At the end of the 2018 MLQ season, only three MLQ franchises had a Head Coach or Assistant Coach on staff that did not identify as a man/male despite 31% of the population of the league being made up of women/female and gender non-conforming, transgender or genderqueer individuals.
In the fall of 2018, MLQ Human Resources Director Lisle Coleman sent out a Gender Inclusivity survey to gender-minority players within the league as well as gender-minority coaches, assistant coaches and managers. Belonging to a gender-minority is defined as any individuals whose gender does not match the most represented gender in the league. This gender will be determined by the demographics of the previous season’s players. For the 2018 season, the reported demographic breakdown of players in the league was as follows:
68% Man/Male
30% Woman/Female
>1% Agender, Bigender, Two-Spirit, Non-binary, Other
The Gender Inclusivity survey was sent out to approximately 150 individuals. MLQ received 40 survey responses. 93% of the respondents identified as a female/woman with one “male/man” response and 11 gender non-conforming individuals. In an optional question, 64% of players said their primary position was chaser and 31% said their primary position was beater. For most of the survey, respondents were asked to agree or disagree with statements on a one to five scale with one being strongly disagree and five being strongly agree.
Gender-Based Discrimination
84% of respondents said that they experienced gender-based discrimination. Only one survey response strongly disagreed with the statement.
The most commonly brought up example of gender-based discrimination was the distribution of playing time and role. 64% of players thought their playing time was affected by their gender. Almost 75% of the survey respondents thought their role on the field was affected by their gender. Several players identified their experiences in the “female chaser” role. One player said “I probably got the most playing time of anyone on my team just due to the fact that there were usually only three girls on a roster for each series, and I was the one with the most experience. However, I played nearly every minute of a series and only touched the ball three times. Two of those times were me blocking passes on defense. If I didn’t make my own decisions about what kind of role I wanted on the field, I would have been completely useless.”
Additionally, comments shared that they felt that gender-minority players were held to a different standard of play than their majority-gender counterparts. Multiple comments reflected on the fact that while gender-minority players received the least amount of passes or offensive opportunities, they had much more significant likelihood of dropped passes or negative offensive outcomes being held against them.
Coach Information
In an effort to understand why players chose not to apply to coach, MLQ asked for survey respondents to select statements describing their level of comfort in their coach ability as well as their desire to coach in general. Only 40% of individuals felt comfortable coaching their team. Of the 17 individuals who said they strongly agreed or agreed that they felt comfortable coaching, eight said that they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “My gender affects my decision to apply to be a coach”. Most respondents identified that their skills and knowledge were the reason they would not apply.
When asked to agree or disagree with the statement “I feel my team would be receptive to me as a coach”, only 22% of people agreed or strongly agreed.
To further understand the reason why gender-minority players chose not to coach, MLQ asked about individual’s perceptions of their own strategic knowledge as well as their coach/teammates’ perception of their strategic knowledge. 73% of players agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I feel that I have a good strategic knowledge of quidditch” but only 52% thought their strategic knowledge was valued to the same extent by their coach.
The Rooney Rule
In 2003, the National Football League established the Rooney Rule to address diversity concerns within the league’s coach hiring practices. Find more details about the rule and recent updates to the policy here.
Along a similar vein, MLQ will enact a coach hiring requirement that begins to address the issue of gender discrimination within quidditch. Effective for the 2019 season, MLQ is establishing a new coach hiring policy requiring each franchise to fulfill gender-minority coaching applications. You can read the full policy here. While this policy will not be the sole solution to concerns about gender-based discrimination, MLQ is committed to continue to break down barriers to gender-minority players in our league.
Questions related to the policy or gender-based discrimination can be directed to Human Resources Director Lisle Coleman at [email protected]. The MLQ Harassment Policy can be found here. To apply to coach an MLQ team, fill out this application.