Sunday, January 29, 2012

35 years of participation data

We have, countless times during our research and writing about Title IX and equity in sports, said "thank goodness for Drs. Linda Carpenter and Vivian Acosta." For 35 years now these women have compiled and categorized and interpreted data about the participation of women as athletes, administrators, coaches, and other staff in intercollegiate athletics.
They just released the report for year 35.
Here are some of the highlights:
  • The most women ever are employees (coaches, trainers, sports information directors, administrators, in intercollegiate athletics.
  • Participation is the highest ever as is the number of teams per school (8.73 average)
  • The number of women coaching women's teams is at the highest level since the start of the study.
  • But 57.1 percent of women's teams are still coached by men as are 97-98 percent of men's teams.
  • And only one in five coaches of intercollegiate teams are women.
  • But there are 100 more women in head coaching positions today than in 2010
  • One of the most interesting and startling statistics to me was that almost all schools have Sports Information Directors but only 9.8 percent are women. (Is there a connection between this stat and the lack of media coverage of women's sports?)
  • And DI has the lowest percentage of women as SIDs (3.1%)
  • Women are better represented as strength and conditioning coaches, though. In DI Football Bowl Subdivision schools there is at least one female S/C coach. (The issue remains though how many of those women are hired solely to train female student-athletes. This is the first year the study has addressed S/C coaches. Maybe in future years some of this information will be added.)
You can always go to the website linked above for more information about Title IX.