Are Women Coached by Women More Likely to Become Sport Coaches? Head Coach Gender and Female Collegiate Athletes’ Entry into the Coaching Profession

Abstract

While sport and gender researchers have examined the barriers facing women in the coaching profession, less attention has been devoted to female student-athletes’ transition into coaching. Some research suggests that female athletes who have been coached by women are more likely to become coaches (Everhart & Chelladurai, 1998; Lirgg, Dibrezzo, & Smith, 1994; Moran-Miller & Flores, 2011), but research is limited and findings somewhat equivocal. The present study extends existing research by examining the relationship between collegiate female basketball players’ career behavior and the gender of their collegiate head coach. Three research questions based on previous research are addressed: (1) Are female collegiate Division I basketball players who are coached by female head coaches more likely to enter the coaching profession than athletes who are coached by male coaches?; (2) If female collegiate Division I basketball players do enter coaching, are they more likely to coach at a higher level if they were coached by a female head coach than if they were coached by a male?; and (3) If female Division I collegiate basketball players do enter coaching, are those who were coached by women more likely to persist in coaching than those who were coached by men? Head coach gender did not emerge as a significant predictor of athletes’ likelihood to enter coaching or occupational coaching level, but logistic regression indicated that athletes who did enter coaching were 4.1 times more likely to stay in coaching if they had a female head collegiate coach than if they had a male coach. This study extends the scarce body of research on the potential salience of same-sex coaching role models for female athletes and provides groundbreaking baseline data on collegiate athletes’ rate of entry into coaching, lending support to advocacy aimed at reversing the current stagnation of women in sport leadership.