UK Coaching calls for gender parity within the coaching workforce

UK Coaching exists to support and develop the nation’s three million coaches and is today outlining its ambition for gender equity within coaching, in the next five years.

Pre-pandemic, female coaches made up 43% of the workforce, down from 46% in 2017. And this number may continue to fall upon return to play, as it is anticipated that only 50% of coaches are expected to return to paid positions.

In the last year, proactive measures have been put in place in a bid to increase the number of female high-performance coaches, who currently make up 10% of all performance coaching roles. UK Sport recently launched their leadership programme in a bid to double the representation of female coaches in the Olympic and Paralympic high-performance community by Paris 2024. The programme involves leading coaches mentoring a cohort of nineteen through a six-month course that aims to help them reach the top of their respective sports.

And to ensure talented coaches have the opportunity to join the high-performance pathway, UK Coaching has also recently introduced its own female leadership programme, working with national governing bodies to develop female coaches and elevate the positions of women in coaching across all sports at the base of the performance pathway. The organisation is already working with Basketball England and the Rugby Football League to deliver bespoke courses.

Yet with UK Coaching’s research showing the importance of female role models and with activity levels amongst this group lower than that of their male counterparts, female coaches will be fundamental as the nation rebuilds after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our research shows that it’s really important that when starting to get active, women and girls are more comfortable if their coach is the same gender. With the levels of inactivity amongst women and girls at a high, it is vital that we can encourage more females to join the coaching workforce. It has also been great to see a handful of female coaches breaking the glass ceiling and coaching at high-performance level across the world. We need to do more to ensure that this becomes common practice. For too long female coaches have been overlooked in high level sport.”

“The last year has had a huge impact on the nation’s activity levels so let’s get more women at the forefront and give them the platform to inspire the next generation of female coaches.”