A study from the University of Minnesota finds that there is progress hiring women to coach women's college sports. But they still lag men.
For the 8th year in a row, the data from the U of M's Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport shows hiring ticked upwards for women coaching women's sports among more than 350 Division I institutions.
The problem is that the growth is small, just .4% -- shy of 43% of all women's sports teams.
"It is going up but it's going up so slowly that it would take us 22 years to reach 50 percent of women coaching women at the (Division I) collegiate level," Tucker Center Director Dr. Nicole LaVoi said about its Women in College Coaching Report Card.
There was more positive news: for the first time new women coaching hires outpaced men.
It's the first year the Tucker Center has tracked race in its data collection.
"Women coaches of color are vastly underrepresented at 7% of all head coaches of women's teams," LaVoi said. "A lot of the women athletes of color at schools are not seeing same-identity role models in their female athletic coaches."
LaVoi said the report card is used by athletics departments across the country because the benefits to hiring women to coach women stretch from the workplace environment to the athletes themselves.
"When you do have a same-identity role model it leads to positive perceptions, confidence, body esteem, career aspiration, emulation, and self-valuation so it's good for the female athletes," LaVoi said. "It's also good for the workplace because a gender- and racially-balanced workforce leads to a better occupational climate. It's also important to track because when young men see women in positions of power it helps them treat women as their equals in the workplace and change gender stereotypes about women and leadership."
The Big Ten led all Power 5 conferences and was 2nd overall with 52% of its women's teams coached by women.
