"Why are there still no women coaching men’s sports?"

[Jamaal510]

More: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/09/female_coaches_why_aren_t_there_more_women_in_charge_of_men_s_teams_.html

Near the end of the trailer for Wildcats, a 1986 sports comedy with a 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating, a voice-over actor informs prospective moviegoers that during the film, “Goldie Hawn tackles the impossible.” The movie is about a woman who coaches a men’s football team, and the implication is that such an endeavor equates to doing that which is undoable.

Sadly, that disembodied voice from the mid-’80s was on to something. Huge numbers of otherwise reasonable people, in 2012, simply take it as a given that women couldn’t possibly coach men’s sports teams. And so, regardless of ability, talent, or potential outcomes, a woman who aspires to lead a high-level men’s team is actually reaching for the near impossible.

There are exactly zero women working as coaches for the 122 teams playing in the NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL. Zero head coaches, zero assistant coaches, zero assistant to the assistant coaches. The average NFL team employs 18 coaches. Major League Baseball teams have six coaches and a manager. Most NHL teams carry at least four coaches, and a typical NBA squad has one head coach and four to six assistants. All together, that’s more than 1,000 jobs ... all held by men. To state it another way: 50.8 percent of the U.S. population has virtually no shot of becoming men’s football, baseball, basketball, or hockey coaches at any level that would involve payment for services due.

Women coach women’s teams at all levels. But so do men. In fact, the percentage of women’s college teams coached by women, for instance, has shrunk considerably since the passage and implementation of Title IX. (In 1972, 90 percent of women’s college teams were coached by women—that number is now down to 42.9 percent. And according to this ESPN story, men have been hired for 68.5 percent of the college women’s team coaching openings filled since 2000.) This is by no means meant to suggest that coaching men’s teams should be valued more highly than coaching women’s teams or represent the ultimate goal for a coach. The point here is simply that choosing a coach from an inherently flawed and unnecessarily narrow universe of candidates is probably not the best way to proceed. Not to mention that coaching women generally pays far less than coaching men.

[Exilednight]

1. It will happen, and I believe the NBA will be the first.

[fishwax]

2. The San Antonio Spurs now have a female assistant coach, for the record

This article was written in 2012. Becky Hammon was hired as an assistant for the Spurs before the start of last season.

[Snobblevitch]

3. I believe there are many other areas

of U.S. society in which gender equity is of much more importance than having females coach male professional sports teams.

[polly7]

4. I coached boys' baseball and hockey teams for a few years.

Of course this was minor hockey and baseball, and I didn't get paid for it ..... and it was only because the men here were too busy some years, and we always had trouble getting coaches so the kids could play, period .... which probably means this post has absolutely no relevance to the OP , but still, it does happen.

(And we won our midget baseball league and made it to provincials - just once)

[LeftyMom]

5. Well, there's hardly any women's football, and women play softball in college.

So I'm not sure just where MLB and NFL coaches would play first before gaining coaching experience. Women's basketball programs tend to be a bit different strategically, but the NBA game is shifting style in a way that would erase some of that difference, so I agree that's where it's likely to happen first, and to some degree has, since the Spurs have a woman in an assistant position and anybody in Pop's coaching tree is likely to get job offers eventually.

The MLB and NFL also have some machismo culture issues that would make them seem likely to be late to the party, especially since players in both leagues are widely regarded to halfass their seasons when they aren't enthused about their coaches.