Before Title IX's enactment in 1972, around 15,000 girls nationwide played college sports. More than fifty years later, that number has skyrocketed to approximately 225,000. While opportunities for female athletes have expanded extensively in the Title IX era, openings for women coaches stagnated. According to the AP, in 2022, women held just 42% of head coaching positions for women's teams. The continued lack of women coaches demonstrates a gaping hole the NCAA has not adequately addressed.

So, why aren't there more women coaching women? Before Title IX, the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) governed women's college athletics. According to Dvora Myers from FiveThirtyEight, before the adoption of Title IX, 90% of teams in the AIAW were coached by women; by 1978, after Title IX forced the NCAA to adopt women's teams, that number went down to 58%. NCAA leaders used the expansion to find more opportunities for men. As Myers explains, when the NCAA took over former AIAW teams, ”male athletic directions favored male coaches,” and women's coaches were "put in subservient positions to men.” By 1982, 95% of women's teams in the NCAA were under male control, the AIAW dissolved, and a legislative attempt to correct gender inequality had unintentionally created a new iteration of it. As sports researcher Nicole LaVoi said to NPR Kansas City, "Men are afforded the opportunity to coach women." There are fewer women "that are afforded the opportunity" to coach at all.

Basketball fared much better than other sports. Per Jenn Hatfield from High Post Hoops, the number of women coaching women's basketball teams in the NCAA has steadily risen since the 2015-2016 season, and today, around 63% of all NCAA women's hoops coaches are women. "No one is exactly sure why," reported Hatfield, but one reason could be the efforts of "prominent female coaches like Muffet McGraw" of Notre Dame, who assert that colleges hire too many men. Another possibility is the effects of NCAA leadership programs for female coaches, like the WeCoach Initiative, which have historically attracted and elevated women coaches.

Additionally, women's college basketball benefits from the game's grip on American culture, and college games are surging in popularity. According to Sports Illustrated, the 2023 Women's March Madness finals was the "most watched NCAA women's basketball game on record with 9.9 million viewers, a 103% jump" from the previous season. Record-breaking accomplishments by women coaches, like Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer becoming the winningest NCAA Division I coach of all time, also bring (deserved) legitimacy to women's college hoops. These accomplishments, especially compared to male coaches, establish women as competent leaders who can hold their own in the sport and make their own decisions.

Increasing the number of women coaches in college sports is crucial for achieving gender equality, but hiring more women coaches is good for the game. Per Myers, women coaches are role models, crucial for "increased self-esteem, self-perceptions, and body image," Women coaches "help pave the way for more female athletes to move into the coaching profession." And, per a Harvard study cited by the New York Times, "gender-balanced teams" - meaning teams whose coach and players are of the same gender - "perform better than male-dominated teams." VanDerveer and other prominent NCAA women's hoops coaches like Dawn Staley and Kim Mulkey help draw eyes to the game. But Title IX was intended to level the playing field - women shouldn't need to smash records to prove they are qualified and capable as athletes and leaders. Women deserve the opportunity to lead, just like their male counterparts. Other NCAA sports should take a page from women's basketball books, but the story still needs to be finished.