For today's post, I want to look at the role that gender can play in a coach-athlete relationship. I will focus on the issue of how if affects female athletes since the bulk of my experience has been as a male (obviously) coaching female soccer players. There are significant calls and programs to increase the number of women in coaching throughout different sports. As I have often said and even written about in prior posts, I fully advocate and support this. When people talk about opening the doors to allow more women into coaching roles, the assumption is usually that this implies creating better opportunities for women's to be able to coach women's sports (and certain shall we say less mainstream (read profitable and lower paying coaching roles). Most people don't even conceive the idea that it might relate to creating more chances for women to coach period, regardless of sport OR GENDER. For me , it would like saying that we support women taking on a greater percentage of managerial and executive roles in business so long as they only oversee female employees. Doesn't make sense. What is also most ironic is that most male's two biggest reasons for why a woman is not suited to coaching men's sports is that they can't understand what its like to be a male athlete or the requirements of the sport because they have never played at that level and that it could create awkwardness in the locker room having a woman around male athletes. To the first point, I would simply say that I have never heard of a male that played female sports so how is that not an issue for men coaching females and to the second point, from experience, I would say, do you not think a male coaching females has any chance of creating awkwardness. Anyways.... To give some context to my perception as why men continue to hold the majority of coaching roles, I looked at how women's sports have evolved over time. The growth of professional sports has been exponential in recent years but let's be honest women's sport at the elite level is not something new. There has been elite level women's sports and elite level women's athletes for decades. For the most part women's elite sports were generally identified at the college level and at sport events like the Olympics, or World Championships. Some sports, like golf, tennis, basketball, volleyball both court and beach have allowed women to make a living, some would say a good one, albeit no where on par with their male counterparts. Athletes from non team sports like swimming, figure skating, track and field have also been able to make a living and in both team and non team sport athletes, there was always the income generated from endorsements, sponsorship, We are seeing the worldwide growth of women's soccer leagues, while women's hockey doesn't have any full fledged professional leagues, there are attempts in trying to build them. In additional to all this, with the growth of TV and medial presence for women's elite and professional sports, the viability of making a living being a coach in women's sports is also growing and for the moment these roles continue to be held predominantly by males. This reality is seen at most levels of women's sports where men continue to hold the majority of coaching roles, and reversely, there are a really small handful of women's making a living coaching men's sports. So how does gender affect coaching and the coach-athlete relationship when we look at men coaching women? It is very clear in society that women in general and female athletes as a part of that, feel under pressure to conform to certain types of body image and accordingly this will impact behavior, diet and training routines. I would think ( or maybe I should say I would hope) that if most elite female athletes were asked, few would state their coach was the source of this pressure. This assumption is based on elite level sport and not recreational levels where coaches do not have the experience or training to work with high performing athletes, but again maybe I generalize. Where you to delve deeper, I am quite sure that it would reveal anecdotal evidence that a word from a coach carries a lot more weight that other pressures. If a male coach doesn't fully understand the added pressures females athlete might feel, then a comments made could be received by the athlete in a manner that is not intended by the coach. This would make sense given the influence of any coach in any coach-athlete relationship by could be different when the gender issues come into play. Many discussions with or questioning of high performance female athletes typically shows a general preference was for male coaches but as I have stated in prior posts, I think this is often skewed by the fact they limited experience with female coaches and therefore do not have sufficient points of comparison to be able able to make a proper judgement. This could also be affected by that fact that they female coaches they might of had where not properly trained or prepare for the role either by their certification process or prior experience. I have seen women been given chances to catch with the goal to see them fail so that men can say "see I told you it wouldn't work". In addition, most coaching training courses remain given by males, so women getting into the coaching ranks are training by men and all that comes with that. In my years of experience, when I have spoken with athletes about their preference for a male or female coach, there was a general preference for a male coach. When I would ask why they would tend to answer the following;
Many athletes see themselves as athletes first and women second. They want to be pushed as hard as male athletes and demand the same expectations. That said, most of my athlete acknowledge that women are different to men; for example, women can be more emotional, focus more on the group dynamic and cohesion, they will talk more and are more inquisitive. As such, the coach may need to adapt the way he or she communicates with the athlete or team to meet these needs, but still train them as hard and with the same technical rigor. There has always been the axiom or saying " she plays like a guy" or "coaches like a man does", like this means that it is being done the "right way". I once had a manager in my work who always said " I became a good manager when I started acting like a man would in the role" FALSE ! A person should coach (or manage ) their their strengths, their personalities and their style. Being a female is not a weakness and no woman should aspire to coach like a man! As always, I share my perceptions of the topic without thinking that I alone hold the answers to society's issues. Putting my thoughts in writing permits me to reflect and decide how I wish to proceed as a coach and a person. until next time.
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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