Women's Leadership in Junior Girls' Basketball in Victoria: Foucault, Feminism and Disciplining Women Coaches

Abstract

The effect of the implementation of Title IX in American Intercollegiate sports has been one of increased opportunities for women to play sport accompanied by a substantial reduction in the number of female coaches and administrators. Whilst much of the literature dealing with Title IX in America implies that the preponderance of male coaches and administrators in women's sport is the result of the influx of additional funding for women's collegiate sport, our research would suggest that such a discrepancy in the gender of coaches occurs in a number of sporting settings that are not professional. We would suggest that the coaching discourse precedes the existence of monetary reward, and it is this discourse which limits the type of subject positions that women can appropriate. We analyze one such sports setting, elite junior basketball in Melbourne, Australia, and investigate the strategies used by both men and women coaches to improve their own situations and to broaden their margins of liberty in acting.

Notes

 [1] Acosta and Carpenter, Women in Intercollegiate Sport, cited in Coakley, Sport in Society, 218.

 [2] Sabo, ‘Different Stakes’, 202–13.

 [3] Tolich, ‘Negotiated Turf’, 50–60.

 [4] Stangl and Kane, 1991 cited by Wilkerson, ‘Explaining the Presence of Men Coaches in Women's Sports’, 415.

 [5] Wilkerson, ‘Explaining the Presence of Men Coaches in Women's Sports’, 415; Knoppers, ‘Men Working’, 69–80.

 [6] Wilkerson, ‘Explaining the Presence of Men Coaches in Women's Sports’, 415.

 [7] Wilkerson, ‘Explaining the Presence of Men Coaches in Women's Sports’, 424; Hall, Feminism and Sporting Bodies, 13; Bloot and Browne, ‘Reasons for the Underrepresentation of Females’; Brown and Evans, ‘Reproducing Gender?’; West et al. , ‘Leading the Way’, 85–92.

 [8] Knoppers, ‘Men Working’, 74, 76; Bloot and Browne, ‘Reasons for the Underrepresentation of Females’, 8.

 [9] Michael Menshaw found that parents of professional female tennis players will endorse exploitative relationships with older male coaches on the basis that these relationships will scare away the lesbians on the circuit (cited in Lenskyj, ‘Sport and the Threat to Gender Boundaries’, 47–60).

[10] This research was supported by funding from the Victorian Department of Health – a state government agency interested in increasing participation levels of girls and women in exercise and sport.

[11] Denzin, Interpretive Interactionism; Lincoln and Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry.

[12] McKay, MANaging Gender; Still, ‘Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors’.

[13] Lincoln and Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry.

[14] Miles and Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis.

[15] The breakdown of Junior Men's Coaches by gender reveals no female coaches of the 90 teams in the Victorian Championships for Junior Men (includes an Under 20 Men's competition of ten teams), and a total of nine female coaches of the 266 Junior Men's teams across the competition in 2004. Whilst the coaching of Junior Men's teams is not directly a concern for this research, the under-representation of female coaches generally, and the absence of female coaches from the highest grades of Junior Men's basketball, would seem to suggest that the coaching of junior boys basketball is not perceived as a job for women. Whether this is a belief held by those who employ coaches, and/or a belief held by prospective female coaches, has not yet been investigated by the researchers.

[16] Our findings replicate those of West et al. (‘Leading the Way’) who also suggest that the under-representation of female coaches is exaggerated in the most prestigious roles. The difference between their findings and our findings is that our research deals specifically with junior sport.

[17] Lenskyj, ‘Sexuality and Femininity in Sports Contexts’, 30 cited by Hall, Feminism and Sporting Bodies, 79.

[18] Cullen and Luna, ‘Women Mentoring in Academe’, 125–37; Bloot and Browne, ‘Reasons for the Underrepresentation of Females’.

[19] The quotes that are used are representative of ideas expressed by a number of interview subjects.

[20] Fasting and Pfister, ‘Female and Male Coaches’, 91–110; LeDrew and Zimmerman, ‘Moving Towards an Acceptance of Females in Coaching’, 6–12.

[21] Thornton, ‘The Social Logic of Subcultural Capital’, 201.

[22] Messner, ‘Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters’, 771.

[23] Thornton, ‘The Social Logic of Subcultural Capital’, 200–12.

[24] Something that we hope to investigate in the near future, but which we suspect to be so, is whether these embodiments are also gendered. One female coach expressed her limitations as a coach in the following way: ‘Often I lose my voice if I'm coaching so if I try to yell it doesn't happen … so physically I'm challenged.’ Some parents might suggest that the inability to yell might be a physical advantage, rather than disadvantage, when coaching children and adolescents, although we acknowledge that basketball courts are usually loud environments.

[25] Shildrick and Price, ‘Openings on the Body’, 8. The cited quote comes from Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, 1977, 148.

[26] Foucault, 1979, 178 cited by Bartky, ‘Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power’, 63.

[27] Markula demonstrates the insight of this. Many of the exercises performed in aerobics classes are recognized by the women as useless in regards to improved functionality. The movements are not needed to perform the women's everyday chores. The sole purpose of these exercises is to improve the physical appearance of the women. In light of Foucault's emphasis that modern forms of power extract labour and time from subjects, it may be argued that the production of an aesthetically pleasing look is appropriate labour for females. Resistance may then come in the form of exercising for functional purposes. Some of the females who do aerobics suggested that their exercise assisted them in the performance of other sports (Markula, ‘Firm but Shapely’, 438).

[28] Bartky, ‘Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power’, 65–71.

[29] Many of the female exercisers studied by Markula identified the ubiquitous ‘society’ as the source of the gaze that disciplines their actions (‘Firm but Shapely’, 437).

[30] Foucault, 1979, 138 cited by Bordo, ‘Feminism, Foucault and the Politics of the Body’, 191.

[31] Andrews, ‘Desperately Seeking Michel’, 157.

[32] Morgan 1986 cited in Jim McKay, MANaging Gender, 74.

[33] Morgan 1986 cited in Jim McKay, MANaging Gender, 74

[34] Lenskyj, ‘Sexuality and Femininity in Sport Contexts’, 358.