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Who's Calling the Shots? Women Coaches in Division I Women's Sports *
Author(s) -
Welch Susan,
Sigelman Lee
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
social science quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1540-6237
pISSN - 0038-4941
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2007.00509.x
Subject(s) - coaching , institution , prestige , athletes , sport management , division (mathematics) , test (biology) , sociology of sport , resource (disambiguation) , division of labour , psychology , gender studies , public relations , sociology , political science , social science , law , medicine , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , computer network , computer science , biology , arithmetic , mathematics , psychotherapist , physical therapy
Objective. During the past 30 years, women have become an increasingly small proportion of coaches of women's sports. We test several explanations for why some institutions have women coaches and others do not. Methods. Taking the 329 NCAA Division I institutions with women's sports programs as the cases in point, we explore possible explanations for the dearth of women coaches: the resources and prestige of an institution or sport; the gender of the athletic director; and institutional traditionalism. Results. Within Division I schools, women coaches are more frequently found in more prestigious, resource‐richer institutions and those that devote more resources to women's sports. Conclusions. Although the analysis is confined to Division I schools, it appears that more institutional and organizational efforts need to be made to increase the number of women in the eligible pools for head coaching jobs.