As women and mothers, we aspire for improvements in gender equality not only for us, but also for the next generation. And just as we role model for more junior women in the workplace, we also need to role model for our daughters.
For many girls, participation in sports teams is a primary place where they see authority enacted. However, as the coach of my own daughter’s soccer team, I have noticed mothers are much less likely to coach than fathers. This seems to be a lost opportunity—and it’s one that may have roots in what women experience at work.
Why Women Don’t Volunteer to Coach
I have met many smart, capable moms—moms who hold senior managerial and professional roles—who are nervous to coach their elementary-aged daughter’s sports teams. While there are many factors at play in why women do not coach as much as men in youth sports—ranging from overt discrimination to inequality in the distribution of household chores—I want to focus on one area that stands out to me based on my research: the ways high-achieving women have been discouraged from taking on leadership roles in their organizations.
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Extensive research shows that women who act assertive face backlash, including career penalties. One prominent reason for this is that most people simply do not associate women with more agentic and assertive activities, including holding roles of formal authority like a manager. Consider a famous piece of research by Gettysburg College professor emeritus Virginia E. Schein and coauthors pointedly entitled “Think Manager—Think Male.” While this research was published decades ago, recent research finds that these general findings still remain.
To protect themselves against backlash, many women managers adjust their actions and adapt styles of management that are indirect rather than direct. These approaches to management may be intentionally taken up by women, or taken up more subconsciously as an adaptive adjustment to everyday challenges. Research by Harvard Business School Professor Alexandra C. Feldberg, for instance, documents how women managers do not give workers terse instructions, but rather, spend time cultivating relationships with employees. My own research finds the same thing: women managers do not simply tell subordinates what to do, but rather work hard to build relationships with them, out of concern that otherwise their authority might be ignored or disrespected.
Given this evidence, it is unsurprising that women might be hesitant to take on roles that entail being directly assertive, both within and outside of the workplace. If women believe (whether consciously or not) that they’ll be punished for taking on an authoritative position, why would they raise their hand to do so—even if that role involves coaching their child’s sports team? In other words, what I was witnessing on the soccer field seemed to be a manifestation of what I had seen among the professional managers I studied. Women were again concerned about being direct.
Assistant professor of management and organization Vanessa Conzon.
Moms Stepping Up
The problem is that when women do not step into leadership positions such as coach, we inadvertently reinforce expectations that it is men, not women, who should hold leadership positions. Our daughters continue to see men in positions of power, just like how at school, men are disproportionately in principal positions compared to the abundance of women teachers. This is despite evidence that girls and young women benefit from having women role models because, for instance, they can teach them how to overcome gender barriers. When they are older, will they feel confident speaking up and challenging others directly—whether that be as a new manager or budding CEO—when they have not seen many women do so?
Given what I knew about the research, I was eager to coach my daughter’s soccer team (that, and I got to choose the timing and location of practices—no cross-town driving at rush hour for me!). And when I sent an email to the team asking for a volunteer coach to help me out, there were several—but they were all men.
When I pivoted my approach to sharing why we needed more moms involved, using the research I’ve outlined in this article, I finally began to receive enthusiastic responses from women. The moms got it. In coaching our daughters, we were breaking down the myth of separate worlds, coined by Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter in 1977: the idea that work and family lives are separate. The role modeling we engage in with our personal lives shapes the outcomes of our children. Now I co-coach with two women (and one amazing dad).
Coaching also provides an opportunity for women to role model for girls the forms of management they engage in every day, whether this be a more direct approach, a more relational style, or a blend of both. In my case, I have found myself in the course of many practices sitting on the ground with girls when we talk at the beginning of practice (relational) while later giving more direct instructions when corralling fifteen kindergarten and grade one girls to take turns shooting on net (direct). This is also an opportunity to practice management—albeit in an entirely different, and often also more difficult, setting! Indeed, the act of speaking up and volunteering to coach—whether one does that more directly or indirectly—is in itself an opportunity to enact management creatively.
The Takeaway
My aim in encouraging moms to coach is not to put more work on the shoulders of moms who already perform more household work; dads, you can step-up too and take on other elements of household work (the dishes, driving to activities, packing lunches… the list is endless as parents know). And my point is also not that fathers should be involved less with their daughters’ sports teams, but rather, that women should also (to use an apt metaphor) step up to the plate.
So, Moms, volunteer to coach your daughters’ sports teams. Dads, support moms so they have the bandwidth to do so. And let us all recognize that with intentionality and awareness we can help create a more gender equal world.