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Does coaching have a women problem?
Coaching Adviceby Linda Flanagan
With the vast majority of US soccer teams at all levels from youth to pro led by men, Linda Flanagan asks: where are all the female coaches?
Some might call Aly Buffett a soccer nut.
She has been playing since she was seven years old, through grade-school travel teams and high school and college (club) programs, to now relishing a lowkey local league for post-collegiate players.
“I’m a very happy person when I’m on a soccer field,” the 25-year-old told me. But during her 18 years of playing on all these varied teams, how many female coaches did she encounter? “By and large, my coaches have all been men,” she said.
It seems women’s soccer has a coaching problem, certainly in the US. Despite the surging number of girls and women who play the game - soccer is the fourth most-popular sport among high school girls here, spurred in part by the enduring pizzazz of the US women’s national team (USWNT) - few women coach these players.
Roughly 20 per cent of girls’ youth teams in the US have a woman running the show. At the most competitive collegiate level, just 28 per cent of Division I women’s soccer teams are led by females.
The grim trend continues among professional women’s teams, where about one in five coaches is a woman.
This vacuum is no mystery. Jill Ellis, former coach of the USWNT, was so perturbed by the scarcity of female colleagues at her level that she launched an initiative with US Soccer to encourage more women to give it a go.
“I never had a female head coach,” Ellis said in October 2020, as she launched the Jill Ellis Scholarship Fund and SheChampions
“Despite the surging number of girls who play, few women coach them...”Mentorship Program to develop and empower a new wave of women in coaching.
Sadly, many other sports share this absence of female leadership. Across youth sports in America, fewer than 10 per cent are headed up by women coaches, and at high school and university, most women’s teams are coached by men.
Ironically, the decline arguably started with Title IX, the pioneering legislation passed in the US in 1972 that protected people from gender-based discrimination and helped bring droves of girls into sports.
But with more collegiate dollars now devoted to women’s sports, men suddenly lobbied for and secured the coaching jobs that women once held. This meant that, as more girls played, fewer women coached.
Nicole LaVoi - a sports scholar and leader in the movement to promote women coaches - blames discrimination in hiring, pay imbalances, pressure, tokenism, and gender bias to explain why more men now coach women’s collegiate teams.
But this gender gap persists even in youth leagues, where most coaches are volunteers. One survey found that women admitted eschewing coaching because of its time demands, doubts about their skills, and worry about the impact on their family.
US Soccer has launched the Jill Ellis Scholarship Fund and the SheChampions Mentorship Program, backed by the former USA head coach to develop and empower a new wave of women in coaching
There is also persistent sexism, wherein both boys and girls prefer a male over a female coach, and a sturdy network of male coaches and athletic directors who naturally choose their male colleagues when positions open.
The women who do go into coaching must contend with scrutiny that their male counterparts don’t. “Women coaches get more s**t,” Bobbi Moran, an athletic director at a private school in New Jersey, observed.
It is no wonder, then, that most mothers - even those with a deep background in sports - prefer the role of ‘Team Mom’, packing snacks and organizing carpools rather than coaching kids.
Some will be untroubled by this reality. It is only sports, after all. But with so many girls and boys deeply immersed in the athletic universe, being tended to by coaches day after day, year after year, the scarcity of women leaders has to have an impact.
Kids who have never had a female coach are denied a woman’s take on team-building, which may differ from the machismo style so popular among many male coaches.
Girls are additionally denied everyday role models of women in charge. Their absence at the top of teams suggests it is men who should handle the important stuff - rallying the troops, teaching skills, crafting strategy - and that women should stick to support staff.
It should come as no surprise that girls who have not encountered female coaches should shy away from these roles when they are of an age to take them.
Boys are affected, too. When Will Ebben was growing up, he had two female head coaches, in youth basketball and soccer. He didn’t think much of it at the time.
Now 24, he appreciates how that early exposure to women in leadership roles made a difference. “The only other female authority figures I had were my mother or a teacher,” he said.
His basketball coach, especially, was a devoted player, with two kids who dominated on the court under their mother’s supervision. Being a witness to her expertise seeped into his thinking.
“I believe if I never grew up around female athletes or had a female coach then my entire perspective on women’s sports would be different,” he said. Has it shaped how he views women authorities outside of sport? “I think it definitely played a role in how I view female authorities.”
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Female role models - like Yolanda Thomas (left), the cover star of our September issue - are hard to find in US college soccer, where just 28 per cent of head coaches are women
The Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport has identified several distinct strategies to lure women into coaching youth sports:
- Ask them to coach
- Give new coaches female mentors
- Allow some to work as co-coaches
- Provide female-only coaching clinics
- Share how ‘mothering’ skills work in coaching
- Reduce time demands
- Remind them of the positive example they are setting
- Simplify the process
At higher levels, athletic departments and club leaders may have to take deliberate steps to bring in more women. The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, the Tucker Center and the Women’s Sports Foundation have all come up with suggestions to increase the number of women coaches and retain the existing pool. Their recommendations fall into three main areas:
1. Make a conscious choice to hire and develop more women coaches: It may sound obvious, but without a deliberate effort to attract women, the male-dominated status quo will continue. Athletic directors at all levels, plus leaders of club teams, must make the decision to seek female coaches.
“Athletic directors at all levels must make the decision to seek female coaches...”2. Modify the hiring process: Rather than rely on old boys’ networks to find coaches, use a search committee composed of diverse Give it time to identify the eligible women. Take a chance on a less experienced female candidate. Replace departing male and female coaches with women. Encourage collegiate women players to consider coaching. As one athletic director said: “Administrators need to find the talent.” That means approaching other women coaches for leads, talking to parents about women who might be interested and asking former colleagues for possible candidates.
3. Support the women coaches you have:
It is not enough to hire them; once they are in the role, women need back-up from administrators, especially when the sexist complaints roll in. One powerful way to do this is to call on experienced female coaches to mentor and encourage younger ones, and remind them why they are needed. Another is to alter policies that tend to penalize women, especially regarding childcare. Give women professional development opportunities. Build a culture that welcomes and supports women coaches.
Has Aly Buffett considered coaching?
“My first thought is I’m not good enough to coach soccer,” she said, reluctantly. Anyway, rather typically, no-one has asked her.
But she thinks it’s important for girls to be coached by women - to observe up close what female leadership looks like, and to make having a woman in charge a routine affair. Some girls might even find that they get something extra from a woman coach.
Aly believes that her high school cross- country coach, a woman of ferocious talent, could identify with girls on the team in a way that her male coaches couldn’t.
She is suddenly intrigued by the thought of coaching. Maybe she’ll give it a try.
She added: “It would be cool to play a big, positive role in someone’s life.”
Linda Flanagan
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