Gender role expectations and the prevalence of women as assistant coaches

Abstract

While the percentage of women head coaches of collegiate teams has consistently declined since 1972, the number of women assistant coaches continues to rise and currently represents the largest group of women employed in college athletics. Because the positions of head coach and assistant coach place similar demands on the women in these roles, the differing trends for these positions are perplexing. Utilizing a framework of role congruity theory and symbolic interactionism, this study considers whether women are clustered in the assistant role because head and assistant coach positions are gender typed, with the head coach being masculine typed and the assistant coach being feminine typed. 403 male and female college athletes were asked to match gender traits with either an assistant coach or a head coach. Results show that masculine traits are aligned with head coaches more than assistant coaches.