CAGE: The Coaching and Gender Equity Project

The Final Report was released August 19, 2005: "CAGE Final Report" (word document)

In the three decades since the passage of Title IX, women’s participation in collegiate athletics has expanded dramatically, yet the entrance of women into collegiate coaching positions has not kept pace.  Less than two percent of men’s teams, and only 44.1 percent of women’s teams have women as head coaches, and the latter is close to the lowest figure in the post Title IX era.  Given most coaches come from the ranks of collegiate and high school athletes, this finding is surprising and disturbing. 

Colleges and universities have an interest in improving this situation to:

• enlarge the talent pool from which coaches are drawn,
• improve the overall quality of coaching, and
• enhance gender equity across the ranks of their employees.

 Improvement of the gender mix of coaches and athletic administrators could also:

• increase the probability that young girls will take up athletics and therefore enjoy related health and character-building benefits, and
• increase the likelihood that collegiate women athletes will perceive coaching as a viable option for their future.

The CAGE project generated research to answer the question: why are women under represented in the ranks of collegiate coaches and Athletic Directors?  The purpose in addressing this question was to shed light on methods for improving gender equity in collegiate athletics.  Four subsidiary questions were involved:

• Are women not entering the field?
• Are women entering but not staying in the field?
• Are there barriers to the movement and promotion of women? And
• Do work and family responsibilities play a role here?

The project has administered focus groups with coaches and athletic administrators at the NACWAA Fall Forum in October, 2004, and at the NCAA Convention in January, 2005, and we administered focus groups of women student/athletes at Division I, II and III institutions, and undertook an analysis of Census 2000 data on coaches at colleges and universities.

To the extent the research can provide relevant institutions and professional associations with policies and practices to improve gender equity, the project will have succeeded.

Start date: August 2004.

Sponsors

The National Collegiate Athletic Association

The National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators

The Commission for Women, and Athletics of the Pennsylvania State University

Resources

• CAGE Background paper, by Jennifer Fazioli, April 2004
• NACWAA 
• National Collegiate Athletic Association
• National Association for Girls and Women in Sports
• National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education
• Parent's Association.com
• Women in Sport
• Women's Sports Foundation

The CAGE Team

Principal Investigators                                               
Robert Drago                                                            Lynn Hennighausen, M.S.
Professor of Labor Studies & Women’s Studies        A Balancing Act, Inc.
Penn State University  drago@psu.edu                       lynn@workandfamilychoices.com

Jackie Krasas Rogers                                                Theresa Vescio 
Director of Women's Studies & Professor of Soc.      Professor of Psychology & Women's Studies
Lehigh University  jkr205@lehigh.edu                        Penn State University tkv1@psu.edu

Research Assistant
Kai Dawn Stauffer
Human Development & Family Studies
Penn State University dem200@psu.edu