unintended consequences of women's college sports popularity

[bags27]

Ninety percent of women's [basketball] teams were coached by women in 1971. That has since dropped to 43 percent.
Tara VanDerveer talks gender bias and new Women's Sports Foundation report

The title of my thread may be misleading, since the article also says that there are fewer female ADs (but how many fewer? no numbers, just impressions); if that is, in fact, true about fewer female ADs, then maybe men just hire men. But has Title IX with its effect of enlarging women's athletics actually made it more desirable (that is: profitable) to coach women's athletics? And if that is the case, why are men grabbing these positions?

Of course, if we focus solely on the very, very most elite WCBB teams currently (ND, SC, Baylor and UConn), only one has a male head coach, and he has an extremely active and essential female ass't coaching staff. So, it's not like men are proven better coaches or program builders.

So why is this happening?

 

[UcMiami]

Money. And I suspect the percentage of women vs. men who actually pursue coaching positions from the ground up.

We get these articles every few months it seems and they always deal in percentage terms. I would like to know raw numbers of D1 programs 'then and now', average salaries, average number of assistants and gender of assistants, etc. I suspect the number of college programs has exploded, the money has certainly exploded, the number of staff has probably increased, while I would guess the number of women actively pursuing coaching jobs has not kept pace. And I think the explosion of teams has been true down to peewee level.

 

[bags27]

I suspect the number of college programs has exploded, the money has certainly exploded, the number of staff has probably increased, while I would guess the number of women actively pursuing coaching jobs has not kept pace.

Yes, I agree that might be true, but why??

 

[UcMiami]

Yes, I agree that might be true, but why??

I think it comes down to 'options'. Women athletes tend to be better students with more rounded interests outside of sports, a higher percentage of them are using sport as a way to get an education and for the camaraderie of being part of a team, and while society has changed some, there are still a much higher percentage of females that are the primary 'homemakers'. (The money sports are really stark in regard to educational access vs. career training by gender.) Add in that coaching really isn't a 'great' profession - low pay at the pre college level, and significant overnight travel at the college and above level and while it isn't as bad a choice as say actor or artist, there are a whole lot of better choices for an educated person.

Some pretty large generalizations above, but we are talking about the total work-force nationally and percentage of men v. women who see sports as a career option which is a generalization as well.

I would be interested in knowing the percentage of women running AAU programs and HS programs as well because that too becomes a feeder system. And pro/semi-pro athletes remains significantly out of balance so retiring players seeking continued involvement in sport tilts heavily toward men.

Finally the trickle down effect of participation is still quite 'young' - the numbers are only balancing out now gender wise, and that means we are still 5-10 years from balanced numbers of workforce age and there aren't a lot of Tyler aged HCs at the college level.

NB - I am pretty sure a good reflection on how seriously genders pursue sports involvement post college would be rec league participation - there are many more leagues that get organized for adult men than women and most of that is driven by the players themselves - women are much more likely to pursue non-team post college athletics I suspect because they are much more flexible time wise while men are more likely to rearrange other obligations to be able to continue playing team sports.
The other indicator I suspect would be sports audiences - don't know if there is a gender comparison of the hours devoted to watching sports on TV but I suspect a huge divergence as I suspect is also true of actual live attendance.

Again - I would really like to see the raw numbers of women coaching (HC and assistant coach) at the college level as well as the number of men across all sports with comparison to pre title 9.

 

[RSHERMVIKES]

I seem to remember that both DT and Maya Moore coming out of HS said they wanted to be coached in college by a man.

 

[DaddyChoc]

I seem to remember that both DT and Maya Moore coming out of HS said they wanted to be coached in college by a man.

just college, why not the pros?

 

[RSHERMVIKES]

just college, why not the pros?

DaddyChoc- - - Because coming out of HS it's the players choice and by who your drafted into the WNBA is out of the player's control. But at the time DT was drafted 1 by Phoenix, Paul Westfeld happened to be PHX HC.
That's why TN with Pat Summitt was never really on DT's college list.