, we have Americans without an education working minimum wage jobs with no healthcare.
And there was a phase where women did well in IT.
Unfortunately, I read about places like Google that seem to have some arrogant males.
Hopefully, away from Google, women are still doing well. That is what I see in the places I work.
3
To Independent,
I have no interest in sports as entertainment, but it is certainly important that all people remain as fit as they can — for quality of life, longevity and even intelligence (which is improved by cardiovascular health).
This article annoyed me because it conflated “entertainment” with girls’ sports. I would have assumed that girls’ sports is about teaching young women to enjoy fitness and remain healthy throughout our lives. Perhaps the teaching of that would benefit from more female coaches, but perhaps not.
Perhaps the money spent coaching competitive teenage hockey or soccer (where girls injure themselves at a higher rate than boys — tearing out our knees and suffering proportionally more concussions because of our thinner skulls) would be better spent on non-competitive fitness activities that could be continued through life. Maybe we should build pools and rock climbing gyms and more parks. Actually maybe men and boys would benefit from a re-direct of funds too! We all have to move to stay healthy but we don’t all need to be “entertainers.”
5
Excuse me but there have been many women's coaches. Yet again, we have leftists arguing that if a woman is not a coach of a woman's basketball team, its the result of oppression and bias. Wrong. Its a result of choices. If the left wing thesis of oppression was real, how have there been so many great women's coaches? If a female athlete wants to become a coach, they can. Maybe women don't want to pursue that occupation in a 50/50 ratio.
Where is your article demanding that 50% of nurses should be men?
13
And you are assuming that this article is "leftist" because the Right doesn't support the concept of equality, gender or otherwise, in sports or anywhere else, right? Why is the pursuit of equality so threatening to certain folks? Mustn't even suggest stepping on that white male privilege!
8
This headline is objectionable. Does anyone really think that winning at a game means you are a better person than those who don't?
12
And unless the left stops promoting the idea that biological men can declare themselves female and compete in women’s sports against biological females, our girls won’t be winning at sports either.
26
@Greenie
Quit it with your "the left", would you please?
Other than that, I agree. Growing up with male hormones produces a different muscular and skeletal structure.
2
@Greenie
I tend to vote left, yet I agree with you that, in sports, genetic males should not be competing against genetic females -- since that results in genetic females being tossed under the bus (once again!).
Most blue voters possess common sense, you know. That's why we want to eject Trump as POTUS.
4
Put this in the category of "Let's Make Up A Problem." Then, let's follow the usual formula of coming up with everything we can think of to support the idea that this is a problem and look for studies which lend support while not even attempting to put forward a balanced piece. It's the politically correct playbook which works to convince millions that there is some sort of systemic racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. problem.
That does not mean everything written is wrong or incorrect but there are more problems with this piece than I care to articulate; fortunately, enough of the comments here do it for me.
I will add, though, that one of the studies mentioned here was performed by the Harvard Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy Program. I found it on their Gender Action Portal. Enough said.
10
These men should just be allowed to self-identify as women and the problem is solved. That is happening now in Connecticut track and field and elsewhere in sport, including certain master cycling events. It's a win-win for men and self -identifying women.
14
You’re brilliant, xtra! Problem solved in the most modern of ways. Best of all, no one will be able to publicly object to it.
6
My first response to this column was "if men are better coaches, why would you give the job to a woman," which clearly shows how embedded this attitude is. Upon further reflection, I realize my prejudice for what it is, a systemic bias. If women are never given the opportunity to coach, how do they become good coaches? There is no difference between this and any other systemic bias in our culture, whether racial, age based, or gender based. We have a deeply ingrained habit of using privilege derived from discriminatory policies as the basis for perpetuating the myths of race, age or gender superiority. It's a self-sustaining model.
Combine this systemic bias with the profit motive and you've cemented it firmly in place. Deny women (or minorities) opportunity, foster success in the privileged group, measure that success in monetary terms and you've effectively removed any incentive for changing the basic formula that defines the original sin of discrimination. If you refuse to educate someone, or provide them with equal opportunity, can you then justifiably declare them incompetent and deny them entrance into an arena that demands competence?
14
Reading this was like a breath of fresh air. Most other men commenting here got stuck on your first sentence.
4
Articles like these keep being churned out about how there are no women in STEM, no women in high paying tech jobs, no women as men's sports coaches, and they all make this outdated assumption that there are legions of women out there who really really want to coach high school football and being denied the opportunity.
There aren't.
This isn't a righteous fight for equality like the Women's Suffrage or Civil Rights movements; apparently, our society is just becoming completely overrun with people who seem to feel insignificant unless they're struggling or overcoming adversity and will stop at nothing in pursuit of that narrative, even if it's just not true. They alienate the very notion of common sense, and weaponize the overcoming of imagined adversity as a means of stifling any kind of dissent, so collectively we all just smile and nod while people become hysterical about issues that are completely meaningless and affect vanishingly small if not totally hypothetical segments of the population that, with all due respect, really shouldn't dictate the structure of society.
It's baffling to me that we silently watch people strive to find the furthest margins of society where they can possibly fit, and then they sit in that corner and whine about being marginalized. The fact that very few people of a certain shape or color want to do something does not make it hard for them, it just makes them outliers.
58
@Ben L.
In my own situation and that of a number of my friends - our parents fostered our brothers' ambitions but not ours. My parents paid for my brothers' education (including MBA and law schools) but wouldn't cosign a small loan for me. They thought I'd be lucky to even obtain a clerical job.
You have to be very resilient and confident in yourself to overcome this kinds of upbringing and open prejudice.
I funded my education through scholarship and tech work (I majored in computer science) and went on to an IT career, MBA, now in management.
6
Title IX has led to the growth of all college athletic departments' budgets, quite dramatically in many instances. To the nth adjunct faculty member struggling along on poverty wages whilst teaching subject matter core to the institutional mission (math, science, english, foreign languages), the addition of several full-time coaches, whether men or women, no matter what the sport or whosoever gets to participate looks like exactly what it is: the diversion of valuable resources from the institution's essential academic mission to yet another form of diverting American amusement. I'd like to think I've led a reasonably athletic life myself, mostly in the outdoors, but find no good reason that academic institutions, any more than steel factories or accountancy firms, should devote vast resources to an undertaking so far from the important task at hand, in this instance education. And from that perspective, Title IX simply adds to already grossly wasteful spending.
24
While I'm all for general equality of opportunity, I find the premise of this piece presents a faulty logic. If women's team 'were' largely female coached and now, owing to increased funding/attention/whatever, they are more successful and popular and thus receive the attention of more men, is this not a good thing?
If there are 3-5 times as many male as female athletes in a given sport, it would logically follow that there are likely to be about 3-5 times as many (if not more) who would like to become coaches. If true, then female representation as coaches for female teams is well above what one might expect.
Personally, I think it appropriate that women's teams are coached by women, if only, all other things being equal, to serve as examples for leadership roles (i.e. exactly the same as for men). However, this incessant drumbeat for enforced equality of outcome across the board remains tiresome and troubling.
22
As a female athlete who has engaged in sport at various levels from t-ball to rugby and who has been coached by probably now 100 coaches, I can say without hesitation that the coaches with the best leadership skills were female. Women are resilient, empathetic and fair. These are characteristics that I have consistently found to be lacking in many of my male coaches, particularly in high level sport.
The issue is of course a dearth of opportunity, and often an issue of confidence--internal and external. Many women falsely feel underqualified and intimidated by the boys club atmosphere, and even more men do not trust women to do a good job.
Sport is an institution that still heavily lacks women's engagement in leadership and it is sorely missing out on what women can contribute. I also feel that it is as an institution, run in its current way, actively contributing to gender disparity, particularly through professional sport. We need to trust women and let them excel, because they will if given the chance.
8
The author trots out a lot of statistics that don’t get to the heart of the matter:
Do women athletes (and women’s teams) win more championships or competitions when coached by men or by women?
I don’t know the answer, and whether the figures vary across sports, but I am certain the numbers exist and only await discovery by reporters who are paid to dig deeply into such matters.
3
Can’t wait to show this to my daughter, who plays lacrosse at Kenyon College, where she is coached by two strong women and where the athletic director is also a woman. Playing sports has been a formative experience for my daughter, in large part because she sees role models in her coaches. Like the coaches in this video, they set a powerful example of resilience, discipline, determination, team work, and sheer joy in the game. On and off the field, that’s a winning combination.
91
@Alex Interesting. Good luck to your daughter. FWIW, I played on some exceptional men's D1 soccer teams and never, ever regarded my coaches as role models. I suspect my male teammates all felt the same, although I never asked the question.
1
Correction ... the best person does not always win ...
Sadly, life is not fair ... nor does the final score identify a winner.
Not everyone wants to be a leader. Try your hardest, play your best game, be your own person ... and never stop learning and achieving.
Be honest with yourself when taking stock of your abilities and opportunities.
Gender entitlement does not equal default super stardom .....
8
Uh huh.
The male state will always be penultimate. We women battle in an arena where the parameters, society and outdated sex based gender norms render us, not mute, but caricature.
Add in males who believe they are "female" and...
We women always lose.
5
@Julia
Cheer up. Life's not so bad. We (including me) tend to take things for granted, but there's a lot of people in a lot of countries who would gladly trade for the opportunities everyone has here.
2
Editors: As my female offspring enlightened me: it’s FEMALE coaches, not women coaches. “Women” is a noun. Would you say ‘Where are all the men coaches?’
Carry on.
6
There is also a line of thinking that “female” is dehumanizing, because it can refer to animals as well as humans.
1
The fact is we use nouns as adjectives all the time (apple tree, music lesson, Boy Scout, etc.). There’s nothing wrong with saying “men coaches.”
3
What kind of strange, Puritanical rhetoric is at work in the article's title link on the homepage? How exactly is the "best person" judged? Isn't it just she (or the team) who wins the game? I ask you.
7
Winning a physical competition doesn't mean someone is a "good" person. It just means you're in better physical shape than the other people who deigned to join the competition.
9
Actually, sports need to teach girls the value of team work. No one gets there on their own, regardless of what our "rugged individualist, winner-take-all" culture tries to tell them.
4
There are many individual sports that have nothing to do with teamwork. They have lessons to teach also such as the value of hard work, perseverance, focus, etc. Developing a belief in your own capabilities, a little rugged individualism, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not the same as selfishness.
2
I read the detailed report that was linked to this article. In it, a school where 85% of the head coaches were women received an ‘A’ grade, and one where 84% were men received an ‘F.’ Shouldn’t A’s be given to the schools that maintained a balance around 50%?
In an article that purports to expose bias, this is a significant blind spot. I give it a D-.
19
Yes, in all endeavors, let the best players excel, create an environment of friendly sportsmanship and competition and reduce the finacial status of athletes.
1
I hope that the authors are not suggesting that the paucity of female coaches is solely the fault of men in leadership.
The WTA (women’s tennis) tour offers a good example of what can happen when women are the ones making hiring decisions. Female professional tennis players are the most well compensated female athletes in the world and are the CEOs of their own, individual businesses and they overwhelmingly employ men as their coaches. It would be fantastic is they set an example by hiring women as coaches, as Andy Murray and Yevgeny Kafelnikov did on the men’s side.
3
Follow da money.
4
How about skills, knowledge, and abilities being the determining factor to hire a coach? The authors' fixation on genitalia is asinine.
12
I will admit that when I saw the headline, I assumed that this was talking about women coaches at the youth level. As a father of young (male) athletes, I have often wondered why there are not more female coaches. At early recreation soccer, I coached my boys' teams because there was literally no one else willing to do it. The majority of the other coaches were dads who were likewise shanghaied into the roles. Despite it being a coed league, I only saw one female coach in 4 years (and she was damn good at coaching). At the more competitive club where my sons currently play, there is only one female coach out of the staff of more than 20. When I asked the director why we don't have more female coaches, he said that they haven't had any female applicants, despite the fact that the ladies from the golden age of women's soccer are now at a prime coaching age.
While having more female coaches may increase success at the college level, I think that benefit pales in comparison to having strong female role models at the youth level. I truly hope that we see more women choosing to coach in the coming years, but it will have to be by choice.
12
These comments remind me why we can’t have a woman President. We are still a sexist culture. If you believe “men are just better coaches” or “women don’t want it” or any discussion of women coaches leads to a “shut down the whole system” (btw, I don’t see those comments when we are discussing which dude will be the next Coach of x) - you are part of the problem. I hope your daughters don’t put up with ANY of this.
11
I both agree with and support the general thesis of this OpEd. Women belong in leadership roles, both in sports and in business.
Which makes it all the more annoying that it attempts to make its main point using faux science like the HBR study. The methodology and the data set it was drawn from screams "Here is our conclusion. Find me some evidence. Quickly!"
Supporting a good idea with bad science undercuts the support for the idea itself. And bad science, even with a Harvard logo, is still bad science.
6
Where are all the men teachers?
Where are all the men college students?
Where are all the men psychologists?
Where are the early diagnoses and cures for the epidemic of HPV-caused cancers in men?
In fact, where is the concern with the epidemic of HPV-caused cancers in men?
Where are the endless parade of NYT articles on any of these issues?
32
Its all about the money and who is the president of the college and the sports alumni association. The balance of power is not about who is the best coach but who can bring in the most money. We have known this for decades.
Where are all the minority colleges for the NFL. Baseball hockey ? Why with all the terrible quarterbacks in the NFL Colin was not given a fair chance at a position. Why because white men still rule in this arena and money talks
Racism, gender issues fuel this country and till these old white men are held to account for their self promoting activities their will be no change.
Everything will be white men in charge so its up to the students to decide where they want to go to school and people not buying tickets to racist organizations.
Money talks in this country nothing else matters because it is all about money. Impact the bottom line impact the sponsors by not buying their products and see how fast change will come.
Vote democrat, get involved with your local colleges and educate the students how they can hep their communities and at the end of the day when the colleges toss them out they will help themselves.
1
Why not more female auto mechanics? Women drive, so..
32
We should scrap Title IX. Given the push to allow males to compete in women’s athletics as transgender females, it’s unnecessary, yes?
6
Women are not a “thing” anymore.
Just an opt-in category for any man who cares to join.
5
Women coaches aren't missing, beyond the money factor that brought men into women's sport, it is simply that as in many areas of life it is even harder for women than men. When a equally capable woman wishes to participate, the cultural conditions and habits of society pose unfair hurdles and burdens on them. The lack of fair opportunity on a equal playing surface is seen in sport, the office, the entertainment industry, politics, and other areas. Are we making progress? Is it enough? At least here in America the answers are some token progress and not nearly enough. The evidence is clear. When a woman fighter pilot must also worry about sexual violence, the women yelling the same words as a male is not angry, but too emotional, when one of the most qualified women in history is denied the Presidency to an ignorant egotistical idiot, a US Supreme Court Justice retirees early to care for her husband, and a WNBA athlete who becomes pregnant threatens her own livelihood, we have a ways to go. Power and control are not given away by those who have it, it is the people who must take that power and thus far those that favor equality are still fighting bias, habit, and prejudice that fears leadership and success by women.
1
Where are all the male K-12 school teachers?
13
@Amanda
American men don't become teachers because the pay stinks, independent thinking is not valued, and the prestige is low. Just about any other professional job pays better (maybe not nursing.) And lots of women aren't going into teaching because of the money and lack of professional support.
You have to remember that until the 1970s or so educated women who wanted or needed to work were stuck being teachers or nurses. After that they found other careers with better pay and status.
Raise the pay and professional status of teachers (on par with IT workers) and you will see more men entering the field.
8
It's a vast conspiracy; men control even the women's locker room.
3
What a ridiculous, illogical, genderist, anti-male article. Title IX brought more equality, not less. Women coaches were forced to compete on the merits with male coaches. Male coaches are simply more competent, overall, and that's why more were hired once more money for women's teams became available. That's the only possible conclusion.
3
To whom exactly does "best person" refer? To my way of thinking the best person rarely wins.
6
The "best person" does not always win. Sometimes evil people win. Winning is not worth the sacrifice of one's conscience.
8
Have you watched any women's college basketball? 90% of the coaches are women, and to be a male and want to coach the women b-ball players, well, good luck with that.
Based on your argument, shouldn't there be more men coaching women's college basketball, or is discrimination against men ok since it is women that are getting jobs regardless of their qualifications.
3
@philly You're way off. I just counted. Of the 351 head coaches in wbb, 120 are male. That's 34 percent. In the P5 conferences (Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12, ACC, SEC), it is 21 of 65, also 34 percent. On the men's side, in 350 programs, 350 head coaches are men. To my knowledge, Coach Eddie (Edniesha Curry) at the University of Maine is the only female assistant coach among more than 1,000 men's bb assistant coaches. I won't even bother to fitgure that percentage for you.
Your argument makes no sense unless you want 175 of the men coaching men's teams to lose their jobs to women.
5
totally agree. I am close to this as I have 2 girls who played some sports in the 2009-15 timeframe. It amazed me to go to volleyball, soccer, basketball games and see twentysomething (and some older) men coaching, yelling and even touching girls like they were all "sports bros" and thought it was inappropriate especially the guy like "yelling"(I experienced it in sports but these were almost Coach Geno wannabes). I found out almost all were male teacher/jock types who wanted to be male coaches but were using woman sports as a stepping stone and for some reason were beating women to the job. I did not like it and it did turn off some players. Answer, I don't know but like the article
5
Please substitute, in your mind, the words "men" and "women" in this article for "black" or "white" or any other group you care to name. Are you still ok with it? Are you ok with citing Harvard studies that prove women are better than men, that girls are better than boys? Is equality still the goal?
My Mom taught me that you can lift yourself up without tearing others down. We are going to move forward together or not at all. Oh, and by the way, Trump loves this article.
24
Times are changing. More and more women are becoming coaches every year. Really. Keep your shirt on; there's no reason for the anger and stat-spewing. Slow, steady pressure. Change takes time, and in this case it's going the proper direction. That's good. See Sierra Morgan's post below.
1
Make that COMPETENT in the sport instead of "best"...what IS best anyway?
1
Sports should teach people to work together cooperatively.
4
Of course, it must be all men's fault. Each day must start with a NY Times editorial telling men that they are at fault as a near plenary and absolute manner for yet some other apparent inequity.
Here, it's women were mainly coaches of women's sports before Title IX, prodigious growth in women's sports occurred because of Title IX, and now the majority of coaches are men. The latter proposition must, therefore, be men's fault right? Right.
If man is walking in the woods and there are no women present, is he still wrong?
12
And yeah. Waking in the woods as a male... Maybe not 'fault' but defacto privilege.
4
@Julia. You have indeed made my point for me.
7
Wait! What? Sports should teach girls that the best person wins? Really? Do you actually believe that? Wow what a sheltered life you have led. It took me several years as a young girl to learn that the best person does NOT always win and to understand the complexities of competition. What do you mean by best? One might be ‘best’ technically but if you are not a competitive person, you will not win. You might be the best dancer, but if your father does not donate the costumes you will not get the role that requires the best. Or does it even require the best dancer in the end? Best is a superlative, and not everyone can be best by any definition of best. So why set up false criteria for girls?
Of course we need more female leaders in every area, but seems to me teaching girls the ins and outs, ups and downs, of achieving their goals, and ‘spotting’ them through their successes and failures, is healthier and more realistic.
Oh, but: Be Best.
What the heck????
8
Sports is one area where coaching and leadership failure is regularly rewarded. College and especially pro male sports routinely hire and re-hire unsuccessful coaches. Each rehiring results in multiple million dollar salaries and buyouts for poor performance and incompetence. As with most things in the USA, coaching is all about money. There will be more female coaches when the folks who pay understand that they will have to pay women who fail, just as they pay men.
1
Regularly coaches and such are ex-athletes who are hired to train the next generation.
I wonder why not much of an effort is made to hire these ladies to train the younger ladies.
I also wonder why so much praised is given to males who don skirts to play with the ladies. The reason why a female league has been created was to ensure a level playing field. But allowing boys who look in the mirror and see a girl, to play with the girls, is the same as having men and women playing side by side, which defeats the entire purpose of having a separate league.
This is the definition of ‘equality’, when every one is equal to every one, which is in itself a lie. We are similar, not equal. Letting the confused boys play the girls is equality, which tilts the field in their favor, and once again defeats the entire purpose of Title IX.
6
Well, I'm not sure it's really as big of a sexist situation as it is made out to be. I coached my daughter's youth soccer teams growing up (and my son's) and it was just a great way to bond and get to know them. My wife didn't want to do it. Was it a negative imprint on their psyche that their dad wanted to coach them? Did it send the wrong message? Coaching can be great. Men seem to enjoy it. It's not meant to exclude women. When you get into the paid coaching world, we have men and women coaching girls at our high schools. The primary qualification is willingness to teach and win - not gender. The bigger issue is likely big money sports (football and basketball) and money losing sports. It kind of doesn't matter what gender you are as a coach. If the TV dollars aren't there, you aren't getting Nick Saban dollars. That's not sexist, that's economics.
3
While it is true that the US produces some of the world's best women athletes, it is worthwhile to ask why and why the same is not true for male athletes.
Our female athletes compete in a much smaller arena, since girls globally are not playing sports, but are cooking, cleaning and carrying water. How many girls globally are not allowed to attend school much less after-school soccer?
Our male athletes,however, compete with boys who are playing hours upon hours every day. Streets in every corner of the world are filled with boys playing soccer, cricket and other games. The parks and playgrounds in my hometown are empty.
Not to disparage our female athletes, as a woman who played competitive sports for many years, but as a suggestion we use sports for other than another commodity, I propose we look at ways to make sports an equaliser, a classroom for real lessons and a space for community and social growth. it's a lot to ask, but when I see the emphasis and expenditure we place on sports, it seems possible.
1
I had a physical yesterday from a woman doctor- what leadership role is more important that that of a physician? How is coaching a sport team significantly different than running a ballet company?
This article talks about college sports, but what about professional men's football? It seems unbelievable that there aren't plenty of Ms Belichicks capable of excellent coaching of men's football teams.
The issue goes far beyond college sports and in spite of huge advances in opportunities for women in our society in recent decades, the evolution is far too slow.
More rapid integration is crucial not because women are equal too men so much as that they are different- at least I deeply hope they are.
Our species is in desperate need of leadership less demented by testosterone and utterly incapable of long view thinking.
Within 24 hours there will be an increase in human population on this planet of 200 thousand. More forests to clear, more fossil fuel to burn. Maybe an Icelandic feminist revolution on a global scale is our only hope.
44
@alan haigh "I had a physical yesterday from a woman doctor"
"Where Are All the Women Coaches?"
Isn't it interesting that we use the word "woman" as an adjective instead of "female" when describing occupations once (or still) dominated by men? The NYT William Safire wrote an interesting article on this very subject about a dozen years ago (linked below).
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/magazine/18wwlnsafire.t.html
3
@alan haigh read my post..
Here we go again, another NY Times article re identity obsession.
They just can't stay off the bottle for too long. It is one of the reasons we have the ego maniac demagogue Trump in the WH.
Again, NY Times part of the 12 step program for you re this issue.
1-Do encourage women to go into any field they want.
2-Do sue if one has good proof that you are being discriminated against.
What not to do? Identity obsess, rationalize, intellectualize, finger point, ax grind, whine, demand quotas, 50% plus of everything whether you are qualified, even want it or at forced to take it and condemn men if the above is not followed.
If you do the above, everybody is hurt, women and men alike and you open the door for a demagogue like Trump to capitalize on it.
19
@alan haigh - I don't look to my doctor for leadership. I want competence. According to this article, women excel in competence, so I'd want a woman doctor, too.
3
Women have been playing competitive Collegiate Softball for more than 3 decades, the happy result of Title IX. However, female umpires are still very rare. What's the reason? I don't know.
After coaching both of my daughters in the sport, I began to officiate, and have umpired at the recreational, HS, and NCAA levels for more than 20 years. I routinely talk with players to urge them to become active as officials, and every umpiring organization I know seeks to train young women with competitive experience to become umpires. Despite our best efforts, it has been difficulty to convince young women to come back to the sport as coaches or officials. I am not sure why this is - I can only hope that this will begin to change.
1
Coaching is a job that is difficult to manage when you have a family - lots of time away, weekends etc. It is reflective of a general societal mindset that women's family work isn't in balance with their spouses.
1
My only gripe with this piece is that its headline should read "Sports should teach girls AND BOYS that the best person wins." It won't do much good to teach girls to excel if boys and men continue to assume their right to lead.
3
Yup, it should start with not allowing Geno Auriemma to win any more national championships. It is clear that his 11 championships in Women's NCAA basketball only occurred because of he had an unfair advantage of being a man. In fact, we should just take them away or require UCONN to will each game by 50 points or it will count as a loss. That should level the playing field.
5
Since virtually everything has become politicized these days, I would note that women, in addition to asserting their right of equality, should take the high ground abandoned by so many that endorses TRUTH, MORALS and ETHICS. THAT is the way to excel as well as simply being a better athlete.
Setting the bar for future generations carries more responsibility than filling your trophy case with medals. These days that is all-too-often forgotten, or not recognized. The legacy you leave will be your defining role in life. Insofar as "awards" are concerned, they will be forgotten in history, but your legacy will live on - make it meaningful and show up those men that would demean it.
1
I'm glad The Times is pointing this out repeatedly. Thanks to Ms. Stockton, Ms. Varjacques and Ms. Jensen for their article and video.
1
What about female tennis players? Sure the majority of them have male coaches but when it comes right down to it, it is the woman who is in charge of her game and her performance in a match.
There are so many comments that can be made about this article, but I don’t have the time. Point number one is the article was written by three women, why didn’t they solicit a man to give a man’s viewpoint of all of this. Have they considered the number of women in K-12 education in leadership roles. I don’t know the percentage but it’s extremely high on the female side,As a result our children are being lead by well-intentioned women, but they don’t understand the mind of the boy and it is totally different than the mind of the girl.Until we get rid of that bias this article is not very helpful.
12
I don’t think the mind of a boy is “totally different “ from the mind of a girl.
1
Increasing the percentage of female coaches is desirable and we should work towards that goal. Doing so, however, will require inspiring more young women to pursue coaching. The disparity between men and women coaches is naturally a reflection of the talent pool pursuing a coaching career in the first place. And the pool of women will naturally grow as biases are broken down and more women come to view coaching as a viable career. But even then, the percentage of persons pursuing coaching careers will likely be skewed because many more men than women have an inherent interest in sports. People don't like hearing this but it's true.
5
I guess teams have decided the men they chose to lead them are better than the other candidates. What is the problem?
8
The kley term in this essay is "CEO." I know several female and male college coaches, including Coach Eddie (Edniesha Curry, one of the tri-authors), and they work exceedingly hard and long hours. Like CEOs, they are expected to produce.
Coaches are the "face of the university," and the most common reason they are fired is failure to win. Not so with professors.
The work is so demanding that top-level coaches often have no life off the court or field. We are still at a point in our culture where it is OK for a man to have no life outside work but not OK for a woman.
I have seen women who coach basketball work their way to the top, only to give it up so they could have lives. Joanne Boyle gave up a successful career at UVa to focus on rearing her adopted daughter. Any male coach ever do that?
The steps will continue to be tiny and slow, but 11 women are assistant coaches today in the men's NBA. Colleges and universities are behind the curve and need to catch up. I know of a couple of cases where a husband is an assistant to his head-coach wife, and a couple of cases in which a husband has given up his coaching career to support his wife's coaching career.
Hundreds of women have the ability that Coach Eddie has shown to coach young people. University administrators are ignoring half the talent pool and putting the lie to their claim that they seek diversity.
4
A university in Houston offers executive-quality leader development, including a semester with a certified leadership coach, to every student in the school who wants it, free of charge and without competing. Do young women step up? Absolutely, and at rates equal to or greater than their presence in the university. That says a lot about women's intentions to lead.
2
Let's remember that Title IX was toothless and largely ignored until Cohen v. Brown University. But, the academic atheletic czars are adaptive -- where money is concerned.
More money for women's athletics -- not a problem. Surplus of wannabe male coaches and administrators -- problem solved with jobs for men in women's collegiate sports.
"They want gender equality, let's give them some." Never underestimate the mendacity of collegiate athletic administrators.
4
I have coached women's sports (volleyball and basketball) and assisted in one men's sport (baseball) in high school. The coach who asked me to join was grateful for the different set of skills that I brought to the team as a woman; the young men (and umpires) came around (it was a tough go at first) and now, well past retirement, I get occasional requests to return from them and their parents. I think many teams - elite as well as other - benefit from a diversity of viewpoints, experiences and styles.
2
"Research: Women Score Higher Than Men in Most Leadership Skills"
If the metric were accurate them women would be in leadership.
It should be obvious the HBR doesn't have a complete metric that explains why men lead and women don't.
That makes this ideology and not science. That said the difference looks the be trivial if not polling noise.
Combine random outcomes (sports) with reckless overconfidence (Dunning-Kruger) produces spectacular victories that we then call genius. This metric is missing if not more.
6
Hey, it starts in little league and rec ball. In my town the dads want to coach their daughters (because they all secretly think their daughter will eventually get a sports scholarship) and they make it hard for the moms to coach because the dads bond with each other and believe they are better at coaching because they are men. The girls see this from t-ball on. The moms just go along to get along not looking at the big picture of how this affects their daughters’ view of leadership. I helped coach and saw this first hand. We need to show our daughters how to lead, from day 1.
255
@CTMD
In my experience as a lacrosse club founder and administrator, men who coach at the youth level are more confident then they are capable. Women, on the other hand, are generally more capable then they are confident.
Rank generalizations to be sure. But I find that women coaches are more open minded and willing to learn and improve as a coach. The majority of men who coach get wounded and defensive if you give them notes. They chuff up and lean on the "old school" crutch.
36
More men have played sports than women, especially at a level where they would make good volunteer coaches.
20
@CTMD
Yes!!!! You nailed it.
The discrimination starts in AYSO and Little League. Men view themselves as virtuous for spending time in the field with their sons and daughters. Moms are relegated to snack duty.
24
Women have had opportunities for decades to lead and many have taken them. They have coached Little League, hockey, basketball, football, been Boy Scout leaders and more. They were not in it for fame.
I coached youth and boys high school ice hockey for 20 years. Coached several Olympians and a few NHLers. Every association I coached in needed coaches. I loved playing and volunteered. I was one of the first women to become certified to coach at the college level. I was offered an assistant coaching position at a smaller college. I would have loved to have been on the bench. What stopped me was having to leave a job that I loved paying a decent 6 figure income.
You cannot just demand that coaching position be given to women and you just cannot just assume there are thousands of qualified women intentionally being denied the opportunity. You have to want to coach and have the financial security to work your way up by volunteering for years if not a decade.
Just because you played a sport does mean you will be a good coach. This article is an insult to the women who have been on the benches, on the sidelines, and in the dugouts for the better part 50 years. I live seeing women as game officials in pro leagues, more are on benches. We are now in a second generation where it is socially okay for girls to love sports. Women coaches are coming up through the ranks as I type.
311
@Sierra Morgan
Did you even read the article? This is the point:
"Before Title IX, women were head coaches of more than 90 percent of women’s college teams. Passage of the law flooded women’s sports with money and created many more jobs, many of which went to men. Now about 40 percent of women’s college teams are coached by women."
Got it now? There were plenty when the pay was poor.
109
@MaryTheresa
Or is it possible that the finite number of women who wanted to coach was exhausted prior to the explosion of positions post Title IX?
48
@Sierra Morgan My experience is consistent with the article - there is a dearth of female coaches out there. I think we need to start at the beginning and get more moms coaching at the lower levels. Elementary and middle school girls’ teams are dominated by dad coaches. I and some fellow mothers have made real efforts to coach, not because there aren’t potential coaches out there, but because we believe our daughters need and deserve female coaches. So, I don’t think this article is insulting, I think it is an accurate depiction of a problem in girls’ and women’s sports. We all need to work harder to get more female leadership for female sports teams, and awareness of the problem is the first step.
25
Fact: 40% of women's college team coaches are women. Question asked: Where are all the women coaches?
Fact: 9% of nurses are male.
Question NOT asked: Where are all the male nurses?
61
@Jay Orchard
We already know the answer to this: Men routinely refuse to assume positions historically categorized as "female". Beat sexism, and you may see a reversal. Misogyny hurts us all.
5
@Jay Orchard
The male nurses are all in more prestigious high paying jobs. I will be less bothered by patriarchal male women's couches when I see a single female couch in men's basketball. I am a huge fam of Tennessee women's basketball not only because I am an alumnus, but also, because of its tradition of strong female leadership in the tradition of Pat Head Summit.
4
@Jay Orchard - The men will be there the day nursing pays well. False analogy.
6
When a piece tells us men are keeping women from a lot of coaching jobs, we need to learn exactly HOW men are doing this. Do we need to "let" women lead, or are they not stepping up to claim their due?
4
Your headline is clearly aimed at men. Yet it should be aimed at women. If females were so naturally great at winning as coaches AND if the profession appealed to them, more females would coach!
It may just be that like lots of jobs that more men do than women --plumbers, construction workers, cops, firemen, etc.--women just don't want these jobs.
27
It's all about the money.
Drop the salaries of a male-dominated sector and watch the men leave. Raise the salaries in a female-dominated sector (to a "respectable male wage") and see the men notice and start entering those fields. Think nursing, K-12 teaching, etc.
It likely will take several generations to cycle up the changes. I was not allowed to participate in my sport of choice in the 80's, laws notwithstanding. So that's a setback for me personally, but also for the sport as it's restricted someone who might otherwise move on to coaching, admin, etc. in the sport.
We can hope that there are more women in all the pipelines now, and more minorities of every variety coming up and being able to position themselves into management and authority tracks if that's what they wish.
And much as I hate to deny anyone a path to college, we really do need to rethink the athletics programs there. It's not like most of the college athletes in the big-deal programs get much of an education, unless they're unusually motivated. Believe me, the pros will figure out a farm team system pronto.
85
@Barbara Lee
One nit-pic in an otherwise excellent post. As noted Title IX has been around for almost 50 years. I'm sorry you were not allowed to play in your sport of choice but several generations of athletes have already come and gone. There has been enough time to have women move up.
11
Yeah men feel that their worth is tied to how much they make. If we stop judging men by how much they make, they would be more willing to work moderate salary jobs. My dating prospects jumped through the roof as soon as I jumped from a moderate to high paying industry.
7
not a pipeline problem, a selection problem and a retention problem
You think people who hire coaches don't want to win?
How can you possibly claim that just by hiring more females ALL of these female-coached teams would score more points, win more games and and win more championships?
That's impossible! There's only One Champion per league! Most of these female coaches would therefore lose!
And where are all these female coaches who aren't getting hired? Are you really claiming that female coaches who are clearly BETTER than the male coaches competing for a job, interview to coach women's sports teams (for example) and are not being hired BECAUSE they are women? That's absurd. There is no proof of this.
22
Hmm, an article written by three women all decrying that men are predominate in coaching positions in both male and female sports. Boo hoo. Maybe the men coaches are actually the most qualified for the positions. Sorry, but I don’t believe in gender quotas for coaching positions. If I were a girl on a sports team, I’d want the best darn coach leading me, male or female. Your article hasn’t presented any evidence that the male coaches are not qualified for or are not the best qualified for the positions they hold.
Another progressive “we shall impose parity at all costs” argument and article. Shame.
41
@JP Again, people are only reading half the story. It's not so much the 40% that's the issue, it's the drop from 90% to 40%. So, in the old days the female coaches were good enough to coach but not now? That's the issue. Shame, right.
Ironic indeed that adding money to women’s college sports means that men are now getting the coaching jobs. Unintended consequences rule.
Sexism in sports will have been conquered when and only when women are the head coaches of half of top men’s teams. Until then, sexism lives.
57
@Barbara8101
I think the 30% goal is more realistic in the near term.
So let's revisit Plessy v Ferguson and apply it to collegiate sports; men's teams coached by men, women's teams coached by women. Then the social dialogue will turn to proper representation of racial and sexual orientation within the two divisions which will birth the answer of further segregation until everything's divvied up equally and then everyone will be happy. Right?
12
@Kurt Pickard You have described an equation for mediocrity.
Sports should not teach anyone that it's about who wins. Our culture loses when it thinks that life is about winning. It's about living and participating, and the losers have value equal with the winners.
Most of us who play one sport or another do not do so because we make a living at it or gain our reputations doing so. Most participants in sports do so for social and personal reasons, for the camaraderie and the exercise, and we gain whether we win or lose. I've gone out of my way to lose at times when I perceived the distress of the person I was "playing against," and those times were at times when I gained the most.
Losing can have more value than winning as it can be the greater teacher. Winning can be pernicious.
3
You’re not saying that it builds character for women coaches to “lose” jobs, right? Please tell me that is not what you are saying.
2
Do we know for a fact that women *want* to be coaches ?
Perhaps they'd rather be doctors or lawyers or dentists
17
@G
We can't know for a fact that women "want" to be coaches. There are about 3.5 billion women in the world, including some who live in countries where they aren't even allowed to drive a car, never mind kick a soccer ball.
But we can know for a fact that some women want to be coaches, because some women love sports, some women are competitive athletes, some women enjoy the role of teaching and working with young people in an academic environment, some women have the temperament for leadership, etc....catch my drift?
4
@Round the Bend-Your underlying tone heavily implies that no women are coaching, which the article actually disproves. I say this as someone whose sisters were athletes at D1 and D3 schools, both with female coaching staffs. You also insert a red herring about other countries where the rights of women are completely oppressed. I agree, those countries are despicable, but there is a large chasm between their lack of liberties and our country. So big, that they are nearly incomparable. Additionally, this article is focused towards the United States, so bringing those places up is rather a distraction.
Your second paragraph alludes to what women "women want to be". Of course some women want to be coaches, but the question is not 'if' some women want to be coaches. The true question is what percentage of women vs. men want to be coaches? And, what are the qualifications of these women vs. men? A trend that I have witnessed, with regards to Social Justice proponents, is that they are all to willing to take correlation at its face value and impose their own overt biases on their conclusion. Okay, there are more male coaches. Does this prove discrimination? Not necessarily, and until you design studies that examine this question, you can not be sure. Similarly, the level of evidence is normally so poor, usually an observational study, that not much can be gleamed off it. Yes, some women want 'to be', but that is way too simple of a statement.
4
@Alex
You missed my point entirely. My fault for not being clearer.
I was merely pointing out that attempting to make any kind of meaningful, blanket statement about any huge group of human beings with exactly one trait in common, is fruitless.
No group can be described in that way.
1
Speaking from my experience only, all the female coaches I know stopped coaching when they had children because of the long and odd hours of being a coach and the fact that they still had to have a regular job to pay the bills. Seeing their children was more important than coaching others’ children.
19
Since 100% of games are "won". It is laughable to suggest that more games could be won with women coaches.
73
@AJ This should be a Times pick. I agree with most of the author's points, but this is not a trivial error. Since this really is, at the grand scale, a zero sum game as far as wins and losses, the focus should be on maximizing the benefits to students participating in sports. That might come with more women in coaching positions.
1
Perhaps the reason is that women, being the smarter gender, have figured out that it is better to devote their lives to a more productive profession than childhood games.
10
Perhaps the schools want the best coach they can find and there's a deeper well of seasoned coaches on the men's side. Perhaps for one reason or another, fewer women want to be coaches (gasp). Perhaps it's just a statistical anomaly in a small sample size.
28
As a female soccer coach, of middle school girls, I can attest to the fact that there just aren’t enough of us. I can count the number of female coaches that I meet, both on school teams and club teams, on one hand. The same goes for referees. The question is why? Why are women less drawn to coaching roles even at this low level? I don’t have an answer. I suspect there are quite a few factors including traditional gender roles and encouraging men to engage with their daughters more. There definitely is some sexism at play, at least here. A father daughter relationship can definitely be enhanced through coaching, but so can a mother son relationship. When my girls were younger my husband and I coached together, but I was always the “head” coach and he was the helper. We felt it was important for girls to see a woman in charge. Plus, I’m definitely better at it. Now that they’re older, I coach, and he works as a referee. I love coaching, and I try to encourage more women to step up, but the response isn’t great. I’d love to see some research on why.
32
@Fannie Price Could it be that males in general are more obsessed about sports from an early age than females are - and I mean *major obsession* - stat-tracking, and all that - and that such obsession carries over well into adulthood - e.g., the “complaints” females often have about “jock” males - and that that level of sports interest is the real reason why males tend to “dominate” in most aspects of sports later in life? There may be a few outlier females who want to be baseball umpires, low pay and all, but surely many more males who are likely interested in such a (trivial) pursuit.
8
Title X is great but currently High School sports excludes the majority of kids who want to play.
If you don’t sign up for club teams in elementary school, focus on one sport all four seasons, the high school teams don’t want you.
We need title X for kids who just want to play without having to turn pro at age 10.
High School sports are currently being used to further adults careers who just want to win and not to educate through sports the mind and body all of the kids they are supposed to serve.
Your tax dollars are used just for a select chosen few, and the others can just go home and play video games.
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@Jane - that's simply not true of all high school sports. Some, yes - you can't walk on to an ice hockey or soccer team in high school. Many you can.
@Jane I agree. As a first-generation American who's studied overseas, I've never understood the American obsession with collegiate sports or ultra-competitive interscholastic sports teams in high schools that benefit the few, at the expense of encouraging lifetime sports activities for the many. It is practically heresy to say so in the US, but in my opinion, big-money "collegiate sports" (especially those that cause traumatic brain injury!) should have no place in tertiary education. That's what the rest of the world (not the U.S.) thinks, by the way.
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@Jane It's interesting and ironic that simple high school sports has become so exclusive and competitive in the fattest, least athletic nation on the planet. The USA needs to get money out of politics and money out of sports.
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Interesting. I was having this same conversation just the other day. My spouse asked why all the NFL coaches were men.
My response went something like this: Fewer women are allowed to play football therefore fewer women learn how to coach football therefore fewer women are hired as coaches which means women have a harder time building a professional resume.
However, in saying this, I realized the statement was only partially true. You don't ever need to play football in order to understand play calling. A strong background in chess is probably more useful. A few books on rules and strategy will suffice. Get the mechanics of the game down. After that, you simply need to watch an endless number of football games and think critically about each game. Even each play.
Becoming an offensive or defensive coordinator doesn't require any particular physical acumen. The job is mostly mental. So why aren't there any female coordinators in the NFL? I don't have a good answer. There are female trainers. There are female sports interviewers. There are female cheerleaders. Some women obviously find themselves deeply invested in the game. So why no coordinators?
Hmm...
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@Andy
Actually, until only recently there were no women calling games from the booth. In the NFL the women are relegated to sideline duty. Why is there not one woman play by play announcer in the NFL? In the NBA we have the excellent Doris Burke, and now a few more ex- WNBA players for analysis, but I still see no ( correct me if I’m wrong) play by play announcers who are women. Same for MLB, women on the sidelines, men in the booth, except for Jess on Sunday night baseball. Same for radio, very few if any female voices for pro teams across the nation. (In NY we do have Suzyn Waldman and the woman who covers the Devils, but that is 2 out of 18).
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@Andy Being part of the team is more than an intellectual understanding. I would gamble that around 99.99% of the coaching staff played at some level. Without that minimal credential, it would be difficult to be accepted by the team.
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@CTMD
We're agreeing in different words.
I have no solution for a society where women are underrepresented, underpaid, and under-respected.
Expectations about a "woman's role" in the home contribute. When male-female couples are asked about their contributions to household 'work' you might expect the sum (50% plus 50%) to be 100%. Reality says it's about 135%, as men overstate our contribution. That time and resources show up (partly) in unequal leadership
As a coach of middle school girls, I say, "it's never just about the basketball." Steve Kerr's triad of MENTORS, CULTURE, and MINDSET matter. Do schools teach about Frances Perkins, Arlene Blum, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, Wilma Rudolph?
If you ask me about coaching success, I point out former players leading in business, with graduate degrees in education, at the Naval Academy, and thriving in college - not ephemeral wins and losses.
But awarding women positions solely because of gender isn't the solution either. A woman unqualified by experience, training, or temperament is as sure to fail as an unqualified man.
My late aunt used to talk about why she was passed over for bank president as the Board explained, "we need a man." Their selection ultimately served jail time for bank fraud and perjury.
WE NEED WOMEN in coaching, but give them the training and pathways to succeed, the hand up not handout positions.
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I remember learning in HS physical education in the sixties that it was an NCAA requirement that a women's sports team (such as they were pre-Title 9) had to have a woman coach to be recognized. The only male coach I remember from college was a fencing instructor. Among other unexpected consequences, title 9 created more coaching jobs and made them more worth while financially so of course men crowded women out.
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More proud than ever of my mom, Betty Howe Constable, who established and served as head coach of Women’s Varsity Squash at Princeton University from 1971-1991 - and an overall record of 117-15. Followed by Gail Ramsay, head coach, now in her 23rd year with an overall record of 263-73.
Women know how to lead women. Let’s keep it moving forward.
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As long as sports are separated by the real DNA genetic evolutionary fit natural differences between the only two procreative human genders then it is not really clear what ' equality' means under Title IX.
Non- discrimination? Affirmative action? Equal opportunity?
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Maybe when coaching positions are opened a man is the most qualified. What then? Quotas?
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A well-written and insightful piece. America should have goals across sectors to promote women in non-traditional fields, such as sports but also business and politics. Quotas are one way. But we are not open to these mechanisms here. And it shows. America lags behind many other countries in terms of women in politics, for example. It is 76th (out of 187 ranked nations) in the world in terms of women in Congress/Parliament. So deliberate efforts are needed. Women coaches, as women politicians, enhance the environments they are in. Women coaches can understand women athletes well and help with various on the field and off the field experiences. As the authors note, U.S. women athletes are some of the best in the world, it is about time they are fairly compensated, recognized and promoted to leadership positions.
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Why would anyone want to be a college coach in the first place? Unless you work for a top echelon school in football or basketball, the pay is pitifully bad and many coaches are fired on the whim of the administration because of unfounded accusations from players about being unfairly sidelined or cut from the team. (Still waiting for the NYT to do an expose on this by the way, it would be big.)
Women are wise to stay away from the very murky waters of college sports where there is little upward mobility, support from administrators, or recognition of efforts coaching players for success in life beyond the win column.
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As a parent of a young women involved in sports I see a far greater threat to women’s sports than a lack of women coaches it is the allowing of trans athletes to compete as women. I have heard several young women complain that track and field’s competitive nature is being upset by this discouraging girls from wanting to compete in certain events
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@EAH You’re brave to say that which must not be said. I mean, why talk about an actual threat to the very existence and credibility of women’s sports (ie a steady increase in wins and titles going to biological males with all the physical advantages of that biology) when we can focus on a symbolic issue like how many female coaches there are?
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@EAH Well said.
We see it very clearly in women's cycling at the moment.
There needs to be three classes of sport.
Men's, women's, trans.
Not sure how practical that is though.
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@EAH: I was surprised that issue didn't come up in this article.
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If women wanted to coach, were willing to put in the long hours to climb the coaching ladder, and were halfway decent at coaching then they would rule college coaching.
Just as women have come to dominate medical schools and law schools after decades of under-representation.
Not everything can be solved by quotas.
Actually - I take that back - most 'sensible' people believe that "Not everything can be solved by quotas".
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Women dominate law schools? Medical schools? Do you have any support for that assertion? I’d like to see it. And while you are looking for it, check out top management in major law firms.
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@barbara8101
"Dominate" seems like a stretch, but there does seem to be evidence that women are now a majority of law school and medical school students.
As for top management at major law firms, it is certainly going to take a while before a majority in law school translates to a majority in top management at law firms.
https://www.enjuris.com/students/law-school-female-enrollment-2018.html
https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/more-women-men-enrolled-us-medical-schools-2017
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@barbara8101
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/business/dealbook/women-majority-of-us-law-students-first-time.html
Despite the fact that they apply to law school at a rate 24% lower than men. Similarly for med school.
The reason why women are under-represented at the top of major law firms is the exact same reason why they are under-represented at the elite coaching ranks. Thanks for the example.
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Women don’t want to coach...that’s the go-to way to dismiss the issue of men coming to predominate in coaching girls and women. It is strangely similar to the opposition to Title IX when it was debated in the early 1970s. Girls don’t want to play sports; they want to play with Barbie.
Opportunity changed the equation decisively. Girls flooded into competitive athletics at all levels, much more quickly than even ardent proponents imagined.
Men took over coaching for the same reason men take over anything: the coaching jobs started paying more and became more prestigious.
Women should be recruited into coaching and other leadership roles with fervor. They are out there; they are qualified; they will perform as well as or better than the guys.
Once again, the issue is one of opportunity. Men have had long practice keeping women off their chosen turfs. They are good at it. As with Title IX, women need to knock down the door to opportunity of opportunity is not knocking for them.
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@Victor Victor is spot-on with his comments. Also some women have deeply engrained gender roles from their birth families. Some of my friends do not want to out earn their husbands. Also many women want to have children and be hands on Moms. They may not have the needed support at home to accomplish that. Some girls and women are raised in deeply patriarchal religions where female leadership is not allowed . Just as there may be a glass ceiling in certain jobs, there may be a thicker glass ceiling at home which contribute to less female leadership overall.
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We need a ten year moratorium on male participation to allow the correct equilibrium to balance women’s participation in all aspects of life. A decade where male applicants aren’t accepted at public and private colleges and universities. Where men cannot be promoted beyond the bottom rung supervisory level. Where men are capped at $50,000/yr in income from all sources.
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@From Where I Sit -Wrong. People of either gender, any and everywhere, who benefit from the status quo will and should defend their advantage. More likely, the change will occur by building from the base. As a parent, I have spent a lifetime at soccer fields where there is a glaring lack of female refs and coaches. High school girls and adult women should be refereeing elementary and middle school girls games. Adult women should do the same for high school and college girls games. The disparity is not for a lack of opportunity. The schools and clubs are begging for refs. Women and girls can and should step up. We have women friends who are soccer coaches. Former college players. Competent. Invested. And it all works for them with either gender until the boys turn 14/15 years old. Few female coaches embrace or are comfortable with the level of aggression that is part of the boys game going forward.( FYI the girls aren't saints but generally play a cleaner game) I'm actually disappointed when I see women's national teams coached by men but I wonder if there isn't an "aggression ceiling" that will preclude most female coaches from running adult male teams? It's what mothers don't understand about their sons. They like playing rough.
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Thanks to our founders we have a Constitution to protect us from Maoist sounding authoritarian fantasies such as the one spelled out above.
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@Katie Actually it has been until recently exactly that way for men, especially white ones.
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After 26 years as a coach, 19 in Division I, I was forced out of coaching after winning a salary increase and Title IX improvements through a legal action. However, the university administrators took their revenge when they knew they could get away with it, forced me out of my job and I was a pariah, never getting another coaching job, and having no references it took a year and the only work I could find were entry level jobs until I finally retired. Even though this was twenty years ago, it appears that now that more pay equity exists, the men are taking over the jobs. Twenty years ago only 11 percent of women's track and cross country coaches were women, but no one thought hiring a woman to coach women was of any importance. I hope things are better now but it appears that may not be so.
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I help run a local sports club and volunteer as an assistant at my local high school. Both would welcome female coaches at all levels, but the women need to want the jobs. This article assumes that there are women applying for the open positions, but that is not always the case. I know several athletic directors, and most of them would rather have a female coach heading the coaching staff of a email team. We need the ones who want it to apply.
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@Daniel Kelly
Bunk.
Women are pushed out of coaching in Little League and AYSO. Because Dads spending time coaching their kids us so iconic, so virtuous.
Get mire women on Little League, AYSO and AAU boards and watch the high school, club and college ranks swell with qualified female coaches.
It’s not that hard.
7
This article commits the sin of assuming that because a gender imbalance exists at the coaching level, that it must have been caused by discrimination— that plenty of good female coach candidates are being passed over for equally or even less than qualified male candidates. But there could be other reasons for the imbalance— maybe the recent increased opportunities in other career fields are attracting the best women for coaching jobs for example. More information is needed about the imbalance before it can be used as evidence of it’s own failure.
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@SP
Most of us don't need an article to inform us of what we see day in and day out. This article is just another one in the many articles, lawsuits, that have been going on in plain sight for decades. We know the imbalance what else do we need. Witnesses
Why was Title 9 passed in the first place>?. Tired of listening to we need more facts. We have the facts we refuse to change because we Want to make sure white men get all of the jobs.
White men rule and we all know it no matter how ignorant they are. Thank you white men for the financial crisis of 2008 and the price that everyone had to pay for their arrogance.
Unless we march with our wallets, attack the sponsors , attend schools that care about all students and women, minorities nothing will change.
Most of us are tired of talking about the same subject over and over again
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@SP
The author trots out a lot of statistics that don’t get to the heart of the matter:
Do women athletes (and women’s teams) win more championships or competitions when coached by men or by women?
I don’t know the answer, and whether the figures vary across sports, but I am certain the numbers exist and only await discovery by reporters who are paid to dig deeply into such matters.
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@Mon Ray and what if the answer is "there's no particular gender-related results bias (i.e. male or female coach doesn't by itself make any statistical difference), but exposure to particular individuals does, and same-gender coaching has other benefits besides winning?"
I'd wager that's the most likely answer, and it leaves a question still hanging in the air to be answered (and maybe more than one).
3
I don't disagree with any of this but don't forget that men want to coach women because they are just better to coach. I have coached my own daughters as well as junior high girls. If there is a choice, many men would prefer to coach women because they generally try harder, listen better and create fewer problems. Thus, you almost have to take away the option for men to coach women, otherwise, you will always have qualified male candidates that are hard to overlook. The same qualities that make women great to coach will also make them great leaders but men want to coach those great leaders.
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Above is a summary of the problem, unintentionally perhaps. That girls are "easier to coach" means that men have a golden opportunity to come in and take over. A chance to be in charge. And get credit for being involved with a kid. The girls and women miss another opportunity to make their own way, develop and express leadership skills, because men take the territory of youth coaching-- thinking it's so great and so fun and so innocuous to be there in that role.
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@mr I appreciate your effort at a deeper take on the subject. 1)I doubt that Anthony was trying to subjugate girls. 2) Why wouldn't you want to coach the best players? 3) Was there a female willing to do the job?
2
When do we stop counting? When can we start to judge all fairly based on their competence? Where is the dream that we'll get to a day when all will be judged by the content of their character?
This article and these comments addresses bias with counter bias - when will we stop being biased?
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@TJ
Sadly, TJ, gender bias in all things--political, social, religious, personal--will remain as long as we continue to live in and support a patriarchy, a system that that permeates everything in our lives. The bias is conscious and unconscious, explicit and implicit, participated in and resisted, supported and challenged by both women and men, young and old. I don't see such bias ever disappearing, but I do think that resistance is the secret of joy.
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@Jace Condravy
Most clear case of confirmation bias.
We can't stop judging based on gender, because we live in a patriarchy. Proof? Because when we count...
Differences in representation are not necessarily sexism. 93% of those incarcerated are men, is the prison system biased against men?
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@TJ Orchestras used to insist that they weren't gender biased. They were just choosing the best performers, the most rigorous musicians, and more of them were men. Then finally, to settle the issue, all musicians started auditioning for orchestras behind a screen which hid their race and gender. Women's representation in professional orchestras shot up by 40%.
It's always amusing to me to see the comments saying, "Have you ever thought that maybe men are just better? Or maybe women don't want to do this?" Well, sure, maybe. But just because colleges don't think they're being biased doesn't mean they're not. Professional orchestras didn't think they were biased, either. Until you can come up with the equivalent of having people audition for jobs behind a screen, you won't know where the real talent lies. Soft assessments of "personality" traits figure heavily into the hiring of leadership positions. And soft assessments are often rife with unconscious bias.
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