The head of Britain's professional sports coach association Emily Handyside says female coaches "must work twice as hard as a man to be respected and credible", despite recent on-pitch successes and increased media exposure for women's sport in the UK. A study from UK Coaching shows there has been a 6% decline in the overall number of female coaches in recent years. The decline is particularly steep at grassroots level, with a 10% dip in the number of female volunteer coaches - significantly affecting pathways in amateur sport.
"When people imagine a coach, they imagine a man first, people expect a man," Handyside, former Wales netball coach and lead at UK Coaching, told BBC Sport. "These assumptions make people feel like they don't belong there. Women must work twice as hard to be respected, to be credible." Additional research highlighted systemic barriers experienced by women coaches, including bullying, harassment and unequal opportunities.
And the impact is passed down to young players, according to new FA data released this week. Half of all girls who play organised football say they would tell a female coach something they could not tell a parent or guardian, while for a male coach, the figure is just one in eight - but only 7% of the people coaching grassroots football in England are women. The study from Bloomsbury Football Foundation in association with the FA found 13% of teenage girls play organised football at least once a week, against 46% of boys.
Of the girls who play, 49% are mostly or always coached by someone of their own gender, against 85% of boys. This tallies with what has been experienced by female coaches for years - while opportunities are increasing at the top level, for most there has been little change. An example of success at elite level is the Women's Super League.
In January 2023, only four of 12 WSL coaches were women. Now, eight out of 14 managers in the English top tier are women,, external including the managers of all three newly promoted sides - Amy Merricks at Birmingham, Crystal Palace's Jo Potter and Karen Hills of Charlton Athletic. A new Fifa quota stating women's teams must have a female head coach or assistant has also helped redress the balance in top-level football.
However, at grassroots level it is a different story, with barriers including cost and childcare, even for former Lionesses. "That number is a shock," said ex-England international Fara Williams, speaking on the BBC's Women's Football Fallout about the drop in coaching numbers. "The cost to do B and A licences, and the salaries or opportunities you will get from that investment, it does not quite marry up.
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