A Level Playing Field

Only 42% of the coaches for women’s teams are women, themselves. As Ms. Barcomb gave her presentation, I kept mentally looping back to this statistic.

How is it that less than half of the people coaching women are women? How could

that have happened? Ms. Barcomb mentioned that before Title IX passed, before

people invested in or paid much attention to female athletics teams at all, the vast

majority of the coaches for female sports teams were women. At first, I couldn’t

think of a reason why colleges would have hired women before, but now that

women are legally required to be given opportunities, the women’s jobs ceased.

Upon further thinking, however, I could think of a few possible reasons: Perhaps

colleges didn’t want to invest their money on female coaches, once the job earned

more pay. Perhaps, because women’s sports had never been quite as popular before,

female coaches weren’t famous enough or vouched for enough, while the more

famous male coaches were getting hired by teams. Perhaps, the fact that 89 percent

of Division I college athletic directors are men finally got the better of the hiring

process, and the women’s teams only started getting taken seriously by them after

Division IX, changing their hiring process. There are probably plenty more reasons

as to why female coaches suddenly were upstaged by the sheer volume of male coaches.

Unsurprisingly, given the aforementioned statistics, there are about double the number

of men’s coaching jobs than women’s jobs. Furthermore, as Ms. Barcomb mentioned,

only about 3 percent of the coaches for men’s teams are women, which is a vast

difference to the 58 percent that men take up on the women’s coaching side of things.

Another piece that Ms. Barcomb mentioned is the double standard for coaches— while

the male coaches are expected to get up in the referee’s faces, or even praised for their

extreme emotions, female coaches are often ragged on for similar reactions. While the

male coaches could be violent to another coach and fairly easily get a job elsewhere

for coaching if they’re fired, female coaches aren’t given the second chance— as soon

as they become a fraction as aggressive as the male coaches, the punishments become

far greater: the audience will drag the coach through the mud, will call her a “B*tch”,

will make sure she gets fired, if the employer doesn’t fire her first. And if she’s fired,

that’s it. Game over. Hearing about all of this reminded me just how insidious sexism

is, even in the athletic fields. I hope that the future holds more opportunities for female

leadership, which clearly has a good influence on boys, but especially growing girls,

and that the playing field for women and men will one day become even.