Reflections on Improving Women’s Experiences of Mentorship in Canadian Coaching

Abstract

Despite recent advancements for women in leadership roles, women remain underrepresented in sport coaching contexts. Mentorship has been advocated as a potential avenue for advancing and sustaining the careers of women coaches. In line with this, national sporting bodies have implemented mentorship programs to pair new and aspiring women coaches with senior leaders. While recent evaluations show promising results, research is needed to understand how these programs are conceptualized, implemented, and experienced by program participants. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore stakeholders’ experiences in two Canadian women in coaching mentorship programs. Perspectives were gathered from 21 Canadian sport stakeholders that included program mentees, mentors, and staff. Data were analyzed using a reflexive thematic approach. Findings demonstrate the need for purposefully recruiting both mentor and mentee coaches to sustain meaningful partnerships. Additionally, participants highlighted the need for sport organizations to situate women in coaching as a priority and engage in sponsorship and long-term planning for sustaining women’s advancements in coaching. This study explores women in coaching mentorship programs from multiple perspectives, which may inform future formalized mentorship opportunities for women coaches by addressing identified challenges and barriers.

Legitimising and Delegitimising Women Coaches in the Golf Industry: Women Golf Professionals’ Experiences of Advocacy

“…Despite interest in the experiences of women coaches across sports, to date, less is known about the elements that encourage, promote, and foster women coaches throughout their careers (Demers and Kerr 2018;LaVoi and Dutove 2012;LaVoi et al 2019;Allen and Shaw 2013). One avenue that shows promise to support and actively promote women coaches is the contribution of social agents (LaVoi and Dutove 2012), in particular, through mentorship (Allen and Reid 2019;Banwell et al 2019Banwell et al , 2021Kramers et al 2023), sponsorship/advocacy (Kerr and Banwell 2016;Demers andKerr 2018), andallyship (LaVoi et al 2019;Schewinbenz 2021). Researchers continue to advocate mentorship for coaches in general and for women coaches in particular (Leeder and Sawiuk 2020;Sawiuk et al 2017).…”