Women as sports coaches.

The purpose of this study was to examine the reasons why women are underrepresented in sports coaching roles in Britain, particularly the most prestigious coaching positions. In depth, semi-structured interview schedules were carried out with twenty women coaches from five sports. The backgrounds of the twenty coaches ranged from those working with essentially recreational performers to those coaching international standard performers. Literature on women and the labour market, women and leisure and women and coaching was employed to contextualise the analysis of the coaches' responses, and a socialist feminist perspective adopted. The interviews with the coaches revealed that, on a macro-level, the unequal division of labour in the home, together with women's unequal position in the labour market contributed to the lack of women coaches in Britain. On a micro-level, women coaches experienced difficulty in gaining access to coaching qualifications, coach development programmes, coaching appointments and difficulty in obtaining opportunities to work with higher status teams. Access to higher status coaching roles was further constrained by coaching networks and the assumption that men were better coaches than women for such work.