Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Are Men Better Leaders? An Investigation of Head Coaches’ Gender and Individual Players’ Performance in Amateur and Professional Women’s Basketball

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Sex Roles Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Correction to this article was published on 23 March 2023

This article has been updated

Abstract

Male-dominated industries such as sport contain stereotypical and subjective notions of leadership ability (Burton et al. 2009; Fink 2008). These gender stereotypes often manifest themselves within varying levels of leadership, but specific to the sport industry, they are the most visible within the head coach role. Men hold the majority of head coach positions within the professional and amateur levels of sport, and these hiring practices can be based on gender-role stereotypes (Acosta and Carpenter 2014). In an attempt to challenge stereotypical gender based leadership preferences, leadership ability and performance should be objectively examined. Therefore, in the present investigation we aimed to examine the presence of gender stereotypes in the sport industry by determining whether the gender of a head coach for two women’s basketball leagues, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the National Intercollegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), impacted individual player performance. Data were collected for 1522 players for 19 WNBA seasons (1997–2015) and 4000 players for three seasons of NCAA Women’s Basketball (2013–2016). Results indicated that head coach gender does not appear to impact individual player performance in the WNBA or in the NCAA thereby providing objective evidence to challenge the traditional gender stereotypes found within the sports industry.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Change history

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lindsey Darvin.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Electronic supplementary material

ESM 1

(DOCX 45 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Darvin, L., Pegoraro, A. & Berri, D. Are Men Better Leaders? An Investigation of Head Coaches’ Gender and Individual Players’ Performance in Amateur and Professional Women’s Basketball. Sex Roles 78, 455–466 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0815-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0815-2

Keywords

Navigation