I am a Sports Management major and plan on having a career in the sports world. I decided to do two journal writings on issues relevant to the sports industry. Currently there are huge issues with gender equity and race equity in sports. Title IX was a great start to equality, but some of the issues are still propagated. There are still issues of underrepresentation of women coaches of women’s sports. Title IX brought about the addition of many sports at the collegiate level, but men filled most of the coaching positions. Also at the administration level there is a vast discrepancy in the ratio of gender. I was able to listen to an interview of Ellen Staurowsky. Staurowsky is a Professor and the Graduate Chair in the Department of Sport Management and Media at Ithaca College. She began her career in sports at the age of 23 as a professor and collegiate coach of two sports. She spent nine years as an Athletic Director. She focuses on gender issues, pay equity and social justice issues.
Currently she believes that we do not know what is happening at the ground level in organizations. There haven’t been studies thorough enough across all aspects to know exactly the level of diversity. So far all studies have shown that women are significantly underrepresented on all levels. When talking about the barriers to diversity and inclusion she states that the theory that time will cure the lack of diversity is a myth. She feels like there is a need for conflict to induce change. This conflict could come in the way of lawsuits and public embarrassment. There is a large problem with sex segregated sport entities. The United States as a whole continues with the same struggles with gender equality. She states that the legacies of racism and sexism still continue.
Ellen talks about a couple types of sexism. One is exclusionary sexism. This is demonstrated by Texas high school football coaches are often also given the athletic director role. This is exclusionary by the simple fact that there are virtually no women football Head Coaches. Another type is what she refers to as the labyrinth. The labyrinth is the web of information and connections that are needed to be successful in ones job. She gives a personal example of this when she was an athletic director trying to attend meetings. She had a hard time figuring out where the meetings were being held while it seemed like every male that was there knew exactly what was happening and where to be.
She feels that managers have a very important part in promoting diversity. Promotion of diversity within an organization must be top down. Employees must understand why it is beneficial to them to promote diversity.
Mrs. Staurowsky makes a strong point that history of diverse leaders seems to be forgotten. The WNBA President was celebrated as being the first female in a position like that but it was forgotten that there were many before her that had similar positions of power. She feels that the NCAA and Mile Brand have done a very good job providing very clear leadership on diversity issues. The NCAA has developed a Department of Diversity and Inclusion. Going forward she feels like individual Universities and each Conference needs to do a better job of promoting diversity.
After listening to Ellen Saurowsky’s interview, I feel like organizations need to be made to understand the problems that are being perpetuated by the lack of diversity. I am in two gender studies classes also and it amazes me how prevalent the lack of diversity in sport organizations compared to other types of organizations. I do disagree slightly that time is a myth. I think that we have seen that great strides have been made since the Seventies. It has been shown that current students demonstrate far less amounts of racism and sexism than previous generations. So seeing that I feel like the lack of diversity will continue to become less of an issue as time goes on.
Unless sports organizations want to subject themselves to gender equality lawsuits, they need to work hard to breakdown the barriers for women. Women can be very successful leading sports organizations if given the chance. Nancy Hickey the Athletic Director at the University of Texas San Antonio is a great example. In her short time there they have already positioned their previously non-existent Football team to be in the Football Bowl Subdivision of the NCAA.
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