Kahrl: Where will MLB’s first woman general manager come from?
From SABR member Christina Kahrl at espnW on April 24, 2018:
Ever since Kim Ng interviewed to be general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ in 2005, Major League Baseball still awaits its first woman GM.
Ng played the game the way almost every aspiring exec of any gender would, could or should. Starting as an intern for the Chicago White Sox before being hired to work in baseball operations in 1991, she did a stint in the American League office and then became an assistant general manager for the Yankees in 1998. Other women have become assistant GMs, like Elaine Weddington Steward with the Red Sox in the early ’90s, or Jean Afterman with the Yankees. But perhaps singularly, Kim’s career path, ability and ambition earned her consideration.
But now, after 13-odd years without an answer, that question’s perhaps literally going gray, as younger men have landed the top jobs. And while her chance may never come, the industry is now asking a more basic question: Where will the next Kim Ng come from?
Baseball’s working on answering that. When it comes to getting women in the game, not only does baseball’s track record need to improve, baseball already knows it. A year ago, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport in handed MLB a C for its gender hiring with a grade of 70. That improved this year to a 71, an incremental gain reflecting a difficult challenge. You can open up front-office career paths in areas with crossover skills like finance, legal or media relations. But in sport-specific operations departments, where people help decide who’s on the field, who gets drafted and who’s on the team, the ranks of women become more scarce.
Read the full article here: http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/23294318/where-mlb-first-woman-gm-come-from
Originally published: April 24, 2018. Last Updated: April 24, 2018.