Gender, Work, and Power: The Case of Women in Coaching

This paper examines women's experience of power in coaching. Data are taken from interviews with forty-nine women coaches. Respondents resist an attribution of power to coaching. They prefer to view the position as one of influence, meaning that the coach-athlete relationship should be cooperative and empowering. This alternative view, however, is not realized in coaches' practice. The discussion suggests that the limits to women coaches' ability to realize an alternative conception of power lie in their acceptance of the dominant ideology of sport that stresses production and in their relative powerlessness within the institution.