The Alberta Women in Sport Leadership Project: A Social Learning Intervention for Gender Equity and Leadership Development

Abstract

This best practice paper describes a Canadian intervention to address the lack of women in sport coaching and leadership roles. While the number of female athletes has increased over the last decades, the opposite is true of female head coaches, both nationally and internationally. The issues influencing this trend are mostly institutional and societal. There is a lack of support systems in place for females attempting to become involved (recruitment) and maintain their involvement (retention) in coaching. The Alberta Women in Sport Leadership Impact Program (AWiSL) takes a community of practice approach to increase gender equity and leadership diversity in Alberta sport organizations. The AWiSL began in October 2017 and continues until early 2020. There are currently 6 mentors and 12 sport leaders from Alberta sport organizations, who engage in monthly meetings to learn and participate in the co-creation of knowledge to meet the project outcomes, which include the planning and implementation of initiatives for their individual sport organizations, all in the service of supporting gender equity. Descriptions of specific activities thus far are presented as well as information about the how to of conducting such an intervention. Various challenges and lessons are discussed. The description of the AWiSL and ongoing program evaluation aims to support other organizations seeking an example of an initiative to create equitable coaching and leadership opportunities, and to create change.

Final Thoughts on Women in Sport Coaching: Fighting the War

“…Multiple papers in this special issue outlined and evaluated programs targeted to develop women coaches. Allen and Reid (2019) and Culver et al (2019) specified multifaceted programs, best practices, and lessons learned for developing women coaches in Scotland and Canada, respectively. Both papers add practical and applied knowledge of supports at the individual and interpersonal levels of the EIM model, that can be adapted to other contexts to help develop and retain women coaches and improve equitable representation of women leaders in sport.…”

“…By explicitly demonstrating that women coaches have value, and, in turn, those who support them have value, the organizational climate for women coaches will change. Culver et al (2019) provides another programming, or educational, pathway to change. The coaches in her article identified that they valued more self-directed education as opposed to being the passive recipients of coaching instruction.…”

“…The common themes across the work in the special issue, and with scholars who have studied women in coaching, include educational programing that scaffolds inclusive leadership, supportive peer relationships, supportive relationships with mentors, sponsors, and organizational leaders, and visible pathways for career development (Culver et al, 2019;Larsen & Clayton, 2019;Norman et al, 2018). In isolation, educational programs that accomplish any of these aspects can make some impact, but where all are present, structural change can occur.…”

Exploring a Women-Only Training Program for Coach Developers

“…Bronfenbrenner's (1977Bronfenbrenner's ( , 1979 Ecological Systems Theory (EST) accounts for "how" systems have enabled the learning in this community, whereas Wenger, Trayner, and de Laat's (2011) Value Creation Framework (VCF) reveals "what" value has been created for these women in this social learning space. The EST has previously been used to identify barriers for women in leadership across sport systems (Burton, 2015;LaVoi & Dutove, 2012) and the VCF has been used as a tool to assess value, particularly in the context of social learning spaces for women coaches in sport (Bertram, Culver, & Gilbert, 2017;Culver et al, 2019). Below are descriptions of ecological systems and value creation cycles along with examples from the WiSL.…”

“…For the purpose of this practice paper, we focus on one of these 12 sport organizations to take a closer look at their initiative titled Women in Sport Leadership (WiSL). Readers are referred to Culver, Kraft, Din, and Cayer (2019) for more information on the larger AWiSL program. In this practice paper, we describe the systems which supported this initiative and the value of using, in this practice case, a women-only training program (WOTP; the model used for the WiSL) from the perspectives of two women in the program and two lead facilitators.…”