1. Participation by Women as Coaches in the United States
Lauren Meehan
June 25, 2014
Pioneer Coaches Symposium: Paying It Forward
I want to thank Lesle for her work putting this together as well as inviting me to speak here. I also want to thank all of you for sharing your wonderful ideas and insights throughout the day. So, I am Lauren Meehan and I have coached youth soccer in various forms (club, high school, camps) for five years. Last fall, I once again had a conversation with a fellow female coach about how few of ‘us’ we run into in our coaching lives. Instead of hoping it would change eventually, I decided to look into the issue and see if the cold hard facts matched up with what I have experienced. Unfortunately, they did.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

2. Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan
Nationwide data
National team program
NWSL
WPSL
W-League
Head coaches
4/7
1/9
14%
22%
Assistant coaches
0/1
3/13
24%
Goalkeeper coaches
I started at the national level, looking at who US Soccer, NWSL, WPSL, and W-League list as coaches online. There is probably a discrepancy in the national team info based on who actually works with the different programs throughout the year, so these numbers represent ‘outsider’ knowledge. On the NWSL side, we all know the sole female head coach – Laura – way to represent. Similarly low numbers are found at the assistant and GK coach levels and in the two semi-pro/pro-am leagues.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

3. NCAA data
Better sample sizes present at the NCAA level. I’ve gone through data for DI, DII, and DIII. GK coaches are lumped into assistant coaches. This data shows a lot of what I experienced when I got around other coaches at coaching courses – a lot of women can be found at the college assistant coach level.
Head coaches: 27% Assistant coaches: 48% Volunteer/grad coaches: 60%
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

4. NCAA data
Division II follows along much the same lines of Division I, although the absolute numbers are lower.
Head coaches: 28% Assistant coaches: 47% Volunteer/grad coaches: 65%
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

5. NCAA data
Division III has a jump in the percentage of female head coaches. I haven’t looked into why this might be happening but there are enough DIII programs that this jump is a significant departure from participation in DI and DII.
Head coaches: 37% Assistant coaches: 56% Volunteer/grad coaches: 68%
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

6. Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan
ECNL data
The last bit of national data I collected was for the ECNL. For teams with multiple head coaches listed, I counted that team as coached by a female if one of the head coaches was a woman, so this skews even a bit in favor of women.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

7. ECNL data % of teams with a female head coach
This gives a more visual representation of how those female coaches are distributed – the darker the state, the more women we find. One of the important states to look at is Texas – out of 45 teams (nine clubs, five teams per club), zero have a female head coach. California is slightly better, at 6% of its teams in its 14 clubs head coached by women. In all, 15 ECNL states have zero teams coached by women. The best states are Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maryland. SoccerPlus Elite in Connecticut is the only club with three different women coaching teams – other clubs with three teams coached by women have a female head coach who doubles up. I have yet to explore why this is happening – some may see this as a lack of qualified women and others can see it as a lack of opportunity given to women to coach top teams.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

8. Colorado data – Youth club
20% of girls U11 – U18 state competitive league (CYS) and ECNL teams had female head coaches in the 2013 – 2014 season
Distribution by clubs with > 10 teams
The next few slides will give you an idea about the more focused data that can show what mechanisms may be at work in different states. Overall in Colorado, 20% of girls U11 – U18 teams are coached by women. I haven’t included boys teams yet because I think this number is already shocking enough. This chart breaks out this 20% by club, including clubs that have at least 10 girls teams so the sample size is decent. The big three (Rush, Real, and Storm) all fall below the overall state number. These three clubs also have some of the most entrenched male staff in the Colorado soccer scene – Tim Schultz, the Bushey clan, Lorne Donaldson, and Mike Haas – which could make them harder to break into despite the high number of teams these three clubs have. Pride is a top tier club at the state level and they have the highest % of women for the clubs which consistently make State Cup finals and play in the highest state league division. They also have the most women on their technical staff.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

9. Colorado data – Youth club
% of teams coached by women by level of team
Looking at Colorado teams by level, this chart shows that the highest percentage, and absolute number, of women coach at the very lowest level of soccer in the state. Similar to the ECNL info, is this a function of lack of qualifications or lack of opportunity…or a mix of both? Or is there a ‘disposition’ that many women are believed to have that make them more suitable to work with bad players? Are we perceived to have the necessary ‘patience’ for low level players but not have the demanding nature required for top level players? Are we afraid to speak up when we don’t like a team assignment or fail to advocate for ourselves in asking to coach higher level teams? In some informal research, I found that 10% of full time technical staff in Colorado are women. Most top teams are taken by DOCs and that leaves a lot of teams in the middle and bottom for non-DOC coaches to take on. I know that in my five years of coaching the highest level I have coached is Premier 2, with most teams being at the Challenge level.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

10. Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan
Other research
More states below average than above average female participation as ODP coaches and coaching education instructors
Sam Snow, personal communication, February 14, 2014
Intimidation, expectation of displaying ‘male’ characteristics, and patronization limit women’s coaching education participation
Schlesinger, T. & Weigelt-Schlesinger, Y. (2012). ‘Poor thing’ or ‘Wow she knows how to do it’ – gender stereotypes as barriers to women’s qualification in the education of soccer coaches. Soccer & Society, (13.1), 56 – 72.
Women take blame for coaching inequalities – ‘not good enough’
Fielding-Lloyd, B. & Mean, L. (2011). ‘I don’t think I can catch it’: Women, confidence, and responsibility in football coach education. Soccer & Society (12.3), 345 – 364.
Reasons for low participation – women’s sports are not widely recognized or respected, coaches are not paid well, bias against female coaches, few female coaching role models for younger athletes to follow
Demers, G. (2007, May/June). To coach or not? Female athletes considering coaching careers discuss perceived drawbacks. Soccer Journal, 24 – 30.
More women are assistant coaches than head coaches
Kerr, G., Marshall, D., Sharp, D., & Stirling, A. “Women in coaching: A descriptive study.” Petro-Canada Sport Leadership Sportif, November 3 – 5, 2006, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
More women coach at resource rich institutions
Welch, S. & Sigelman, L. (2007). Who’s calling the shots? Women coaches in Division I women’s sports. Social Science Quarterly (88.5), 1415 – 1434.
Softball (65.2%), women’s basketball (62.4%), volleyball (57.1%) have more women coaches than soccer; in soccer, women head coaches more likely to have women assistant coaches
Sagas, M., Cunningham, G.B., & Teed, K. (2006). An examination of homologous reproduction in the representation of assistant coaches of women’s teams. Sex Roles (55), 503 – 510.
Some other research that fills out some of the numbers is listed here. Sam Snow sent me some of the info he keeps on state instructors and ODP instructors. I don’t have percentages because he doesn’t compare the female numbers to male numbers but there is enough to know more states are behind the curve than are ahead of it. Some good research has been done in England, Germany, and Canada about what keeps women from coaching or from furthering their coaching education. Just as comparison, there are some numbers for other sports here. As you can see, soccer has a lot fewer women coaches. It would be interesting to see numbers for ‘gender neutral’ sports – ones with the same exact rules on the men’s and women’s side and with participation fairly equal across the country. More individual sports fall under this than team sports – think track, swimming, tennis – although volleyball and basketball (despite smaller ball and closer three point line) are good comparables.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan

11. Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan
Next steps
Empirical data explaining why women choose to coach or not coach
Further data analysis on different trends in coaching participation – digging deeper
Creation and implementation of actionable strategies to promote greater involvement by women as coaches at all levels of the game
What I showed you today is the very beginning of what I hope to be a thorough research process that eventually helps create real strategies to increase the percentage of women who coach at all levels. There is a lot more data out there that can be helpful – create state profiles for every state, looking at NCAA programs for things like difference in tenure, % differences across conferences (big money vs. small money schools), or seeing if being an assistant coach is a clear launch pad for becoming a head coach. I’ll also be speaking to people and sending out surveys to understand things like the path women take to get involved in the game, what keeps them in it or makes them leave, and what keeps female players from transitioning to coaching in the first place.
Female Coaches Advocacy - Lauren Meehan