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Abstract

In 2022-2023, across all Division I women's college sports teams, women only held 42% of all head coaching positions. Women's college basketball represents one of the outlier sports, as almost 70% of their head coaches for NCAA Division I women's basketball teams were women. While women head coaches are well represented in women's college basketball, Gerretsen et al. (2023) suggest inconsistencies exist in past experience, tenure length, and gender perceptions in women's college basketball hiring practices. This study further aimed to investigate these inconsistencies utilizing role congruity theory and the glass cliff phenomenon. To investigate, the researchers collected data on the gender of head coaches (n=6,205), head coaching changes (n=775), and performance (win %) for Division I women's basketball programs between 2005-2023. Results indicate that the role congruity theory was not supported, as women head coaches were hired approximately 70% of the time when a coaching change occurred. The glass cliff phenomenon was supported by diving deeper into the data. Gender does play a significant role in the hiring process, with women head coaches being more likely to take over a poorly performing team, replace a former successful female head coach, be replaced after a poor performance by a male head coach, and less likely to take on a higher resourced position (Power-6 conferences).

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