Old survey, new results

NCAA women's lacrosse player. Photo: Public Domain

NCAA women's survey from the 1980s brought back

Cameron Dexter | staff editor

The NCAA has recently released a survey which will revise an older edition from the 1980’s called, “Perceived Barriers to Women in Intercollegiate Athletics Careers,” says Geri Knortz, St. Michael’s director of athletics.

The survey attempts to identify two separate factors that influence women athletes. It identifies how women feel coming from an athletic collegiate background who are choosing to go into athletics careers, and it also identifies the perceived barriers that women athletes feel keep them from pursuing athletic-based careers, according to Knortz.

 St. Michael’s opinion

The NCAA asked Knortz to distribute the survey to all St. Michael’s female athletes.

The NCAA Committee of Women's Athletics (CWA) collaboratated with the Minority Opportunities and Interests Committte (MOIC) to have NCAA women athletes fill out the updated survey from 1989.

The survey focuses closely on the factors that influence women when it is time to choose a career in athletics after college says Jennifer Kearns, associate director of NCAA media relations says. The survey also identifies what motivates women student athletes to pursue athletically-oriented careers after college, she says.

The CWA and MOIC recommended updating the 1989 surveys in an attempt to determine what factors continue to influence women’s careers.

It also looks to identify what motivates women to seek careers in intercollegiate athletics and potential obstacles institutions may face in recruiting and retaining women in coaching and administrative positions. 

 “The goal is to then work with institutions in developing strategies to encourage and support women seeking these positions and there are some differences from the 1989 survey to the 2007,” Kearns says.

The 2007 student-athlete version of the survey is set up to elicit responses on two tiers, Kearns says.

The survey will focus on why women want to pursue a career in athletics, what brought the student-athlete to that athletics career decision, and why they think other females do not choose athletics as careers. 

For those students who do not want to pursue a career in athletics, the survey inquires into why they chose their career path, what they think about females in athletics careers, what they think of athletics as a career, and what, if anything could persuade them to consider an athletics career, according to Kearns.

In the 1989 results showed that out of 1,577 women who responded to, and completed the survey, only 5.3 percent of them were planning to pursue an athletic-oriented career, according to the results published by the NCAA in 1989.

The publication also revealed that, in 1989, 88.8 percent of women felt that the main reason they were not going to was because of a poor relationship they had had with a coach during their time playing sports in college.

The study showed that women working in intercollegiate careers were for the most part unmarried without children.

The 1980s called, they want their opinions back

The 1989 survey revealed information about how men feel about women in the athletics work environment.

An anonymous quote given by a male working within the NCAA in 1989 was published in the survey to show the barriers are real:

“As an associate athletics director, there is no further professional advancement if I intend to stay at Division I. The level of input sought from me by the administration is not the type of influence I would like to have. Perhaps that is a function of this staff. The NCAA is an ‘old boys’ club, and always will be. I am not even sure that the positions filled within the NCAA held by women ultimately have much influence as the membership makes the decisions.”

“You know, back in the 1980’s, that sentiment was pretty accurate,” Knortz says. “To some extent, at DI, even 25 years later, it still is very difficult for a woman to advance to the athletics director position.”

More sports, less women

A study done every two years since 1978 by R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter, two former professors at City University of New York's Brooklyn College, shows a continuation of these trends seen in past years.

“The number of administrative jobs in NCAA athletics continues to grow, as does the number of women in administration. But the number of athletic directors who are female has declined in the past four years, according to the latest Women in Intercollegiate Sport study,” according to the Acosta-Carpenter study of 2006.

Knortz says that female athletic directors are more common on the Division II and Division III levels, but there are women in the Division I field.

“You can see that women are under-represented in coaching and athletics administrations,” Knortz says. “By identifying potential barriers to these careers for women, the NCAA hopes to be proactive in breaking down obstacles and opening doors for women to pursue careers in coaching and athletics administration.”

Sophomore St. Michael’s tennis player Courteney McDonnell says that she is not planning to pursue a career in athletics.

“My experience as an athlete here has been good, but I haven’t considered an athletic career, but this decision isn’t gender-related, I’ve never really considered it,” McDonnell says.