Women make the team, but less often coach it
(Page 3 of 3)
Progress there would be more important than boosting the number of female coaches in women's sports, says Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation. "We need to break open the closed positions in men's sports, jobs that are higher in status and in salary...."
Farnham says he'd be willing to hire a woman to coach a men's team if she were the best candidate. But there are other issues, he says, such as a stigma that women don't belong on certain men's teams like basketball or football. "There's also a certain intimacy ... that might be jeopardized with a female coach," he says.
Ms. Lopiano say it's just that type of stereotyping that needs to be reversed. She points to top female coaches like Pat Summitt, head coach of the University of Tennessee women's basketball team, who last year was approached by the men's team.
"We need to think outside the box and encourage our young female coaches to go into men's teams," says Sarah Feyerherm, assistant athletics director at Washington College in Maryland. Ms. Feyerherm says she also tries to get more female coaches on her women's teams.
Sports associations should reach out to girls in junior high, Carpenter says. The NCAA holds an annual conference for student-athletes, where they can learn about coaching. Member schools have student-athlete advisory councils that convey such information. But "we have a lot more we could be doing," says the NCAA's director of professional development, Rochelle Collin.
If you want more women coaches in college sports, try making role models out of the ones who already exist. That's the reasoning behind the annual conference at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania that brings together coaches and student athletes from a dozen area colleges.
"The goal is to educate women on the state of female athletics and motivate them into coaching careers," says Jenepher Shillingford, founder of the symposium and the former director of athletics at nearby Bryn Mawr College.
Since the first gathering in 2000, half of the participants have gone into coaching.
"This is a lot more than I had expected; these women were only considering coaching," Mrs. Shillingford says.
The symposium covers everything from the history of Title IX to stereotypes of coaching.
Erin Fitzgerald, an Ursinus senior, says the meeting in January was a turning point. "Hearing about the coaching experiences of the women speakers definitely motivated me to coach field hockey when I graduate."
For the presenters, too, it was a valuable opportunity to get together. "Women [in athletics] need to do more networking, not just to get jobs, but to seek each other's advice on things," says Sarah Feyerherm, assistant athletics director at Washington College in Maryland.
Shillingford's next goal is for more colleges to participate in her symposium, or to start their own. She says the NCAA will offer seed money.
"Maybe [the symposium] isn't a ton, maybe it's not changing the world. But you do whatever you can, and that's how you change things," Shillingford says.
