Men in women's sports

[GMDino]

Do you think men should be allowed to coach and/or officiate in women's sports?

Why or why not?

Some statistics for you to consider.

[SunsetBengal]

The stats that you provide show a near 50/50 balance in gender of coaches in female sports. I would surmise that the number has grown significantly in the past 30 years. I think that it's more a matter of how many women want to coach and officiate women's sports, rather than a question of "Should men coach and officiate women's sports".

[GMDino]

(06-02-2023, 07:42 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: The stats that you provide show a near 50/50 balance in gender of coaches in female sports.  I would surmise that the number has grown significantly in the past 30 years.  I think that it's more a matter of how many women want to coach and officiate women's sports, rather than a question of "Should men coach and officiate women's sports".

The state are from 2020.

And its 96% of mem coaching men and 56% of women coaching women.

But beyond that SHOULD men be coaching women?

[SunsetBengal]

(06-02-2023, 07:59 PM)GMDino Wrote: The state are from 2020.

And its 96% of mem coaching men and 56% of women coaching women.

But beyond that SHOULD men be coaching women?

That's in D1 college sports, the stats you provided show a slightly higher margin of women coaching women when all college sports divisions are included (way to cherry pick a stat).  My whole point is... Big Deal

If more women wanted to coach women's sports, it seems like they have plenty of opportunity to do so in this day and age.  In fact, if the percentage of women coaching in Men's sports switched over to Women's sports, the stats would likely lean toward more women than men coaching women's sports.

As to your question of "Should men be coaching Women's sports"?  I ask you, "Why shouldn't they"?  Seems rather discriminatory to exclude men from coaching women while we actively have women coaching men.  Wouldn't you agree?

[GMDino]

(06-02-2023, 08:15 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: That's in D1 college sports, the stats you provided show a slightly higher margin of women coaching women when all college sports divisions are included (way to cherry pick a stat).  My whole point is... Big Deal

If more women wanted to coach women's sports, it seems like they have plenty of opportunity to do so in this day and age.  In fact, if the percentage of women coaching in Men's sports switched over to Women's sports, the stats would likely lean toward more women than men coaching women's sports.

As to your question of "Should men be coaching Women's sports"?  I ask you, "Why shouldn't they"?  Seems rather discriminatory to exclude men from coaching women while we actively have women coaching men.  Wouldn't you agree?

So then you mean to say they should be coaching.  You could have just said that.

I asked for other's opinions.  Thanks.

[SunsetBengal]

(06-02-2023, 08:31 PM)GMDino Wrote: So then you mean to say they should be coaching.  You could have just said that.

I asked for other's opinions.  Thanks.

Seems like your demon, as it would be, is in Title IX.  Prior to Title IX, 90% of women's college sports teams were coached by women.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2015/02/23/women-college-coaches-title-9-ix/23917353/

Quote:Women coaches being forced out of their NCAA jobs. The reasons from the schools' athletic administrators are politically correct.

Tight budget. Not enough wins. Coaching philosophy doesn't fit the university. Need to go in another direction.
True thinks she knows what direction that is: Toward a man.
"There are an absolute ton of heartbreaking stories that I hear day in and day out about females that are being forced out," said True, the head coach of women's soccer at Indiana State University. "There is a stigma that females are not as good as or as strong of coaches as their male counterparts."

On the courts and fields, women college athletes have made great strides.
But in the coaching ranks, something drastically different is happening. Female coaches are losing ground.
Ironically, the drop started with a law that was supposed to be positive for women, Title IX. Congress passed the law in 1972 that required gender equity for boys and girls in every educational program that received federal funding, including athletics.

Since Title IX, however, the percentage of women coaches at the college level has dropped precipitously. Fourty-three years ago, 90 percent of all women's teams were coached by women, according to Acosta and Carpenter's Women in Intercollegiate Sport study. Today, that number is 40 percent, according to NCAA Research. The number of women coaching men's teams is minuscule with fewer than 300 nationwide — less than 2 percent.
At Indiana's 10 Division I schools, no women coach men's teams. Perhaps more startling is the lack of women coaching women's teams. Of the 96 women's teams at those schools, 31 have female head coaches. That's 32 percent, well below the national average.

The numbers are causing pause — and pondering — in the collegiate sports world. Why, in a day when women are making great gains in other careers, are women in coaching falling back?
There's no simple answer. It's a complicated dynamic with a variety of factors coming together, including discriminatory hiring practices, traditional social roles, a slant toward males in sports, stereotypes and, in some cases, the women themselves.
"I feel guilty"
The clock on the dashboard read 7:03 p.m. when Tracey Dorow slipped into the driver's seat of her car last Monday.
She had just coached an intense basketball practice at Valparaiso, as head of the women's team. The hours had passed quickly, her mind on defense, plays and how to turn around the team's losing record.

But as she started her car and saw that clock, the pangs set in.
"I can tell you right now I feel guilty," said Dorow, the mother of 6- and 3-year-olds, as she drove home. "I'm going to get home at 7:15 at night and it's going to be their bedtime at 8.
"Sometimes you wonder if it's all worth it."
Sometimes, Dorow does think about opting out. She has no doubt why the number of women coaches has dropped. It's virtually impossible to find a work-life balance as a head coach. Travel, evening practices and games, weekend recruiting.
Ultimately, she said, women, more so than men, feel the weight of children and home life on their shoulders.
"I feel like men are driven by work and women are driven by relationships," Dorow said. "The No. 1 reason (there is a lack of women coaches) is because women are mothers."

The statistics back up her thoughts: Though fathers represent an increasing share of stay-at-home parents, they still comprise just 16 percent of such parents in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center.
Dorow feels lucky. At Valparaiso, the administration knows her family comes first. She can leave early or come in late, or delegate duties to her assistant coaches.
"Some women don't have the opportunity to have that flex time and don't feel they can do both," she said. "They don't feel they can have a family and coach."
"Suddenly the men wanted these jobs"
In 1972, women were mothers and had families. Yet, they made up 90 percent of women's teams' coaches.
But there was a major difference. Women's teams then were few and far between. They didn't have the funding, the status or the pressure to win that they do today. Many had volunteer coaches.

Women's athletics weren't even offered by the NCAA. Instead, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women governed female college sports.
Still, by 1978, the year the federal government designated as the deadline for compliance with Title IX, the number of women's athletic teams at all levels had more than doubled — from an average of about 2.5 teams to 5.6 teams per school.
That created plenty of new coaching positions in women's sports. But the percentage of women coaching women's teams dropped from 90 percent to 58.2 percent in those six years, according to the Women in Intercollegiate Sport report. That share has steadily fallen since.
By 1982, all divisions of the NCAA offered national championship events for women and most members of the AIAW joined the NCAA.
"Now you have better-trained athletes, better programs, you're coaching outstanding women," said Katherine Mowat, women's golf coach at Ball State University. "You've created a more appealing job for a male. Suddenly the men wanted these jobs."

Unlike women's team coaching jobs of the past, these positions came with money. Salaries high enough to support a family. And they've only risen in the past decades with high profile positions demanding six-figure incomes and more. Former Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt finished her career making more than $2 million.
"Men are going for these jobs aggressively," Mowat said. "I've heard before at other institutions, 'We wanted to hire a female but our most qualified candidate was male.' "
That's the case at Evansville, which fares the poorest among Indiana Division I schools in representation of female head coaches. The school has eight women's teams, with only soccer coached by a woman, Krista McKendree, who recently had her contract extended.
There have been opportunities to bring in more women with hires in women's basketball, volleyball, women's tennis and softball the past four seasons.
"We are cognizant when making all of our hires and look to fill the position with the best candidates for our student-athletes," said Bob Pristash, sports information director.

It's not that there aren't plenty of women who are part of Evansville's teams. Two of the three women's basketball assistants are female. In both softball and volleyball, the assistants are women and those sports also have female graduate assistants.
"Our primary goal when searching for a head coach is to find the best candidate who will accept the compensation that we are able to offer," Pristash said. "All of our coaching searches are competitive and inclusive of both sexes and all races. In some cases, it is a case of demand over supply."


What's different in Minnesota?
Watch a women's sporting event at Minnesota and, more likely than not, a woman will be leading the team.
Out of 12 women's teams at the college, eight have female head coaches. That's 67 percent.
Beth Goetz, executive associate athletics director, said the school isn't deliberate in trying to hire women, but it is deliberate in actively recruiting a qualified and diverse pool of candidates, including women.

"Our dedication to this process has certainly been helpful in our hiring of successful female coaches," she said.
Goetz attributes the lack of female head coaches at other colleges, in part, to who is making the hiring decisions.
"It's a factor that men are still doing most of the hiring," she said, "and often end up selecting from the networks from which they are most familiar, which are majority male."
But it's crucial to have women in the mix as head coaches, she said,
"We require our coaches to deliver results and provide guidance both on and off the court," Goetz said. "And that includes being a strong role model. It is essential that young women see females in positions of leadership and authority."
Karley Dobis grew up in Fort Wayne, playing basketball and soccer. Every coach she remembers was a man.

Then in high school, she had her first woman coach, a golf coach. Her high school basketball coach was a man.
"Both were really, really awesome," said Dobis, a Ball State University junior, who is on Mowat's golf team.
When she found out Mowat was a woman, it didn't affect her decision either way to head to Ball State to play. Once there, she's been impressed.
"With her, there is an understanding more of how as teammates we interact, because she was a teammate once," Dobis said.
Successful coach, now out of a job
Even women who have found success in coaching can find themselves out of a job, sometimes seemingly without cause.
The most recent example came in December when Minnesota-Duluth said it wouldn't renew the contract of women's hockey coach Shannon Miller because of "financial considerations."

"When's the last time you saw a men's collegiate coach fired after winning five NCAA championships, developing 28 current and former Olympians and running up a .713 winning percentage?" asked Bob Collins in the blog he writes for Minnesota Public Radio.
Miller was the highest-paid Division I women's hockey coach, making a base salary of $207,000. But she has repeatedly told the media she would have taken a pay cut to keep her job.
"This move was incredibly disrespectful to all women, not just to coaches and to female athletes," Miller told the Boston Globe. "It is a slap in the face to our gender. I will not tolerate it and I will continue to speak out and fight it."
Miller, an outspoken and openly gay woman, has called her firing a violation of her civil rights.
Whether sexual orientation is a factor when it comes to the hiring and firing of women coaches is tough to prove, but it has been studied by Erin E. Buzuvis, director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Studies at Western New England University School of Law in Massachusetts, and many others. And Buzuvis said, in many instances, it's a prominent reason women don't get coaching jobs.
Female coaches, she said, have been known to say, "The easiest way to get a head coaching job is to be married." To a man.
"Lesbians are saddled with negative stereotypes such as sexually seductive and predatory, masculine, aggressive and harmful toward children," she wrote in her study. "In general, it is perceived that lesbians are bad for the image of women's sport."
Athletic departments at colleges see it as an easier hiring road to take, to bring on a straight woman or man with a family as a coach.
It's a factor that helps in recruiting athletes, as well. Many families are more likely to send their student to a program with a heterosexual coach because of prevailing sterotypes about lesbians, Buzuvis said.
Indiana State's coach True has heard all of this before.
"I am not sure that I have the answer as to how we change this," she said. "But I do think that there's something to be said about empowering the youth and our girls athletics programs now so that we might actually see the number of female head coaches continue to rise once again."

Took me a minute, but I think that I figured out what you were trying to attack with this "question".

[StoneTheCrow]

GMDino sitting there waiting for someone to answer whatever the hell he’s getting at:



Sure! Anyone can coach anyone, just don’t be hanging dong in the same locker room as the ladies okay? Cool

[GMDino]

(06-02-2023, 08:42 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Seems like your demon, as it would be, is in Title IX.  Prior to Title IX, 90% of women's college sports teams were coached by women.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2015/02/23/women-college-coaches-title-9-ix/23917353/


Took me a minute, but I think that I figured out what you were trying to attack with this "question".

Good info but dear lord we gotta another one who "knows" what *I* meant.

I asked how people on the board felt about men coaching women.  That's it.  I provided the stats to provide some insight into how many men coach women's sport.

You said it's fine.  Thanks.

Maybe others will answer also w/o trying to "figure out" what I meant.

[GMDino]

(06-02-2023, 08:45 PM)StoneTheCrow Wrote: GMDino sitting there waiting for someone to answer whatever the hell he’s getting at:



Sure! Anyone can coach anyone, just don’t be hanging dong in the same locker room as the ladies okay? Cool

And another.  You guys are funny.

But thanks for an answer.  I'm looking a little deeper into the subject but its a good point.

[*pally*]

I personally think the problem is more from the other direction...why aren't more women coaching men's sports? I know the talking heads always make something special over someone being a "A Leader of MEN" (I always hear that said with dramatic music) like somehow being a leader of men is somehow better or more special than being a leader, but nothing precludes that "leader of men" from being a woman

[StoneTheCrow]

(06-02-2023, 10:28 PM)pally Wrote: I personally think the problem is more from the other direction...why aren't more women coaching men's sports? I know the talking heads always make something special over someone being a "A Leader of MEN" (I always hear that said with dramatic music) like somehow being a leader of men is somehow better or more special than being a leader, but nothing precludes that "leader of men" from being a woman

They’re obviously not doing X’s and O’s on the sidelines but the women in the Bengals organization are absolutely leaders of men, as an example. They’ve catapulted the franchise into the here and now when an old stubborn male could not. More to come when it comes to coaching ranks everywhere I expect.

[NATI BENGALS]

I dont see gender

[StoneTheCrow]

(06-02-2023, 11:09 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: I dont see gender

You can’t see *gender*!

[NATI BENGALS]

(06-02-2023, 11:25 PM)StoneTheCrow Wrote:

You can’t see *gender*!

Tushy

[GMDino]

(06-02-2023, 10:28 PM)pally Wrote: I personally think the problem is more from the other direction...why aren't more women coaching men's sports?  I know the talking heads always make something special over someone being a "A Leader of MEN" (I always hear that said with dramatic music) like somehow being a leader of men is somehow better or more special than being a leader, but nothing precludes that "leader of men" from being a woman

I'd be good with more females coaching men's teams but more to get rid of the culture that we find too often in the locker-room.

For the same reason I think a female coach would better understand a female athlete and the actual physical changes they go through.

[Belsnickel]

I don't know if any of you are involved in coaching youth sports, but I am a USA Archery coach. With this, as USA Archery is the organization for Olympic competition of the sport in the US, we coaches have a yearly training we must do talking about all of these things. In addition, I have a yearly training for my role in Scouting. In addition, I have trainings on this as a mandatory reporter and Title IX official at my employer. I sit through a lot of trainings on sexual misconduct every year.

With all of that, I coach all genders. I also work with all genders in Scouting and through Title IX processes. When it comes down to it there is nothing I do differently with any of them. With every youth I deal with I am going to ask permission before touching them to reposition their body for proper stance or arm positioning. I am going to avoid the same areas of their bodies no matter what gender they are. I have never been in a locker room or shower with them and I actually never interact with any youth one-on-one; there is always another adult present.

It shouldn't matter who the coach is or who the athletes are; gender is irrelevant. Vet the coaches, train them, and make sure the participants are aware of what is appropriate and not and also make sure they are comfortable with reporting inappropriate behavior. That is the biggest hurdle is that these young people do not always know who to turn to for help and/or they feel like no one will listen to them.