Throughout the international sports scene, there is a recurring trend of limited representation of top-tier female coaches. Whether it be across women's sports or men's sports, the dearth of female coaches is easily observed and often repeated. Here is a small sample from across the global sporting landscape:
1% of track and field athletes at the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games had a female coach
5% of players at Wimbledon 2023 had a female coach
11% of all coaching accreditation's at Winter and Summer Olympic Games are given to female coaches
20% of all international women's football teams have a female head coach
22% of all AFLW clubs in 2023 have a female head coach
42% of women's sport in the NCAA D1 have a female head coach
Behind each one of these statistics is a shared and common narrative in which women coaches must navigate every day.
Real Life Experiences of Elite Female Coaches
In 2021, the Female Coaching Network, the largest network of female sports coaches globally, published research in partnership with Leeds Beckett University about the experiences of female performance coaches in British track & field.[1] The notion of the research was to understand the narratives behind the low numbers, and gain a deep understanding as to why there had historically been so few women coaches at the GB & NI level.
During the quantitive stage of the research, it was discovered that there had never been a female team coach on any GB & NI senior team (Olympic, World or European, indoor or outdoor), on average only 20% of all team coaches on the junior GB & NI teams had been women, less than 8% of athletes in the Top 100 across all events were coached by women and less than 11% of Level 4 coaches were women.
What was uncovered through the deep dive into the experiences of these women was a myriad of societal, organisational and interpersonal barriers that blocked these qualified, experienced and highly skilled coaches from reaching the upper echelons of European, World and Olympic levels. The findings revealed a culture in which these woman felt and were minoritised and were underpinned by unequal gendered assumptions in which power is retained by a few rather than the many.[1 p.3] The findings went on to say:
"This is in part due to a lack of professionalisation within athletics coaching. Without a professionalised and regulated system, it is open to abuse in two particular ways: the poaching of athletes, and unregulated appointment processes and networks that lead to the exclusion and powerlessness of women. The existing coaching culture (which is primarily performance driven and metrics-based) and broader systemic issues in the sport, along with the minoritised status of most women coaches, have an emotional and relational cost for such individuals and greatly impacts their relationships with male peers in the system." [1 p.3]
Additionally, the research uncovered a well of safeguarding issues, which lead to (and continue to lead to) a number of high profile and club coaches being banned due to sexually abusive and bullying behaviours. One of those being Toni Minichiello, former coach to London 2012 Olympic Gold medallist Jessica Ennis. Minichiello was banned for life due to his appalling sexual references, sexual gestures, sexual physical behaviour and inappropriate and unwanted touching of athletes which involved 'dry humping from behind' and 'touching the breasts' of young female athletes.[2]
Female coaches also shared specific examples of the treatment they received in the sport such as one incident of a young female coach being picked up by a male colleague at a conference whilst he announced to the cohort of men in the room ‘have you ever been shagged like this, you’re really light?’. [1 p.22]
Another situation was described at a coaching conference in which a male colleague said to a female coach "oh, you are a girl', as she arrived in smart clothes rather than a tracksuit. Comments such as "no one has ever done well with a female coach", "how does your wife feel about being coached by a woman"and "your just like a mother-hen" demonstrate the constant demeaning treatment and lack of respect placed on these elite sports women.
Away from the peer reviewed research in track and field, the Female Coaching Network has continued to gather insights from within the world of athletics as to the experiences of female coaches and leaders. One former female CEO of an athletics governing body was continually harassed and berated, even leading her to post on twitter a message stating: "I've stopped posting much on twitter...because I just kept getting abuse",[3] not long before she resigned.
Away from athletics, Knoppers et al (2021) reported on the lack of elite female football coaches and found incidences which again reflect the lack of respect women who coach receive, including; the invisibility of women's football within official F.A. coaching courses, the lack of adherence to hiring criteria when selection came down to a suitable female coach and a famous former male player, and being sexually assaulted by a male member of the coaching staff. [4]
The experiences of these elite female football coaches (all of which had coached a women's national team in at least one country while most had coached in two or three countries) once again reflect the disrespectful, demeaning and sometimes dangerous environment these coaches were expected to thrive in.
One coach explained that “if you have a strong personality they call you a bitch. They do not value your qualities; you need to be nice and fit their perception of a female”. Another coach recognised that: "we cannot get unhinged [as men coaches can/do during a game]. I don't think women are accepted as strong leaders when they are vocal or strong in their opinion or express resistance to an idea. I think men still haven't figured out how to deal with strong confident females."
Another paper published in the International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching in 2022 [5], discussed the experiences of elite female tennis coaches in the UK. The paper concluded that the"career success [of female coaches] was judged on adherence to the dominant performance narrative that privileges traditionally masculine needs and values". The performance narrative is explained as 'win at all costs, that prioritises sport over all other facets of life which commonly privileges dominant groups of men at the expense of marginalised men and many women'. This dominant performance culture can be indifferent to the needs and values of women.' One female participant in the research explained:
"I think the perception is you have to be a bit of a hard ass to do it well, you have to shout a lot. But you don't, you have to build good realtionships, and the players must trust you, then it's easy. You don't have to shout at them, you don't have to be nasty and berate them and that's the perception that I initially had, is that you have to behave in a certain why to get results, but you don't have to. It's much better to play to your strengths than to try and be someone that you're not. And that took me a long time to figure out as a coach." [5 p.7]
Fix the System Not the Women
As demonstrated through the shared experiences of female coaches across the three sports mentioned above, the barriers hindering women from reaching high-performance levels such as the Olympics and World Championships are cultural and systemic. However, whether it be the IOC, FIFA, or the thousands of individual national governing bodies around the Globe, nearly all approaches to a lack of diversity in the elite coaching workforce are met with the same approach - they all focus on 'fixing' the woman, rather than 'fixing the system'.
"I have a Pro-Licence and vast experience. I could work in the Premier League but it will be a very long time before a female coach is contemplated to work at the highest level of the men's game."
Former England Head Coach, Hope Powell
Since it was highlighted in 2012 that only 10% of all coaching accreditations at an Olympic Games are held by women [6] , the sports administration world has lit up with hundreds of programmes aimed at developing female coaches. These programmes include up-skilling opportunities, leadership and confidence skills development, and technical support. Whilst it would be foolish to say these programmes are completely ineffective, as all coaches benefit from well thought out learning opportunities, observe these programmes objectively and it is apparent that they are simply another way of blaming women. Programme names such as WISH[7], My Gender, My Strength[8], Women in Coaching, and Gender Leadership Taskforce[9] reinforce rather than quell the notion that women need more development than men, and ones ability to coach depends upon ones gender.
Whilst research into elite female coaches indicates a breakdown at the societal, organisational and interpersonal level, the focus continues to be on the individual level, reinforcing the 'blame the woman' narrative. This approach is not increasing the number of female performance coaches, it is simply producing more and more overqualified women with nowhere to go.
System Failure
In providing a present-day illustration of a systemic failure, one can examine how UK Athletics, as the governing body of athletics responsible for selecting GB & NI teams, recruit their team coaches and staff for major championships. As of 2023, selection is solely at the discretion of the male Technical Director. There is no formal or written policy or procedure for selection, no job descriptions, no person specs, no interview process and no asking the athletes what is needed. There is currently no objective practice for choosing the right staff for the right reasons. This resulted in zero female coaches for GB & NI at the recent European Indoor Athletics Championships in March 2023, something which many athletes, coaches and administration staff complained about.
In a recent interview with the Female Coaching Network, athlete Holly Mills who was part of the GB & NI team at those Championships, explained her view on having zero female coaches on that team:
"There are still a lot of inequalities [in track & field] in my opinion. First and foremost, where I've just come back from the European Athletics Indoor Championships, on that team, there were zero female coaches. Which unfortunately isn't an irregular occurrence. It was only in the last year or two that we saw a female coach on a GB team...to now be in 2023, a year after that breakthrough and to feel like we've gone back in the sense that British Athletics didn't select any female coaches to go on that team is hurtful. It paints a very misogynistic picture within British Athletics and the Track and Field world. Even if there's one female coaching staff on the team, it gives the sense that women do belong in that environment. But when you see none of them, it gives the sense that this is a male environment and the door is locked to women."
Fixing the system, not the women, is not about flooding elite sport with coaches who are unable to fill the demands of high performance sport simply to meet a quota. It is not about achieving equality of outcome. It's about providing opportunities for coaches who have earned the right to that coaching position, it's about creating a safe environment for coaches and athletes to thrive in, and its about providing an environment for great coaches to be great despite their gender, race or sexual orientation.
What can be done?
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