Female coaching numbers in the UK are moving in the wrong direction even as women’s sport enjoys more visibility and success. A study from UK Coaching shows a 6% decline in the overall number of female coaches in recent years, with the fall particularly steep at grassroots level: a 10% dip in female volunteer coaches, significantly affecting pathways in amateur sport. Emily Handyside, a lead at UK Coaching and former Wales netball coach, says female coaches “must work twice as hard as a man to be respected and credible”. “When people imagine a coach, they imagine a man first, people expect a man,” Handyside said. “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.
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. Yet only 7% of the people coaching grassroots football in England are women. A 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. It tallies with what female coaches have experienced for years: while opportunities are increasing at the top level, for most there has been little change.
The Women’s Super League offers an example of success at elite level. In January 2023, only four of 12 WSL coaches were women. Now, eight out of 14 managers in the English top tier are women, 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. At grassroots level, however, it is a different story, with barriers including cost and childcare, even for former Lionesses.
Former England international Fara Williams, speaking on the BBC’s Women’s Football Fallout, said the drop in coaching numbers is “a shock”. She pointed to the expense of coaching qualifications and the limited returns. “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. They are quite costly, those badges,” Williams said. She tried the coaching pathway herself but found it was not feasible. “Some can take that risk, but our generation of players, we were not paid enough to go mortgage free, bills must be paid. I needed to do something that would pay the bills, and football coaching was not that,” she said. Williams added that while playing, she was adamant she would become a coach and coached all the development teams at Everton, Liverpool and Reading, but says players do not have opportunities to coach at a higher level, and when they leave the game they do not have the money.
The cost of qualifications is stark. The UEFA Pro Licence, needed to coach at the highest level of English football, costs £14,000 and has only 24 places per intake. A C licence, the lowest certification level, costs £650. It can be subsidised, but only if the applicant is currently associated with an FA registered club, creating a chicken and egg situation. Handyside acknowledges that cost is a major barrier for women and men. “The top three barriers are the same for men and women, and cost was in there for both,” she said. “It is seen as a bigger barrier for women because when you must work twice as hard, the risk and reward balance is more outmatched. If you are a female looking at that cost and think you will also be overstretched and under supported, that £650 will have more of an impact.”
Zoe Conning balances coaching at community club Manchester Laces with her day job as disability access officer at Wolverhampton Wanderers. A UEFA B licence holder, she has been a coach for five years, including a full-time spell with Macclesfield. “There is an immense disconnect between top level and grassroot football,” she told BBC Sport. “For your B licence, you need another 12 months in coaching in an elite environment. How am I supposed to go to an elite club with no elite experience?” Conning received help funding for her B licence, which costs £1,250, but had to fund her own expenses to travel between Wolverhampton and Manchester, where the course took place. When it came to the A licence, which costs £4,150, she had to say no, and she could not even think about the Pro level course. She says cost is one of the major impacts, and while bursaries and grants exist, the money for the Pro licence is not feasible for someone at grassroots or in voluntary roles. She suggests more advertising of bursaries and support, possibly something similar to student loans, and says coaches must be better paid, as roles are so often voluntary or minimum wage.
Family and childcare disproportionately affect women, whether starting a family, pregnancy or the requirements of childcare. Former England international Anita Asante started her coaching career after hanging up her boots, including a spell with Bristol City in WSL 2. “For myself, the doors did open – I was fortunate to go into Bristol City and work with them, then with England Under-23s,” she said on the BBC’s Women’s Football Fallout. “But it became a choice for me; we have a young child at home, and for players so much of our playing career has been missing out on events and family – you want that time back. There are many young women who want to go into coaching but don’t have the support. Then when coaches get there, they are often under-resourced, so the job becomes less about coaching, and it takes a toll on people.” Handyside says life stages such as becoming a parent are unique to women’s experience and disproportionately affect them. She calls for job shares and more part-time coaching roles, arguing that if a coach needs to step away for a while, they should not have to step away forever. She added that at grassroots level women are “written off as soon as they have a family”, which does not happen as much at elite level where they are protected by employment law. All coaches, she says, need agreements and contracts in place, with guarantees that they can return. “People deserve a level of respect and protection at grassroots level.”
The wider culture remains a barrier. Despite England’s football team winning back-to-back European Championships and England’s Red Roses rugby union side claiming the World Cup at Twickenham, sport is still often seen as a male domain. Conning says she has done several coaching courses but has had only one female coaching mentor. On her B licence, there were 28 men and three women. “It is an intimidating environment to go into,” she said. In Manchester Laces’ division, there are maybe a handful of female coaches, and on a matchday there will be a male referee and male coaches. Handyside is fronting UK Coaching’s new Women in Coaching Plan, alongside the organisation’s signing of the Brighton Plus Helsinki Declaration, the international framework for advancing gender equality in sport. She wants government intervention and more mandates about coaching metrics, including retention as a performance indicator with funding attached. She also highlighted a campaign by Kent non-league club Faversham Town to get mums into coaching, though it remains a rare example. “This is not ‘see it to be it’, that does not sit well with me,” she said. “We want to show that the sports sector really values women and wants them around. This isn’t about blaming men; it is about the nature of high-performance sport – all or nothing. It is the culture, the stereotypes that exist.”