Rethinking Women's Leadership in Sports

A B O U T

R E S E A R C H

M E T H O D

O U T C O M E

D E C K

A B O U T

Project
Rethinking Equity and Opportunity for Women’s Coaching in Sports.

My role
Project partner

Timeline
Fall 2025,
4 months

Context
Women’s participation in sport has increased, yet coaching and leadership remain largely male-dominated. Representation declines as roles become more senior, limiting women’s influence within the sporting system. Coaches shape confidence, performance, and future career pathways, making their representation especially important. This project explores the barriers women face in coaching and the support needed to build stronger leadership pathways.

Challenge
How might we enable organizations to create the next transformative shift in women’s coaching by building stronger cross-sector partnerships and national engagement pathways that expand opportunities for women to enter, grow, and lead in coaching roles?

R E S E A R C H

Stakeholder Ecosystem

This is a multi-level structure of the U.S. sports ecosystem, where global organizations shape policy & national, professional, community, & academic institutions oversee sport development. It suggests that women-focused organizations and leagues remain concentrated in specific areas, indicating
more limited integration of women’s leadership across the broader sports system.

Historic Study

Systemic change rarely moves in a straight line. This timeline traces women’s evolving presence in the sports industry from the 1940s to 2025, charting the cultural shifts, policy interventions, & collective advocacy that opened doors alongside the institutional setbacks and unintended consequences that closed them. From wartime women’s leagues and the passage of Title IX to the ongoing fight for leadership, media representation, and governance equity, the arc reveals a landscape that has transformed significantly, yet still falls short of parity.

Title IX, however, had an unintended consequence on coaching roles. Before Title IX in 1972, over 90% of women’s collegiate sports teams were coached by women. More than 50 years later, that figure has dropped to just 41% of women’s head coaches across all three NCAA divisions, meaning only 4 out of 10 NCAA women’s teams are currently led by a woman.

Systems map

Reviewed the list of materials, focusing on those that would have the most impact in terms of cost to the company. Identified the top 6 categories and chose products to look into further in each category.

P R O C E S S

Phase 1: Journey Mapping

From here, we identify the 5 Es in the coach journey, starting with Entice, which comes along with making the decision of wanting to become a coach. From there, we move to the process of entering; then we have the interaction as a coach, which comes with engagement; from there is the late-career stage aligned with the exit, and finally the extend on their path.

Phase 2: Qualitative Study

Phase 3: Insights

O U T C O M E

This mapping surfaces problems at every level of the system that are deeply interconnected, from ingrained ideologies at the top to immediate hiring practices on the ground, revealing that
barriers women face in coaching are not isolated but systemic and mutually reinforcing.

D E C K

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See the full report here.