‘Poor thing’ or ‘Wow, she knows how to do it’ – gender stereotypes as barriers to women’s qualification in the education of soccer coaches

Abstract

This essay explores the mechanisms preventing women from undertaking coaching education in professional soccer, as well as the factors at work when women abandon such education. The focus here is the influence of gender stereotypes on the exclusion of females from coaching education and on discrimination against them during education. Systems theory provides the background of an explanatory model designed to explain in detail the impact of such stereotypes on different system levels (society, organization, interaction) and the resulting exclusion of women from coaching education. A qualitative interview study in a regional association of the German Football Association (DFB) reveals that the exclusion of women often begins before they even start coaching education.

Notes

1. Steinbichler, Rarität – Die Fußball-Lehrerin.

2. DFB, Statistics of Educated Coaches.

3. Cook and Cusac, Gender Stereotyping entrained Ridgeway; Weinbach and Stichweh, ‘Gender Differences’.

4. For example, see Hart et al., ‘Examination of the Reduction’; Everhart and Chelladuri, ‘Gender Differences in Preferences’; Theberge, ‘Making a Career’; Knoppers, ‘Coaching’; Koppers, ‘Gender and the Coaching Profession’; Laberge, ‘Employment Situation’; Fasting and Pfister, ‘Female and Male Coaches’; Bahlke et al., Trainer das ist halt einfach Männersache; Demers, ‘Why Female Athletes Decide’; Weigelt-Schlesinger, Geschlechterstereotype – Qualifikationsbarrieren von Frauen in der Fußballtrainerausbildung; West and Brackenridge, Wot! No Women Coaches.

5. Weinbach and Stichweh, ‘Gender Differences’.

6. See Brown, Prejudice; Duckitt, The Social Psychology of Prejudice; Eckes, Geschlechterstereotype; Oakes et al., Stereotyping and Social Reality; Schneider, The Psychology of Stereotyping.

7. Weinbach, Systemtheorie und Gender.

8. Goffmann, ‘The Arrangement between the Sexes’; Heintz, ‘The Social (Dis)Order of Gender’.

9. Turner, Rediscovering the Social Group.

10. Hirschauer, ‘Forgetting Sex’.

11. Weinbach and Stichweh, ‘Gender Differences’; Tajfel, Social Identity and Intergroup Behavior.

12. Eagly, Sex Differences in Social Behaviour; Ridgeway, ‘Interaction and the Persistence’.

13. Abraham, ‘Geschlecht als Strukturdimension sozialer Ungleichheit’; Hartmann-Tews, ‘Soziale Konstruktion im Sport’; Kreisky/Spitaler, Arena der Männlichkeit.

14. Hargraves, Sporting Females; Hargraves, ‘The Women’s International Sports Movement’; Pelak, ‘Negotiating Gender/Race/Class’; Twigg, ‘The Body, Gender, and Age’.

15. Luhmann, ‘Frauen, Männer und George Spencer Brown’; Weinbach, Systemtheorie und Gender; Weinbach/Stichweh, ‘Gender Differences’.

16. Weinbach, Systemtheorie und Gender.

17. Kreisky and Spitaler, Arena der Männlichkeit; Scraton et al., ‘Bend it like Patel’.

18. Rustemeyer and Thrien, ‘Die Managerin – der Manager’.

19. Demers, ‘Why Female Athletes Decide’.

20. Acker, ‘Gendering Organization Theory’; Acker, ‘The Future of Gender’.

21. Thiel and Mayer, Characteristics of Voluntary Sports Clubs Management.

22. Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses.

23. Weinbach and Stichweh, ‘Gender Differences’; Pfister, Mentoring im Sportverein oder Sportverband.

24. Hartmann-Tews, ‘Soziale Konstruktion von Geschlecht im Sport und in den Sportwissenschaften’.

25. Hirschauer, ‘Forgetting Sex’; Weinbach and Stichweh, ‘Gender Differences’.

26. West and Zimmermann, ‘Doing Gender’.

27. Bahlke et al., Trainer das ist halt einfach Männersache; Fasting and Pfister, ‘Female and Male Coaches ’.

28. Weigelt-Schlesinger, Geschlechterstereotype.

29. Mayring, Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse.