The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the White and masculine culture present within a major NCAA athletic boosters program. To accomplish this, observations and interviews were collected as part of an organizational ethnography where the presenting author was a participant observer for over four months during the summer of 2012. Throughout the ethnographic experience, it was evident there was a deliberate culture within the department where, almost exclusively, White men held positions of influence. This study adds further evidence of the corralling of women and minorities into lower level positions within athletic departments. Cunningham (2012) argued while African Americans had found success as athletes they had been pigeonholed into lower ranking positions within college athletics. In terms of gender, Yiamouyiannis and Osborne (2012) found women were underrepresented in the governance structures within athletic departments and even were not equally represented with the NCAA offices.
Method:
Observations and interviews were collected as part of a larger ethnography. Semi-structured interviews were performed throughout the ethnography and in final exit interviews after the observation period had ended. Access was granted in exchange for performing data collection projects examining donor motivations.
Analysis/Results:
Numerous obsevations and interviews will be presented. An observation example is when a male executive asked a female executive if she was "barefoot and pregnant" when she was not wearing shoes in her office. Another example comes from an interview with a middle level female employee. It was obvious from her comments that she believed her gender served as a glass ceiling that was limiting her ability to move up in the organization. So much so, that in the middle of an answer about how her job would be different if she were male she, on her own, offered the opinion that men move up faster in the organization. It was obviously something that deeply bothered her and she seemed almost relieved to have someone ask about it. Even for someone as loyal to the university as she was, she struggled with justifying having a job at her dream organization while also being pigeonholed into a position that she was overqualified for.
Conclusions:
Through these observations and interviews, we can begin to see the White male patriachial culture that exists within many booster and athletic departments. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge examining the lack of diversity that continues to exist in the intercollegiate athletics world.