Women Coaches Still Lagging Behind Men

Quite a fuss has been made about increasing opportunities for women in athletics. Many athletic directors hardly breathe before consulting Title IX, a federal statute that guarantees equal opportunity for male and female athletes.

But there has been little discussion about equal opportunities for women in coaching. Although they have made great strides in recent years, women still hold only about a quarter of the total coaching positions at the college level. Many think that is not good enough, especially in light of the increased number of female athletes.

“Our daughters have to have role models in every profession to look at, otherwise you limit their aspirations,” said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “If you never see a woman as a doctor, you never think that you can be a doctor.”

After conducting an informal survey of five local NCAA Division I athletic departments--Long Beach State, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, UCLA and USC, it became clear that women have a great deal to accomplish in the local coaching arena.

Within the last three years, six new women’s teams have been started at those schools, mostly in efforts to satisfy Title IX. But only two of the head coaching positions went to women.

Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, UCLA and USC all started women’s soccer teams, but only USC and UCLA hired women coaches. UCLA and USC also started women’s water polo teams. USC hired the assistant from its men’s team and UCLA simply paid the head coach of its men’s team a little more to handle both sports.

Overall, the five local schools offer 43 NCAA sports for women. But only 16 of those are coached by women.

This is slightly below the national proportion. According to a study by two women at the Department of Physical Education at Brooklyn College, about half of the nation’s coaches of women’s teams in 1994 were female.

Locally, the school with the worst ratio for female coaches is Loyola Marymount, where only one of the eight women’s teams is coached by a woman. The women’s basketball coach’s position at Loyola Marymount has been vacant since Todd Corman resigned at the end of this season.

“We always are looking [for women], whenever we have an opening, it’s just that we haven’t had a lot of opportunity [to hire coaches],” said Loyola Marymount Athletic Director Brian Quinn, adding that he is hoping to hire a woman for the vacant position in basketball.

UCLA has the best ratio: Seven of 11 women’s teams are coached by women.

“We don’t have a policy on it, but when we have an open position, if we can find a well-qualified woman, we would probably hire her,” said Judith Holland, senior associate athletic director. “If women had an equal chance to get a job in men’s sports, then I would say it didn’t make a difference, but they don’t. Women are limited, it seems, to women’s sports. We think we need to give them a little break on the women’s side.”

According to the study, when Title IX was enacted in 1972, more than 90% of women’s teams were coached by women--and most of them were volunteers. But the improved status that the statute gave to women’s sports opened a lucrative job market, and the new, paid positions were mostly filled by men.

Women have gained ground, slowly. The study showed that the proportion of women’s teams that are coached by women was 49.4% in 1994, up two percentage points from 1990.

But if equal opportunity for women in coaching finally has been achieved in women’s sports, throwing in men’s sports--where women account for less than 2% of the coaching positions--tips the scales wildly.

What’s more, as recent court rulings have made gender equity a more pressing issue, athletic departments have turned to eliminating men’s sports. Many men’s coaches are now setting their sights on women’s programs in hopes of attaining job security, making it an increasingly competitive job market.

Many athletic directors complain that there are not enough female applicants.

“You don’t ever have problems with men applying; they apply in droves,” Holland said. “You have to work harder to get the women.”

Quinn said he called two women in his search for a women’s soccer coach.

Qualified women are harder to find because women’s move into coaching has followed their move into organized athletics, which has happened very recently. Karen Stanley, USC women’s soccer coach, remembers being the only woman in many of her coaching certification classes.

“I felt intimidated by it, and I always thought that if I had been less confident I probably just would not have done it,” Stanley said.

But it is important that pioneers such as Stanley keep forging ahead. One had only to drive to Malibu, recently, to see how far women have to climb.

At the NCAA women’s team tennis tournament at Pepperdine, seven of the 20 teams competing were coached by women. What’s more, it became clear as the tournament wore on that women have not been allowed into the circle of elite teams. No woman has ever coached an NCAA champion, and this season was no different. Only three women were still coaching in the quarterfinals and no woman coached a team in the final four.