Women Making Snail-Like Progress in College Coaching and Sports Administration

The latest report on the status of women and racial and ethnic minorities in college sports has been released by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida.

The scorecard gave a grade of C+ for gender diversity in college sports programs. This was the same grade received in each of the past three years.

Richard Lapchick, director of TIDES and the lead author of the report, stated that “to lag behind where we were 15 years ago is simply not acceptable considering how much attention we are supposedly placing on diversity, equity, and inclusion within higher education. The coaching statistics in women’s college sport remain the worst statistics reported by TIDES in all of the Report Cards we publish each year.”

One of the most striking figures is that in 2019, women held the head coaching job for only 41 percent of all women’s athletic teams in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In contrast, 95.8 percent of all head coaches for men’s teams in Division I are men.

Here are some other statistics on the status of women in college sports:

• Women are 44.4 percent of all student athletes at NCAA institutions.
• Women held 41 percent of head coaching jobs on women’s teams in Division I, 36.4 percent of the head coaching jobs for women’s sports in Division II, and 44.5 percent of head coaching positions for women’s teams in Division III.
• Only 14.3 percent of all athletics directors at NCAA Division I institutions are women. The good news is that this was up from 10.5 percent two years ago.
• Less than a third of all associate athletics directors and assistant athletics directors at NCAA Division I institutions are women.
• Women were less than 18 percent of all sports information directors in all NCAA divisions.