identities and inequalities

Gender equity (meaning fairness of treatment for men and women according to their respective needs) is a central concern for international sporting federations, having been identified as a core element of good governance by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). However, there remains an acute imbalance of men and women in most positions of authority within sport, including high performance (elite) coaching. For the previous five Olympic cycles, the figure has remained that, globally, only 11% of accredited Olympic coaches are women (Norman, 2017). 

For this research, athletics in the UK provided the context and focus of the work. The aim of the mixed-method study was to:

• Map the composition of the athletics coaching workforce in the UK
• To understand the experiences of high-performance female coaches working within their organisations,
• To understand the impact of gender diversity amongst coaches on high-performance athletes,
• Too gather insight into the organisational processes and practices towards achieving gender equity within the home country governing bodies as well as UK Athletics itself.

 There were a number of key findings that connected across the different groups of participants and contexts. The study identified significant cultural and systemic issues that must be urgently addressed by NGBs. The coaches described working in a culture in which they are and feel minoritised. It is a culture that is underpinned by unequal gendered assumptions and in which power is retained by a few rather than the many. 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. The athletes too shared this view – that the lack of professionalisation of coaches, and the invisibility of a diverse coaching workforce impacts their wellbeing, development, and performance. Through these experiences, both the coaches and athletes feel that issues of diversity and inclusion are considered ‘tick-box’ measures within their NGBs but in fact, run deeper than this.

The underrepresentation of women in sport coaching is a well-documented issue within the research literature. However, a remaining and sizeable knowledge gap within this body of work is an understanding of how women’s careers and experiences change over time. Further, there is little understanding of how a marginalised status and associated career experiences impact the well-being of women coaches. To address this, in 2016 The Football Association commissioned a team of researchers from Leeds Beckett University to track how the experiences of women football coaches’ lives and careers changed over the course of the three years, contextualised within the organisations and professional environments in which they work. Through both qualitative and quantitative research with developing UEFA B level female football coaches, male and female mentee coaches from underrepresented groups, professional football clubs, and the various stakeholders involved in educating and nurturing under-represented groups within coaching, this study provided valuable, ground-breaking insight and novel knowledge towards a more holistic organisational approach to tackling the diversity of the football coaching workforce.

The research team were approached by a gatekeeper working at the highest level of world football with the purpose of collating and sharing the stories of a sample of high-performance women coaches as to their experiences, challenges, and successes within their role in professional football. Precisely, the purpose of the project was to:

• To obtain insight into the strategies women coaches use to navigate gender issues in coaching top level football and to illuminate the experiences of women coaches within the broader cultural and organisational context of football in order to understand what works to increase the number of women coaches
• To stimulate dialogue and further understanding about the experiences of women coaches within the occupational landscape of football and how these experiences may connect to other sports
• To create a possible agenda for change for the governance of football that improves the experiences of women coaches and thus ultimately, their players

The aim of this programme was to help organisations develop a blueprint for a new and comprehensive Coach Workforce Strategy that will bring about long term change in how they attract, recruit, develop, and retain diverse coaches.

This study focused on establishing an in-depth picture of adult women volunteering in sport in comparison to men, and women and men who volunteer in the non-sport sector. To that end we aimed to:

• Examine how many women volunteer in sport and the roles they occupy
• Examine experiences of participation in sports volunteering (routes into volunteering and motives)
• Track changes in (sports) volunteering over time and explore why this is the case
• Explore aspirations for sports volunteering
• Examine barriers to on-going sports volunteering
• Explore the key factors and circumstances that facilitate participation in sports volunteering
• Examine the benefits to the sports participants, if any, of having women as volunteers in comparison with men volunteers

To explore BME sport participants’ and coaches’ motivations, enablers and constraints on entry and progression in sport coaching; with reference to the experiences and opinions of participants, coaches and coaching stakeholders. For this, partnerships were established with the NGBs of these sports: British Athletics, Badminton England, England Basketball, and the England and Wales Cricket Board.

To meet this aim, the objectives for the study were to:

• Understand BME participants’ experiences of the four different sports (athletics, badminton, cricket and basketball)
• Examine BME participants’ coaching aspirations and experiences
• Integrate BME participant and coach experiences within the context of a particular sport/governing body context
• Evaluate whether there is a relationship between playing experience and coaching ambitions

This study and the first of its kind at this level of European football provides UEFA with rich, in-depth data from the highest levels of governance in a sample of European Football Associations. The study centralises the key role that different groups of men play in driving the agenda of equity, and provides tangible examples of good practice that can be shared with UEFA to address the long-standing, persistent issue of women being absent in its football leadership.