I ‘always wear[s] a collared shirt now in the afternoons’: Impression management as strategic survival for women coaches in Canadian high-performance sport

Despite efforts to diversify Canadian high-performance sport coaching, there remains a significant underrepresentation of women coaches. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Goffman and Hochschild, this paper highlights findings from a study of a group of women sport coaches’ experiences with engaging in impression management – the process in which individuals curate and perform versions of themselves to shape how they may be perceived by others – to strategically navigate their sport workplaces in light of their underrepresentation and exclusion. Based on data from semi-structured interviews ( n = 28) and the reflective diaries ( n = 28) of 15 coaches (four racialized), analyzed using thematic analysis, this paper highlights the participants’ use of various impression management strategies to present themselves as credible and legitimate sport coaches and to mitigate challenges in their sport workplaces related to their gendered and racialized identities. Insights highlight how participants described this work as necessary, but emotionally and physically taxing, and often compromising their sense of authenticity. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of individuals needing to navigate (and survive) systems shaped by Whiteness and masculinity through impression management in order to survive high-performance sport leadership structures that need to be changed.