Notre Dame HC Muffet McGraw: 'We Don't Have Enough Women in Power'

Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw is using her platform to push for more women in positions of authority. 

Speaking to reporters Thursday leading up to the Women's Final Four, McGraw had this response when asked about being a vocal advocate for women as leaders:

"We don't have enough female role models. We don't have enough visible women leaders. We don't have enough women in power.

"All these millions of girls that play sports across the country, we're teaching them great things about life skills. But wouldn't it be great if we could teach them to watch how women lead? This is a path for you to take to get to the point where in this country we have 50 percent of women in power. We have right now less than 5 percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies."

Those comments come on the heels of McGraw telling Lindsay Gibbs of ThinkProgress.org that too many women's basketball programs around the country "are hiring too many men" and she will only have an all-female staff as long as she remains a head coach. 

In a 2017 article for The Red & Black, Layne Saliba noted the number of female head coaches in Division I women's basketball dropped by 11 percent, and male head coaches jumped from 114 to 152 over the previous six years. 

McGraw and Baylor's Kim Mulkey will make up half of the coaches at this year's Final Four, along with Connecticut's Geno Auriemma and Oregon's Kelly Graves.

A 2017 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, McGraw ranks eighth all-time among men's and women's college basketball coaches with 921 career wins. She has led Notre Dame to two national titles in 2000-01 and 2017-18.