Coaching empowers team members. Coaches take teams where they cannot go alone.
Recently Forbes shared their list of America's 100 Most Innovative Leaders list. They asked the question, "Who are the most creative and successful business minds of today?" Their list included ninety-nine men and one woman, Barbara Rentler, CEO of Ross Stores at 75. Four men, including three business school professors, developed the list.
Bernard Lewis wrote What Went Wrong, after 9/11, examining why Middle East societies lag the West. It wasn't history, because the Islamic world pioneered areas of science, freedom, and economic development. But the author notes, "Another approach has been to view the main culprit as the relegation of women to an inferior position in Muslim society, which deprives the Islamic world of the talents and energies of half its people."
Within sport, women lagged in opportunity, particularly prior to Title IX (1972), with inferior coaching, worse facilities, and fewer resources (practice time, scholarships). Girls often had higher status as cheerleaders or majorettes than athletes.
Yet, even with Title IX, women haven't achieved equality. The United States have never ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, women haven't earned equal pay for equal work, and this extends to professional sports as well, such as the US Women's National Soccer Team.
Leveling the playing field won't come only from providing equal access to competition and practice time. Girls need experienced, enthusiastic, invested coaches (women or men) willing to fight for them. During my lifetime, I've seen excellence from many women coaches, but other programs content to higher a convenient coach, not the best coach available. Recently, the outstanding Braintree girls' coach Kristen McDonnell was hired to lead the Norwood Boys' Basketball program. That's progress.
In Geno Auriemma's book, he described UCONN women players being told that the Athletic Department would hire the best woman coach available. The players asked, why couldn't they have the best coach, not the best woman.
The highlights of my coaching career aren't league championships or players achieving a college basketball scholarship. It's seeing girls winning in the classroom and in society, girls earning advanced degrees or reaching their dream, like a former player in her third year at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.
We regularly hear women candidates for office dismissed as shrews, unfeminine, or witches. Take charge men are strong leaders or direct. Powerful women are bitches. Title IX got more women onto the field but hasn't broken through the glass ceiling.
So, I coach to empower women, to encourage them to knock down the doors impeding them, to lead families, lead in the classroom, and lead on the field. Anything less should be unacceptable to my family and to yours. As for Forbes, you blew it.
