Search

Building on the body of research that has addressed the experiences of female coaches, the present study examines women's role as coach developers. English football served as the context for the research. Figures demonstrate women are underrepresented in this role more so than they are as coaches, and their distribution across the coach developer pathway is unevenly balanced, with most women qualified at Level I of the pathway. Using the concept of 'organizational fit', the research connects the experiences of the 10 coach developers interviewed, to the structural practices of their national and local governing bodies. These practices were symptomatic of the organizations' culture that is created and upheld by masculine ideals. Work expectations and the environment were structured on the image of men as coaches and coach developers. Cultural barriers to women's sense of organizational fit were specifically found to be: the incentive to progress (return on investment from higher coaching qualifications), the degree of organizational support and nurture, and the opportunity to progress and practice. Consequently, organizational expectations and values do not support the ambitions of women to climb the coach developer career ladder, and restrict their sense of choice and control. Future research should direct its attention towards a greater interrogation of aspects of sport organizational culture that may serve to 'push' female coaches away from its core, or alternatively, pull them closer to engage and make use of their expertise and abilities as coach developers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses upon UK professional coaches’ experiences of equity training and the impact of the conceptualisation of equity as a matter of equal opportunities on this education and subsequent coaching practice. The research employs a critical feminist approach to connect the ideological framing of gender equity by sporting organisations to coaches’ ability to understand, identify and manage issues of gender equity, equality and diversity. The discussions are based on interviews with four coaches, Jack, Peter, Charlotte and Tony, who had all recently undertaken equity training, and all of whom represented sports and different stages of the coaching pathway. The data highlights that seeing gender equity through an “equal opportunities” lens results in a narrow conceptualisation of such issues by coaches, fails to challenge dominant and discriminative ideologies, and does not enable coaches to address equity within their practices. Consequently, coaches struggle to understand the importance of and manage such issues. The participants’ experiences reveal that gender relations, intersected principally with religion and ethnicity, underpinned their everyday coaching practices. The findings illustrate the need for sporting organisations to redefine how they approach equality and equity and for a more sophisticated sociocultural educational programme for coaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study centres upon the accounts of master women coaches based in the UK, exploring how they have individually experienced such acts of resistance as reaching the top of such a male dominated profession. By going beyond previous positivist feminist approaches to this focus of inquiry, I employ a feminist cultural studies framework to understand how the social construction of what it means to be a woman impacts women coaches' individual sense of self and confidence to lead. The discussions are based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with six senior national women coaches of team sports in the UK. The data highlight the success of masculine hegemony of coaching through documenting women's reluctance to advance their coaching career through a lack of self-belief and motivation as a consequence of their culturally and historically marginal position. The findings illustrate a pressing need for a revision of the dominant values inherent in professional sport in order to engage and retain potential women leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of women in senior positions of sports coaching in the UK. The paper is based upon qualitative semi-structured interviews with national women coaches from a variety of team sports. A critical feminist standpoint is taken to illustrate how the challenges of being a woman coach and working within women's sport can contribute to the understanding of the marginalization of women in positions of power and responsibility. This analysis is discussed in relation to the challenges and complexities women may face in attempting to coexist in elite roles at the cost of the strengths that women can bring to the profession. The powerful impact of sporting ideologies is identified as a crucial factor in maintaining coaching as a male domain. This is demonstrated through women's limited intentions to resist and men's significant structural control of the coaching process and profession. In addition, I highlight how the current coach education system and philosophies contribute to the absence of women from high-performance roles through neglecting women's potential to improve elite coaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore how high performance women athletes in the UK experience the coach-athlete relationship. The aim of the study, conducted from a grounded theory perspective, was to explore how coaching and coaches can influence women's participation in sport. Through privileging the voices of 16 women athletes, utilising in-depth interviews, four major themes emerged describing how women currently experience high performance coaching. These were: the salience of gender in the coach-athlete relationship; how the coach-athlete relationship was experienced by the athletes as a popularity contest; the quality of the coach-athlete relationship built upon whether the coach adopted an 'invested' or a 'functional' approach to his or her position; and the (em)powerful role of the coach. The results of the research demonstrate the significance and influence of gender in the coach-athlete relationship. The findings suggest that women's experiences of coaching are socially constructed, and that gendered ideologies concerning women's sporting abilities can negatively affect this relationship. The study also reveals that the coach occupies a powerful and often over-bearing role in the lives of high performance women athletes, but that a more democratic, personalised and positive coach-athlete relationship can prove instrumental in improving women athletes' experiences of performance sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to discuss a theory of everyday gendered homophobia as a way of understanding lesbian coaches’ experiences of their profession. I discuss the need to gain a better comprehension of homophobia achieved through deconstructing women’s day-to-day experiences of professional coaching, examining how their lives are individually organized along multiple power lines, namely sexual orientation and gender. Through this, it is possible to connect the macro-structure of sport to the micro- and recognize the everyday inferiorizations that take place within the participants’ lives. The main focus of the article is to explore the power of understanding the everyday and present the key conceptual issues and processes underpinning a theory of everyday gendered homophobia. The conception of everyday gendered homophobia is based upon data from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 10 professional women coaches who identified themselves as lesbian, from both individual and team sports within the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on interview research, this study examined how master female coaches based in the United Kingdom experienced relations with men within their profession. Using feminist cultural studies approach to examine how sport promotes and maintains a gender order unfavorable to women, we found that female coaches felt the need to continually prove themselves and often experienced coaching as a hostile and intimidating culture. Participants reported a gradual reduction in such unwelcoming behavior from men, seemingly because they had proved to be no threat to the existing patriarchal structure. A critical exploration of coaching is needed to understand how masculine hegemony leads to women's relative powerlessness as coaches. Furthermore, the findings present a case for a greater emphasis on sociocultural education within the UK coaching curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]