Muffet McGraw provides strong voice for women in Final Four press conference

With Notre Dame playing in the Final Four on Friday night, head coach Muffet McGraw spoke to the media Thursday afternoon in Tampa. She spoke about women and the issues they face in terms of leadership roles.

Muffet McGraw, asked about her role as a leader in women’s sports, started off by talking about the Equal Rights Amendment. It was introduced to grant equal protection under the law no matter a person’s sex. To this day, it still has not been passed.

“Did you know that the equal rights amendment was introduced in 1967 and still hasn’t passed? We need 38 states to agree that discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional,” McGraw said. “We’ve had a record number of women running for office and winning. And still, we have 23 percent of the House and 25 percent of the Senate. I’m getting tired of the novelty of the first American, the first female governor of this state, the first female African American mayor of this city. When is it going to become the norm instead of the exception.”

Recently McGraw spoke to ThinkProgress about her all-female coaching staff and why she plans to not hire a man to her coaching staff again. In her press conference on Thursday, she talked about how few opportunities women get to coach at the Division 1 level.

“When you look at men’s basketball 99 percent of the jobs go to men,” McGraw said. “Why shouldn’t 100 or 99 percent of the jobs in women’s basketball go to women. Maybe it’s because we only have 10 percent women athletic directors in Division I. People hire people who look like them and that’s the problem.”

The Notre Dame head coach has been at the helm of the Fighting Irish program for 32 seasons now. She still feels like there needs to be progress made in sports to give young girls role models both in terms of sports and in leadership.

“We don’t have enough female role models, we don’t have enough visible women leaders, we don’t have enough women in power,” McGraw said. “Girls are socialized to know that when they come out, gender roles are already set. Men run the world, men have the power, men make the decisions. It is always the men that is the stronger one. And when these girls are coming out, who are they looking up to tell them that that’s not the way it has to be? And where better to do that than in sports.”