Emmy nomination for Outstanding News Analysis: Editorial and Opinion
Where Are All the Women Coaches?
Produced by Alexander Stockton, Leah Varjacques, Lindsay Crouse
The New York Times | Opinion
Title IX, passed in 1972, transformed American sports — it decided girls deserved the same opportunities as boys to play sports. From then on, men and women in college had to receive equal treatment on the playing field and equal funding for their athletic programs. Now the United States produces many of the best female athletes in the world.
But that equality stops at graduation.
Before Title IX, women were head coaches of more than 90 percent of women’s college teams. Passage of the law flooded women’s sports with money and created many more jobs, many of which went to men. Now about 40 percent of women’s college teams are coached by women. Only about 3 percent of men’s college teams are coached by women.
That means that men have roughly double the number of opportunities to coach. It only gets worse higher up the administrative ladder: 89 percent of Division I college athletic directors are men.
Without equal opportunities to lead, women don’t.
The pioneering female college coaches in the Video Op-Ed above explain how coaching is no different from any other C.E.O. or leadership role — teams could win more games by including the other half of the population and leveraging their talents.
