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Equal
Opportunity Coaching
Part 4: Men Leading Women
According
to Acosta and Carpenter's 2000 study, although men coach
more than half of women's collegiate sports teams, women
coach only 2 percent of men’s teams. Acosta says some of
the factors that have driven down the overall number of
female coaches have also contributed to the paltry number
of women who coach men.
"When the athletic director is looking for the best guy,
he'll do what anyone would do and look to his friends,"
says Acosta. "When that same athletic director is looking
for a coach for a women's team, he may lament the fact that
no women applied, but he won't go out and recruit.
"Sprinkle in a little discrimination,
and you have quite a mix." Acosta pauses. "And there is
still some discrimination, otherwise you wouldn't have only
2 percent of men's teams being coached by women."
Marjorie
Snyder of the Women's Sports Foundation agrees that prejudice
is keeping women from getting coaching jobs. "There is an
assumption that women can't coach guys," says Snyder. "There
is a perception that coaching men is more complicated than
coaching women, and that women couldn't do it. There is
no such assumption made about men being able to coach women."
Dewey, of Fordham, says one of the biggest misconceptions
about female coaches is that they are somehow gentler on
their players. "What (people) don't realize is that most
women coaches are actually harder on girls than most men
are," he says. "The women who stay and do it are very, very
good. But there aren't enough of them."
Gesturing to Shields as she talks to a few of the male sprinters,
Dewey says, "Courtney ran with some of those guys when she
was a runner here. They know they can't put anything over
on her. They know she's one of them."
Shields says though more girls on Fordham's track team come
to her with questions, she also works with the boys on a
regular basis. "The guys are great to me," she says. "They've
showed me nothing but respect."
NEXT: A New Generation>>
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Equal
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