Female Coaches Left Behind in the Fight for Equality
By Addison Burns (Staff Writer)
Throughout history, women have been discriminated against in sports. In almost all cases, they receive less money than men do, and are represented in stereotypical ways that promote misogyny. The misogyny faced by female athletes also follows into the women's coaching world. At Samo, the head coach of the girls’ and boys’ cross country team is Coach Tania Fischer. She is on a committee called the Women’s Runners Coaches Collectives, a non-profit organization that promotes women coaching in all sports. As a female coach and professional athlete, Fischer has had many experiences with being disrespected in the sports world.
“Take our staff for example, there are 3 women coaches, myself, the softball coach, and the volleyball coach. There’s 23 sports and there’s 3 women coaches so that alone just shows you there's a discrepancy there,” Fischer said.
According to History.com, in 1972, Title IX was passed which prohibits gender discrimination in funded educational programs such as sports. Although this protected women in academics as well, it majorly impacted women in sports. The act resulted in an increase of women participation in playing and leading sports. Before Title IX, there were 300,000 women playing sports at a high school and college level. According to NBC Sports, by 2019, about 3.5 million women nationwide were playing sports in high school. However, the act did the opposite for women coaches. According to Forbes, prior to Title IX women held 90 percent of head coaching positions for college teams, and now women only hold about 41.1% of college coaching positions. Instead of increasing the amount of women coaches, Title IX decreased the amount. Due to the popularity of women in sports and Title IX, female coaching salaries increased. As a result, many men started to take those positions which in turn led to the sharp decrease of women coaches.
According to The Sport Journal, Female coaches often have more to prove than male coaches do. Women have to work much harder while also receiving lower pay and tolerating stereotypes. These harsh expectations come from people doubting the knowledge and abilities of women coaches.
Coach Jenny Forster has been coaching softball at Samo for three years. Forster has also noticed the inconsistency between the respect for women in comparison to men in sports.
“I am, however, always frustrated by the amount of support for women's sports at all levels. It feels like people only think of men's sports and there are so many female athletes at all levels who should be celebrated,” Forster said.
It doesn’t matter the level of play, gender discrimination can be seen at the highest proffesional levels and on the high school level as well. Even as women athletes and coaches continue to make impressive achievements they still undergo many hardships regarding sexism. All in all, discrimination does not only happen to the female athletes, it can also happen to coaches and even to women who hold powerful positions.