Why Aren’t More Women Coaching Football Teams?

We live in an era where glass ceilings are being broken on a regular basis, but one prominent one still remains largely intact: not a lot of women are coaching men’s sports teams. When a man is hired to coach a women’s team, no one bats an eye; when the reverse happens, though, it’s much more of an event.

A new article by Morgan Moriarty at SB Nation explores the handful of women who have coached football at the Division I or NFL level — and discusses the ways that steps are being taken to open up the field to more candidates in the future. This includes the NFL’s Women’s Careers in Football Forum, which has had impressive results:

In the forum’s first two years, eight women were hired as full-time assistants or coaching interns, six within scouting departments, and five in football operations. Nearly 40 positions have been filled by women who’ve participated in the forum since it launched, with 20 of those opportunities coming this year alone.

Brown University coach James Perry made a sharp observation. “Anytime I can open up the pool, it strengthens my staff,” he told SB Nation about his hiring of Heather Marini as offensive quality control assistant. To state the obvious: having a good eye for tactics and strategy has nothing to do with one’s gender, after all.

Football isn’t the only sport where women are taking on high-profile coaching and assistant coaching jobs. Becky Hammon of the San Antonio Spurs is probably the best-known example of this: she’s been on the coaching staff there for 6 years. But Hammon isn’t alone. Corinne Diacre spent 3 years as the coach of the French team Clermont Foot.

And next year, when the second-division American soccer team San Diego Loyal makes its debut, the first assistant to head coach Landon Donovan will be Carrie Taylor — one of the first women to take on such a role. “I kept thinking to myself, I don’t want this club to be like every other club,” Donovan told Yahoo Sports — and it’s that kind of thinking that leads to breakthrough moments. Decisionmakers in others sports may well have a new example to follow.

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