|
 |
|
|
 |
DECEMBER 2007 FEATURE What We Know About the Experiences of Women Beginner Coaches by Guylaine Demers and Marie-Hélène Audet Introduction This article builds on “Why Female Athletes Decide to Become Coaches — or Not”, which was published in The Canadian Journal for Women in Coaching in July 2004. The first article presented the preliminary stage of a larger research program initiated with women coaches, particularly those at the beginning of their careers. We are now able to present preliminary data collected from women beginner coaches in the sport of artistic gymnastics. These data show that launching a coaching career is not always easy. They also show that women coaches are not always adequately prepared to face the challenges of their profession. However, there are successes, and those successes may be the starting points for recruiting women coaches and retaining them for longer periods to time. New Data on Under-representation of Women Coaches Since 2004, new data have become available on women coach participation. Unfortunately, the numbers are not encouraging. First of all, statistics show that the Canadian delegation at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens consisted of only 10 per cent women coaches; it was only 15 per cent at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin. In October 2007, the Journal published an article by Drs. Gretchen Kerr and Dru Marshall that provided statistics for eight sports (athletics, basketball, ice hockey, rugby, soccer, swimming, volleyball, and wrestling) on the numbers of women in coaching positions at the national, university, college, provincial, and Paralympic levels (“Shifting the Culture: Implications for Female Coaches”). Results show that women hold 33 per cent of head coach positions on women’s teams — 41 per cent per cent in rugby, 36 per cent in basketball, 35 per cent in soccer, 34 per cent in volleyball, and 20 per cent in ice hockey. In athletics, 17 per cent of head coaches are women; in swimming it is 20 per cent, and in wrestling the number rises to 35 per cent. Data on participation in Paralympic sports in Canada reflect similar percentages, with women accounting for 22 per cent of all head coaches. A just-completed study on the participation of women in sport in Quebec (Secrétariat Loisir et Sport, 2007) reveals that women coaches make up 14 per cent of all coaches in the province, a two-per-cent improvement over 1999. As usual, women are found at the bottom rungs of National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP) certification and are chiefly in Introduction - Competition. More detailed analysis, however, shows that women focus on training and specialization and, in fact, account for a very low percentage of coaches who do not complete training. The issue of under-representation of women within the coaching ranks remains critical. It is therefore justified — indeed, imperative — to continue studying this population and to try to understand the causes of under-representation in order to reverse this undesirable situation. It is with those objectives in mind that we present the preliminary results of our study. Study Objectives Our study aimed at gaining a better understanding of these coaches as they experienced the first years of their careers. The various studies upon which we based our project were key in describing the precarious situation of women coaches and in attempting to provide an explanation. However, these studies have not been successful in suggesting initiatives that would enable women to improve their position in the sport environment or to increase their participation as coaches. Given that no study has dealt with beginner coaches, our findings specifically aim, first, to draw an entry-level profile of women who choose to go into coaching and, second, to identify the issues and successes they experienced during their early years in the profession. |
|
December 2007 What We Know About the Experiences of Women Beginner Coaches by Guylaine Demers and Marie-Hélène Audet Download a PDF of this article click
here Print a copy of this articleclick here
Get on the email circulation list click here Publisher: Sheilagh Croxon, Consultant, Women in Coaching, Coaching Association of Canada Editor: Sheila Robertson Editorial Board: Copy Editor: Heather Ebbs Translator: MATRA • gs Inc. © 2007 Coaching Association of Canada, ISSN 1496-1539 Coaching Association of Canada Web site by
|
|
|
