All across university sports, there is a stark discrepancy between the number of female head and assistant coaches and the number of male coaches. This is far from the first time this issue has been raised in recent years.
However, Carleton’s women’s soccer team recently welcomed a new addition to its coaching staff: Robin Rushton, who previously served as an assistant coach on three provincial championship-winning teams.
At the moment, all of Carleton’s varsity head coaches are male. This problem doesn’t only exist in the OUA, or in Canada for that matter. Back in 1971, women held 90 per cent of head coaching positions for women’s teams in college sports in the U.S., according to a 2017 article in The New York Times.
After Title IX, legislation which made American colleges give equal funding to men’s and women’s sports, head coaching positions for women’s teams started to pay more–so more men applied for those positions and got them. Now, that number has plummeted to 40 per cent, according to the article.
The fact that things weren’t always this way proves something went wrong in the process. It’s not that women don’t participate in sports, or that there aren’t experienced and qualified people to hire who aren’t men.
As the author of “Where Are the Women?”, an examination of this issue published by the NCAA, Rachel Stark found the reasons for this are complex–from lack of networking opportunities to perceived gender biases.
University athletics departments across Ontario don’t need to perform extensive research to solve the complex socio-economic reasons which created this discrepancy. However, they can make a conscious decision to hire more female assistant and head coaches.
File photo.
