Betty Kaufmann, the head coach of the DePaul men’s golf team, recalls being “one of the guys” growing up. From a young age, Kauffmann enjoyed playing sports and the competitiveness that comes with it. During the week, Kaufmann would play baseball with her older brothers and other neighborhood children. Although Kaufmann enjoyed sports, when it came time to play on the Pee Wee teams on the weekend, she could not join the other children because of her gender.
Years later, Kaufmann has been able to make a name for herself in sports. In her 15th season of coaching men’s golf, Kaufmann has broken stereotypes by being successful in a male-dominated field.
Title IX has been successful in allowing girls to participate in sports from club leagues to NCAA teams. It has been 40 years since Title IX was passed and little improvement has been made in changing the landscape for female coaches in college athletics.
Women continue to shatter stereotypes as athletes. Why can women not catch a break in coaching?
According to a survey collected by Brooklyn College professors Emerita R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter, when Title IX was passed in 1972, women coached more that 90 percent of women’s teams. By 1978, that number had plummeted to just over 58 percent and it now stands at just under 43 percent.
The Acosta-Carpenter study notes that women coach just 3 percent of men’s college teams. These women are seen mainly coaching NCAA track and field and swimming and diving teams.
“Title IX opened up opportunities and created laws that help us [women] succeed,” said Kaufmann. “But if you wanted to be successful you couldn’t be status quo. You had to fight hard to get to where you wanted to be.”
Before the passing of Title IX, few men wanted to coach women’s sports teams.
“With DePaul’s effort to comply with Title IX, they began fielding women sports,” said Doug Bruno, head coach of the DePaul women’s basketball team.
According to ESPN article “The Glass Wall,” written by Kate Fagan and Luke Cyphers, on every Division I sports team, there are approximately eight basketball coaching positions – four on the men’s side and four on the women’s side. Males tend to apply for all of these positions when they become available. Females, however, tend to stay on the women’s side and rarely try to venture over to the men’s side.
As outlined in the article, women often make the assumption that coaching men’s teams is off-limits to them and don’t attempt to apply when a men’s team coaching job is advertised.
“I go to our golf coaching convention and I’m usually the only woman there out of 200 men,” said Kaufmann. “Some guys say to me, ‘I see you at all of the [golf] events.’ Yeah, because I’m doing the same job you’re doing. In the beginning a lot of guys were very receptive, saying things like, ‘What is she doing here?’ One of the coaches is a good friend of mine and he says, joking around, ‘I bet a lot of these guys think you’re at the wrong convention, but I’ll take your r?
