Fewer Women Coaching in College Sports

This is the second article in a three part series on the state of women's collegiate athletics since the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Today's story focuses on the roles of women in coaching and administration.

In 1972. Title IX sent a message to colleges and universities across the country: make efforts to equalize men's and women's athletic programs or lose federal funding.

So schools poured millions of dollars into women's sports programs in order to stop millions of dollars from pouring out of their budgets.

But it wasn't just women who cashed in on the resulting boom in female sports programs and participation. A sizable portion of the pie ended up in the hands of a growing group of male coaches and administrators.

Women's participation in college athletics has increased tenfold since Title IX's passage in 1972, and the number of women's varsity programs offered per college has grown steadily. But the number of women in leadership ranks has dwindled.

"One of the biggest disappointments is that the men have seen the opportunities in women's athletics and gone ahead and gone after those jobs," Harvard senior swimmer Janice Sweetser says. "A lot of it is economics. In the 1970s, women's sports went to the varsity level and men saw the opportunities and had the coaching background. A whole new network opened up and they jumped for it."

As the number of varsity programs exploded, so did the number of men coaching those programs. In addition, the consolidation of men's and women's athletic departments--a step schools have taken to easily accommodate the new requirements--frequently resulted in a male administrator at the top of the new hierarchy.

Women were given the opportunity to develop as athletes, but, as the percentage of men in the leadership ranks grew to overwhelmingly high numbers, these women were forced to look outside the system for role models.

"Women need the role models," Harvard women's swimming Coach Maura Costin Scalise says. "The time from [age 18 to 22] is a crucial growth period. If women have always been coached by men, then they will think that men always hold those positions."

But men haven't always claimed the bulk of the leadership spots--prior to Title IX in 1972, more than 90 percent of women's coaching and administrative positions were held by women.

Professors Linda Carpenter and Vivian Acosta of Brooklyn College have charted the precipitous drop in female leaders in the women's collegiate sports world. According to the Carpenter-Acosta study, only 48.3 percent of women's teams are coached by females and only 16 percent of women's programs are headed by a female administrator.

There are a few rare exceptions to the trend. Duquesne University has a woman, Eileen Livingstone, in charge of both the men's and women's athletic departments, as does Central Connecticut College. And Penn's men's and women's swimming programs are coached by Kathy Lawlor.

"When this thing became big in 1973, women who were coaching were from the old school," Livingstone says. "They continued on, and the demands became greater and that was not part of their lifestyle, so they left. At the same time, salaries increased and that drew men into the system."

At Boston University, where 10 varsity sports are offered for women, only three of the programs are led by a female. The picture is brighter, but not really reassuring, at other Boston-area schools: Northeastern has 10 programs and five female head coaches, Boston College 15 programs and 10 women coaches, and Harvard 19 varsity sports and seven women coaches.

"The number of women applying for positions is going down," says Pat Miller, associate director of athletics at Harvard. `It gets very frustrating. It's hard to find viable candidates."

Women surveyed by Carpenter and Acosta indicated that the strength of the "old boys' club" network--and a correspondingly weak women's network--was the chief reason for the decline of women coaches and administrators.

Men, however, pinpointed a lack of qualified female coaches and administrators as top reasons for the decrease. With men making most of the hiring decisions, this perception has fed the current trend.

"Female involvement in sports is much more accepted than in the past," Carpenter says. "Therefore, you would think that the leaders would be more accepted. But they are a lot more alone than they used to be."

"Now there are so few women coaching that you just don't see the role models, and so women are not encouraged to go into coaching," Sweetser says. "It becomes a cycle."

And the women coaches who still retain powerful leadership roles are often given negative stereotypes for exhibiting traits widely accepted in males.

"Women coaches who are tough and work you hard are seen in a negative light," Sweetser says. "But if a man works you hard in practice, he's seen as a good coach."

Before Title IX, women's athletic programs were small in number and short on participants. But it was rare to find a male coach or administrator in the system.

Seventeen years later, women leaders in college athletics have become the rare commodity.