Head Coach Changes in Women’s College Soccer: An Investigation of Women Coaches Through the Lenses of Gender Stereotypes and the Glass Cliff

Abstract

Women are underrepresented in leadership positions in sport, including coaching. In the present study of women's college soccer in the United States, the authors examine the relationship between team performance and coaching changes through the lenses of gender stereotypes, role congruity theory, and the glass cliff theory. The authors collected 11 seasons of data (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017) for all teams (n = 695) in five conferences. The results of logistic regression analyses with rare events correction show no significant differences between men and women coaches in terms of being dismissed following poor team performance. Hence, the theoretical assumptions of the gender stereotypes and role congruity literature could not be supported empirically. However, the results indicate that women coaches are significantly more likely to be hired as new coaches following poor performance of a team in terms of wins and winning percentage (but not losses) over the course of a season, providing some empirical support for a glass cliff in coaching. The findings have implications for the hiring practices of decision-makers in athletic departments and their performance expectations of women coaches.

Sex Differences in High-Level Managerial Jobs: Evidence From Professional Basketball

“…For all measures of inherited team quality there are no differences between sexes, except for in favor of female coaches when examining scoring metrics for first-time and repeat hires separately. As a result, in contrast to results of Wicker et al (2019) on the glass cliff, our results show that females do not inherit lower quality teams and may in fact inherit slightly better teams. Males are also more likely to be hired following a female coach and vice versa.…”

“…For example, Cook and Glass (2013) found that minority men's college basketball coaches inherit worse performing teams. With respect to sex differences, Wicker et al (2019) found that female coaches of collegiate women's soccer teams in the major National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) conferences inherited lower quality teams than their male counterparts.…”

“…Finally, we control for productivity using various measures. We use the winning percentage, as is standard (Wells & Aicher, 2013;Wicker et al, 2019), along with playoff appearances. Furthermore, we also use offensive and defensive rating, and points scored and allowed as alternative measures to assess the robustness of our results.…”

Are Women Really Less Competitive Than Men? Career Duration in Nordic and Alpine Skiing

“…Our interpretation is consistent with the findings reported by Wicker and George (2019) , who found the dismissal probability of soccer head coaches following poor team performance to be the same for men and women.…”

Female workers, male managers: Gender, leadership, and risk‐taking

“…For example, in 2014 about two-thirds of senior coaching positions in women's national senior teams (head and assistant coaches), under-19s and under-17s teams were held by (white) men, while the remaining one-third of positions of this kind were held by (white) women (Bradbury et al, 2014). A similar share of about one-third of all head coaches being female is present in women's college soccer in the United States (Wicker et al, 2019). This under-representation of female coaches cannot be explained by performance differences, with Gomez-Gonzalez et al (2019) showing that gender does not have a significant effect on team performance.…”