8 Summary of Session 8

You should now be aware that while there are more similarities than differences between males and females, women tend to process emotions in different ways to men, prefer different styles of coaching and like different amounts of input into the coaching process.

The main learning points of this eighth session are:

• Sports coaching is a male dominated activity with only 30% of coaches being females; this means female athletes often have male coaches.
• Males and females can process their emotions in different ways as females manage emotions by talking things through while men tend to try and find solutions.
• Female athletes generally prefer democratic coaching styles that enable them to have significant input into the decision-making process while men tend to favour autocratic coaching styles.
• The quality of the coach-athlete is very important to the female athlete while male athletes tend to focus on the quality of the coach.
• Female athletes tend to derive success from self-referenced standards while male athletes tend to use more externally referenced sources for success.
• Female athletes can derive confidence from their coach’s encouragement and positive feedback.

Many congratulations on completing this course and we hope you have found some useful knowledge and advice that you can use as an athlete or a coach. This area of study and research is still in its infancy so we would encourage you to keep learning about it through resources that OpenLearn provide and through other sources.