We had the great pleasure to speak with Dr. Jenny Lind Withycombe about gender diversity among elite athletes. Dr. Jenny Lind Withycombe, has over 15 years’ experience within the field of athletics as an athlete, coach, consultant, sport psychologist, and diversity and inclusion educator. Most notably Dr. Withycombe has worked with the NCAA, AMCC and the US Rowing team.
Dr. Withycombe has found that a lot of coaches think of diversity of more of a social issue versus an individual issue. For sports teams that is the wrong way to look at it. She suggests thinking about it like this, If you feel unaccepted by your team you’re always going to be expending energy hiding yourself. It’s a lot of work to hide something from your teammates. That is going to impact the performance of the athlete.
The big issue facing athletic programs isn’t that they are predominantly homophobic, it is actually that most just don’t want to talk about it. Dr. Withycombe says, “The lack of talking about it doesn’t create a hostile environment but rather an uncertain environment.” This can create a lot of fear for LGBT athletes. When you don’t know how your teammates feel it’s hard to function like a family on or off the court.
Studies show, teams that focus on creating more diverse inclusive programs saw many benefits such as increased creativity, more harmonious team environment and player happiness. They also enjoyed higher rates of success in terms of wins and losses.
