Volunteering kids sports and gender imbalance

In my n=1 experience Mum's do most of the volunteering in traditional female sports - netball and softball are my experience. In traditional male sports Dad's do most of the volunteering, soccer is my experience. In games where both sex's play like hockey I think that the spread of men and women is about even.

I 100% agree with your comment that there is usually a small core of volunteers who do all the work.

I spent a lot of time as a teeball and soccer ref. I really enjoyed it when my kids were young. I stopped being a soccer ref once my son got a little older. As the kids get older the coaches and parents become too focused on winning and not on enjoying the game.

I have worked FIFO for most of my life. This meant that I was able to do a lot of volunteering at my children's school. Helping out with reading, kindy, library, etc. Most of the time I was the only male. My kids really liked having Dad volunteer at school.

In the team I coached, I found it was generally the Mums who would regularly show up and stepped up when needed and the Dads were occasional spectators on game day.  (except for one Doctor dad who came whenever he could and became our team doctor ).   But thats probably because most of the Dads were tradies and worked.

Perfect example was that I'd been coaching the team for 2 years before I found out that one of the kids step-dad was my senior manager.  He'd never been to a practice or a game in those first 2 years.   Found that wonderful piece of information out when I got called into a disciplinary hearing at work and he tried to sack me for comments I'd made about him to my wife that he took offence to.   Failing to sack me, he then proceeded to make life difficult by insisting that I couldn't leave the office till a certain time....knowing that I was supposed to be coaching the team (and his kid) at that time.  Fortunately, the entire group of Mums stepped up and handled the team warmups for me to take over as soon as I could get there (about 15 minutes after start time). This went on for about 6 weeks.  When the boss showed up for the first game of that season he was told in no uncertain terms by the other parents that he wasn't welcome on the sideline and to shove off.  

Thats how you deal with trouble makers.

I know coaches In our sport that have never volunteered but are happy to make money out of the sport.

Not adults or kids.

If you do a sport or your kids do, volunteer.

Be at the sport, binning fundraising for the sport, or anything linked.

If you don’t volunteer, you are a selfish kunt.

www.womeninsport.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Good-Sports.pdf


However, whilst women make up the majority of volunteers
across all volunteering activities in society, they are less likely
to volunteer in sport than men. Data from 2015 indicate
that men are more than twice as likely to volunteer in
sport (30%) than women (14%)5

I'm assuming thats a question.  

Yes it happened and I went through 7 months of sheer hell working for that company and the total bullsh!t they tried on before I could find another position and get away from it all.  It wasn't just me, there were several others who also had similar experiences.   If management had an issue with you, their standard approach was to make life as difficult as possible by whatever means. 

And frankly, there is no way that what happened to me and other staff members in that company would be allowed to happen these days.

Coaching that soccer team was the absolute highlight of that particular year.   In our club, we were the 4th team in the age group and basically got all the leftover kids the other teams didn't want.  Started the season with just enough players to take the field with no reserves.  Early on we borrowed players from other teams where we could to make numbers or even have the luxury of a reserve or 2.   Oddly enough as the season progressed 3 or 4 of those players when given the option, chose the play with us than their own teams.   It was a great team backed by a supportive group of parents (the Mums in particular) who started the season as a bunch of kids thrown together and ended up playing as a team that had been together for years.   There's some great stories from that year that I'll always remember.

Now many years on, I generally choose the reflect on a great year of coaching rather than a sh!t year professionally.

I left many years ago with absolutely no regrets.  

If my defective memory serves me correct, Pinkboy coached a girls netball team for a number of years and was quite successful too.

In Australia the difference is much smaller.

"There are 1.6 million men and 1.3 million women volunteering in sport in Australia," the report said. This reflects the profile of organised sport participants generally — women are less likely than men to participate or volunteer."


www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-31/australian-sport-community-volunteer-numbers-declining/100581198