Women and Equalities Committee
Oral evidence: Beyond participation: Routes into sport for girls and women, HC 176
Wednesday 3 June 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 3 June 2026.
Members present: Sarah Owen (Chair); David Burton-Sampson; Rosie Duffield; Christine Jardine; Kim Leadbeater; Kevin McKenna; Rebecca Paul; Rachel Taylor.
Questions 1 - 66
Witnesses
I: Hannah Dingley, Girls’ Head of Academy, Manchester City Football Club; Lisa Williams, Head Coach, London All Stars Women’s Basketball Team; India Perris-Redding, Women’s Talent ID Manager, Sale Sharks Women.
II: Amy Fazackerley, National Partnership Manager, Coach Core Foundation; Emily Handyside, Coaching Lead, UK Coaching; Lisa West, Head of Policy, Partnership and Public Affairs, Women in Sport.
Witnesses: Hannah Dingley, Lisa Williams and India Perris-Redding.
Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to the Women and Equalities Committee. Today we are holding an oral evidence session on routes into playing roles in sport for girls and for women. We are going to have two panels and we are first going to hear from Hannah Dingley, girls’ head of academy at Manchester City Football Club, welcome. Lisa Williams, head coach at London All Stars Women’s Basketball Team and India Perris-Redding, women’s talent ID manager at Sale Sharks Women. Thank you so much for coming and welcome. If there is anything that you want to go into deeper detail about at all, please do not feel that you have to get everything into one answer. If you do not get to cover what it is that you want to, you can always follow it up with a conversation or with an email with any of the Clerks afterwards. I am going to hand straight over to Kim.
Q1 Kim Leadbeater: Thank you for coming in today; it is really greatly appreciated. My background is in sport and health and fitness, so I am very excited about today’s inquiry and it is great that you are here to share your expertise and experience with us. We are going to look first at routes into coaching. Can you tell us a little about your journey into coaching and the drivers that led you to pursue it as a career? Lisa and India, I think you were both players prior to coaching, but Hannah, you did not have a playing career before that. It would be really lovely to hear your different experiences about what that transition was like.
Lisa Williams: Good afternoon. My route into coaching was quite simple. As you say, I was a player, at Brixton TopCats, and the coach was very much an advocate for women. He made us all get our coaching qualifications—partly to save himself money, because we would coach the little kids’ session, do our own training session, and then stay to watch the women’s session. This was the journey he predicted some of us would take. He believed that if we understood the whys and wherefores of coaching skills, we would become better players and be able to pass that knowledge down to the younger kids. So that was how I started.
Fast-forward a few years to when I went to university, and because I had my level 2 coaching qualification I was able to earn more money coaching than working all day at Sainsbury’s, so it was a no-brainer. I started coaching for my new club, the London Towers, where I was the only female coach on their community coaching staff and my role there involved going out into primary and secondary schools to run coaching sessions. Alongside my coaching, I then moved into the role of sports development officer for a local authority. Due to my experience in coaching I was given the opportunity to become a tutor. I tutored the level 1 and 2 coaching qualification and the referee coaching qualification—I am going to bore you with all the qualifications that I got at that time. I then moved into coaching basketball at a university and events delivery, then came full circle and set up the London All Stars club with a friend of mine. That was just before we went into lockdown, which was a bit of a weird one. That is the short version; I could talk about that for a long time.
Kim Leadbeater: I could listen to you for a long time.
Lisa Williams: That was pretty much the start of my journey into coaching, and I can attribute that to my first coach making sure that we all had a coaching qualification.
Kim Leadbeater: That is lovely. I might come back to you to talk about how that could have been easier, or the key things that made it easy for you that might not be easy for other people. It sounds as though your coach is one of them.
India Perris-Redding: Mine is similar. I was introduced to rugby in high school through a community rugby coach who became my lifelong mentor. He is fantastic and showed me what the sport was really about. From that moment on, I thought I could actually build a career playing rugby, so I decided to pursue it. To cut a long story short, despite lots of injuries, I made it to the Premiership. Because there was a lack of investment in the women’s premiership at the time, we were all dual career athletes who had to work full time alongside playing.
I did not go to university, so I asked myself, “Where does my passion lie?”, and the answer was rugby, so I decided to see if I could get a job working at the club I played for. I got a community rugby coach role at the Sale Sharks Foundation, where I have just finished up for the last seven and a half years. I would do anything from disability and inclusion to primary school, secondary school and over 50s walking rugby, just to expose myself to everything possible. They helped me gain my level 2—I was the first female in the whole building to get my advanced coaching award—and then it spiralled on a little more from there.
I found that I really enjoyed the coaching aspect but, because I was playing as well, it meant I had to do a bit more support work on top of my playing career than what would be normal now. So I would miss my gym slot at Carrington to go onto the pitch and coach under 18s, run back in, get my boots and GPS vest and go back out and train. There was no one else to coach, we could not find the right people who would volunteer their time, so I would sacrifice that bit of my career to go and make sure that we had more girls coming through and a really positive experience.
From that point on, being very injury prone, I realised rugby playing probably was not for me and I was better off standing on the pitch as a coach. I have basically dedicated the last five or six years in the foundation to ensuring we have more female coaches in the building at Sharks. This means that girls in high school and primary school clubs who are playing rugby have more female coaches. That is pretty much how I got to where I am now, as a really short story.
Q2 Kim Leadbeater: Brilliant; that is really good. Thank you very much, India. Again, that transition from playing to coaching sounds like a very logical one, but I would imagine it is not always that easy, so maybe we will come back to that.
As someone who did not have a playing career, what advice would you give to women and girls who would like to go straight into coaching, Hannah? What was that journey like for you?
Hannah Dingley: Well, I tried playing and I enjoyed playing, but I was not good enough to be professional, so decided quite young in my career that I wanted to coach—that was my interest. I wanted to be involved in football, that was what I wanted to do, so I started coaching alongside playing and other things, but largely in men’s football because there were not the jobs or opportunities in women’s.
Even though it was at more of an amateur level, I still wanted to play, but my team played on a Sunday, so I would coach on a Saturday afternoon. I started gaining experience with a lot of non-league men’s teams, which was interesting, and once you can do that you can do anything. I did all that alongside what I call a proper job: I went to university, started lecturing at FE College and then ultimately at university. But then I would be out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night coaching a team—boys, girls, academies, whatever I could get my hands on really—to do as much coaching as I could.
Ultimately that led to me getting a full-time role as head of coaching in the boys’ academy at Burton Albion. My experience had been coaching an age group in the academy and my day job was lecturing in sports coaching—developing coaches—so when the premier league brought in that role for all boys’ academies, it made logical sense to step into coach development. I then left there to become head of the academy at Forest Green, which I did for five years. I also had a very short stint as the first-team manager with the men's side when Duncan Ferguson got relieved of his duties for a period.
Now I have transitioned back to the women’s game as the academies are starting to grow. I am lucky to be at Man City—who obviously just won the FA Cup on Sunday—as they are investing heavily in developing their women’s programme. The experience I have from seeing that development in the men’s game really supports that in pushing the club on
Q3 Kim Leadbeater: India and Lisa, you both mentioned a male coach who was involved in your journey. I did an event with Women in Sport yesterday about male allies of women in sport from both a playing and coaching perspective. Could you tell us a little about how important that was and maybe share your own experiences of what made your journey easy or difficult, as well as any other reflections on what that journey can look like? Lisa, I will come back to you first.
Lisa Williams: I did not know any different, because my coach was my coach and he supported us. He understood that the club would not be successful without a women’s programme, so he was very much an advocate. To be fair, I had never have been at another club, so I thought all clubs were like that until I went somewhere else and it was not. That experience I had in the beginning was generally very positive, but as I moved from that bubble to other clubs, it was not as positive an experience for a women’s coach. It was very much a case of going to do sessions and having to prove that I knew what I was talking about before anybody would listen.
I remember an experience when I was working for the local authority. The club I was at used to send about four guys who used to play—big, tall, black American guys who had all the swagger—and if they were not there then they would send me. So you can imagine what that looked like. I would walk in and say, “Right, guys, come on, in line,” and they would look at me like, “What do you know?” I remember actually having to play against these guys, beat them and then say, “Right, in line,” and then they were like, “Yes, coach.”
I have had to do that a lot and a lot of my coaching colleagues say, “You’re very bossy, you’re very stroppy, you want what you want when you want it.” To be fair, I am like that anyway; I just amp it up a little more when I am coaching so that people will listen. A lot of the time—I do not know if my fellow panellists have had this experience as a female coach—you have to prove yourself when you step into a room many more times than you would like to.
I once had an experience when I was coaching a men’s university team and had just had my son. My partner and son came along because he was six months at the time, so he was still a baby, toddler in arms. I turn up, full coaching outfit, coach all over the place, my partner’s behind with the baby in the car seat walking in. The referee walks right past me, goes up to him and says, “Oh, coach, can I have your team list?” And he is like, “What are you asking me for? The coach is there.” He said, “Oh, you’re the coach?” And I am like, “yes.” And he is like, “You’re coaching the guys?” “Yes, I am. What’s the problem with that?” I was the only female in the building and this referee gave me such a hard time throughout the whole game, it was ridiculous. I was cursing, I was shouting, I was like, “What’s wrong with you?” But he gave me such a hard time as a female coach and it is that constant negative stereotype: being the only woman in an environment of men that you are constantly battling; and not much has changed.
Kim Leadbeater: That is really interesting. Thank you. I wonder whether anyone would describe male coaches as bossy or stroppy.
Lisa Williams: No, exactly. The woman I coach with and I say this constantly, “If a male coach said anything to you, you wouldn’t even think twice. But because a female coach has said it to you, you have taken offence.” You get that a lot.
Q4 Kim Leadbeater: India, do you have anything to add to that?
India Perris-Redding: It is very similar, actually. Having formed that really close bond with my male mentor when I was introduced to rugby in high school and with him helping me through, I thought, “This is actually really positive, maybe this is quite a straightforward path.” Then I stepped out of this little bubble that is really encouraging and it is not what you expect at all—especially when you have been used to such positivity. You are just welcomed by so many similar experiences.
I have coached for the last five years on the under 15s boys Sharks pathway; I have been the only female coach on that pathway since I can remember. We have maybe six volunteer coaches per site, they will all come and it is always the same; if there is a member of men’s Sharks staff there, people will just completely walk past me, they will not speak to me. I have had the same with parents. I will be there with Sharks kit on and they go straight to a volunteer coach.
You come to terms with things. If you are coaching in primary and high schools, teachers are teachers, they are used to seeing females so they are really good with you. But as soon as you go into local rugby clubs—especially a boys’ session—you challenge what they think is normal and it is really tough. They will say, “Oh, you’re here to coach the girls or the under sixes,” or they think you might be a mum. There is never an assumption that you are a performance coach. When you are in that initial bubble it is great, but the challenges do not seem to stop once you leave that safe space.
Q5 Kim Leadbeater: That is really helpful. Hannah, do you want to add anything from the perspective of a woman working in football?
Hannah Dingley: I was always seen as a physio—that was me. When the medical staff came over, nine times out of 10 they would come to me and I would say, “No, not me.” But in my personal experience, I have always found the people I worked with were fine. I never had a parent or player say to me, “Oh, my God, I’m at an academy run by a woman, I’m being coached by a woman.” When I was running the academies, I was coaching the 18s boys first team; none of the players ever say anything in that environment, because you have an opportunity to show your competence around the people. They know you and there is a relationship.
The barriers and challenges I have faced always tend to come externally. As I say, you go to the away game and a referee on site or somebody who does not know their unconscious bias probably goes to, “Oh, you’re a woman, you must be here for this.” Or you are applying for jobs and they do not know you and they think, “I’m not sure if we should be hiring you.” Football is a really competitive industry and it is difficult. You often cannot get past go, cannot get through the environment. I have a pro licence; I have the highest qualification you can have in the game and at times you cannot even get in front of the decision makers to put yourself forward. That is always a challenge for female coaches.
Chair: Thank you very much. Women are not bossy—we just know what we want and we need to get it. That is it. I will hand over to Rachel.
Q6 Rachel Taylor: You have already touched on some of my questions but before I start, I want to say two things. First, congratulations on the win on Saturday. Absolutely fantastic. I watched the match—I did not think that was going to be the result, so well done, and well done for sticking through the match. Secondly, thank you all for all the unpaid hours that I have no doubt you have done in grassroots sport, because I know that is what happens, and thank you for being here today.
We are talking about the barriers that prevent women progressing into senior coaching roles, particularly in rugby and football. Hannah, you have already started talking about some, but could you elaborate on what you think those barriers are to getting into those very senior positions?
Hannah Dingley: There is definitely an unconscious bias, as I said. I remember when I first started, I got my A licence and I went to a boys’ academy and I tried to get a job. I got a job with the under nines. I was more qualified than many of the male coaches who were working with far older age groups. But the thinking was, “Oh, you’ll have maternal instincts” or, “You’ll be great with those little ones.” That sort of bias around those sorts of cutthroat performance characteristics behaviours, as we call them. There is a sort of assumption that you might be more empathetic or softer and that you should therefore not have the desired characteristics to work at the top level of elite sport.
I also think there is an issue around the decision makers and the make-up of decision makers because, again, if the decision makers have their own set of lived experiences and they are all largely male, how open are they to making those decisions? Whether it is a conscious thing or an unconscious thing, there is a barrier to giving senior roles to females.
Q7 Rachel Taylor: Has that been the same experience in rugby?
India Perris-Redding: Yes; I was just speaking to the PWR recently. The PWR and the RFU have done a research piece that will be coming out soon and it is really quite interesting. The statistics I have here are that 76% of female coaches who filled in the survey—the majority—believe that there is a gender bias in high performance rugby. I say a lot, “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” There has to be that visibility. Currently in the PWR, we have females in assistant coach roles, but we do not have a female head coach on any team, nor internationally, for England. There were some last season who departed their roles. I know that they are working really hard to change that, but for someone who could see that as an option, not having those people visible is a barrier in itself.
It is really important to note that sometimes in rugby, maybe in football, these roles do not necessarily come to the forefront when they are going for recruitment; they are not always necessarily visible in the right places. On the flip side, it is important to note we have a female owner at Sharks, which is a big difference for me. I have a boss who is a female ex-player as well and that really helps me because I know I have people in my corner and they are both fantastic. But I also know that is not the same at every club, so yes, there is definitely that visibility piece. Females are very tentative about stepping into a male-dominant culture, which I can understand because it can be both petrifying and quite hard to manage. I would say it is probably a mix of those things.
Q8 Rachel Taylor: You both have those top coaching qualifications, but are there still barriers to women accessing and completing those top-level qualifications?
Hannah Dingley: You find that they often drop out before that point; very few actually get to that level. I know that in football, for example, the FA provides bursaries and support, but you basically have to get enough women to stick at it up to that point to be able to get those. I will get on my soapbox a little here, but in the men’s game, every player who comes through the academy system between 16 and 18 as a member of the Professional Football Association gets a step on the ladder: they get their UEFA C licence as part of the education structure. If you think that there are 92 clubs in the EFL and Premier League, that is maybe 1,000 coaches per year who are just getting that. That is not a problem, but that is not accessible for the female players. The PFA only look after the top league, WSL1—this is the first season they have actually looked after players in the second tier—so you have all those players who are not on their coaching journey. That results in a much smaller pool to pick from.
With the logic being that the top jobs tend to go to ex-players, we need to start the players on the journey while they are playing so that once they step out, they go into that. In football, a lot of ex-players seem to be going into the media and not coaching. Some of that is, again, systemically that they have not had it. They should come out of playing career with their A licence probably, so that they would be one step away from getting those jobs, but the structures are not designed to support that at this point in time.
India Perris-Redding: I completely echo that. It is also important to note what I have experienced in rugby: when these female coaches will get bursaries, or a free place on a coaching award but they might walk into the room and be two women and 30 men. Already they have stepped into a zone that they do not necessarily feel that comfortable in.
Q9 Rachel Taylor: I have some specific questions but, Lisa, is there anything you want to add at this stage?
Lisa Williams: I can echo that. My colleague and I set up our club because, at the time, there were no female-only clubs run entirely by females. We set it up both to empower women and to provide opportunities for them to get into coaching and officiating—whatever they wanted to do in volunteering, we gave them a space where they could do that. We started off with a local league team, we now have a division one team, a division two team and a men’s local league team. All the coaches in our club are female, but it is all on a voluntary basis. We have a business plan put in place to develop an academy so that we can grow it in the way that we want to grow it by putting it out there. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.
Following from what you guys were saying, I have a few colleagues I work with who are football coaches, same experience. They are the most qualified person in the room, but people bypass them to come and speak to the junior coach at the back who is about 15. They would prefer to speak to him than speak to the female coach, because they do not see her as the person in charge. Those experiences are multiple and I do not understand why women are not seen as though they are in charge. A lot is unconscious bias, preconceived ideas about the woman’s role.
However, some women—not all women—get to a point where they may choose to have children and then they drop off. They do not get to the level they could, because they do not see how they can navigate childcare alongside coaching as it is generally in the evening. Also, in my experience, when we get pregnant the responsibility is the woman’s. As I said, I just took mine along in the car seat; that is what we did, because I wanted to continue my coaching journey.
A lot of the time when I am tutoring, I am the only female in the room and if there is a woman on the course, I am like, “Thank God for that. Great.” I try to boost her up as much as I possibly can and say, “You really must stay in contact. I’ll be your mentor,” so that they know they are not alone on this journey—because it is a lonely one. When I have done stuff with the London Coaches Programme, we have got them to do women-only courses so we can try to encourage women to be on the course. But how many of them continue into coaching? We do not know. That data is not available.
Q10 Rachel Taylor: Hannah, I have a specific question for you about FIFA’s recent requirement for teams at its women’s tournaments to have a female head or assistant coach. What are your thoughts on that?
Hannah Dingley: Obviously FIFA is the global governing body and there would be different associations around the world where saying, “Well, actually, it’s mandated, you have to do it” will probably be really needed. That is one tool, but that has to be complemented with support around coaching and, generally within the national governing body, the way they treat women and the way that women’s football is viewed. I have this big thing that we always seem to want to change the women: “It’s the women’s fault, so we need to put on extra. They need more confidence, we’ll put on another workshop, we’ll put on another leadership programme.”
Actually, there are some really good women out there. They are there, they exist—it is the system and the things around it that need to change. Not just, “Oh, we need to help the women by doing more courses because that will be fine.” Then we get all these coaches and they have nowhere to go. As I said, it is a tool when it is complemented with others and, obviously, the different cultures and different situations of all the governing bodies around the world mean it is probably a good way of making people buy in.
Q11 Rachel Taylor: India, none of the four priorities in the RFU’s new five-year action plan for women’s rugby focus on female participation in non-playing roles. Do you think enough is being done to support women into coaching and other non-playing roles, such as officiating in rugby?
India Perris-Redding: It is worth noting that the Impact 25 programme did a really good job of using the women’s world cup to inspire female coaches and officiating teams. The first step of giving them bursaries and vouchers to be able to do those coaching and officiating courses—especially that female-only coaching award—was breaking down that first barrier. They have made a really great step forward and I played a big part in trying to use the Impact 25 programme to reach out to girls as well.
However, as you mentioned, the main issue is that they can do all this initial work, but it is the piece after that matters. England Rugby or their club might support them to get that award, but who is checking that they are still coaching at their local club? Who is being their mentor? All those small pieces are really important when you are in a moment where you feel completely isolated as a coach and need someone to speak to. That piece after is really important.
Q12 Rachel Taylor: In terms of that piece after, do you think that gender quotas, along the same lines as FIFA’s requirement, would be helpful in rugby?
India Perris-Redding: I have had lots of discussions about this and it is so interesting. We are in quite a good place in PWR with regard to females in assistant roles, and I am a true believer that we should not be putting females in roles just because it looks good as a number and as gender equality; they should be there because they want to be there, and they feel comfortable and confident to be able to deliver that role. That piece is probably really big, but I am not sure how it would look. I want to ensure that it is for the right reasons and the right people are in these roles.
Q13 Rachel Taylor: Lisa, what is your assessment of women’s access to coaching roles in both grassroots and elite basketball?
Lisa Williams: Grassroots is probably a lot more accessible to the everyday woman. I actually got some data from the governing body: 15% of the coaches are female. Those are the coaches who have a qualification—whether they are still coaching, nobody knows, but only 15% are female. It is trickier at the elite level. You have the amount of time you have to take off to go to international competitions, which is not always easy for most people to take. If you think of the England women’s team, they had a female assistant coach for years who, in my personal opinion, should have been the head coach, but for a long time was always passed over for a male head coach. There are some opportunities to get to the elite level, however, the systems that are in place, the bureaucracy, the old guard that have done it this way all the time so they will keep it this way, are a breakdown in the system. The systems need to change and refresh and there is a lot of resistance to change in basketball from the hierarchy and from the coaches themselves, so it is a difficult one to answer.
Q14 Rachel Taylor: What sort of interventions do you think are most effective in increasing women’s access to coaching? Obviously, you have talked about your club being women-only; are there other things that you can think of?
Lisa Williams: As I said, I know they have done female-only courses. There is a lot of visibility for female coaches that use players who have played in the Commonwealth Games and who are doing projects and activities. So that is raising the profile of female coaches out there. It is those types of smaller interventions that seem to be working for getting young women thinking about a career in coaching in basketball.
Q15 Chair: Before I hand over to David, I wanted to ask a question about the intersectional nature of representation, and particularly women of colour in sport and in coaching positions. Have you seen any additional barriers, or any disparities in that at all?
Hannah Dingley: We have a problem in our playing population before we even get to the coaching population. Women’s football traditionally has become a bit of a white, middle-class sport in terms of the demands of bringing players to training two or three times a week. There is also, potentially, the view that you might not be able to become a professional and earn a decent salary. But we need to address the playing population as an initial start because, as I say, a lot of those players will then potentially go into coaching. There are definitely challenges there; as I say, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. Apart from Hope Powell now, I would really struggle to name another female coach in our game, which is sad to say.
India Perris-Redding: I completely echo that—especially that it begins with players first. Coming to rugby, ever since I played it most people will say it is a private school sport or a middle-class sport. I cannot tell you how much we do in communities to try to change that—that is why grassroots sport is so important to be able to engage with these young children who might have never even played rugby before.
I was speaking about this on the way in; it is going to these groups in schools and in our community and saying, “You don’t only need to play; if you don’t want to play, there are so many more opportunities in our sport. You can learn to coach without ever needing to play in your life.” We need to address the much bigger question around that and that begins with grassroots and those opportunities.
Lisa Williams: Basketball is quite unique in that it is very multicultural for male and females at the grassroots level. We have a lot of young people from different cultures, different ethnicities, playing the sport. As we progress up into coaching, there are a lot of women of colour who coach, but it is at grassroots. There is that glass ceiling that very few go past. I have been fortunate in that I have been quite vocal, quite willing to put myself there and say, “Right, let’s go, because I’m going to drag everybody else in with me.” So I knock the ceiling and I am like, “Come on you guys, let’s go and let them see that we are not the stereotype that they think we are and we’re able to be of value and we can bring something different.” A lot of it is about breaking down those stereotypes of getting to that level and still being able to represent and not being seen as a negative. Basketball is not that bad in that regard.
Chair: Thank you very much; it is nice to have some bright spots. David?
Q16 David Burton-Sampson: Thank you all for coming today. Great to hear from you. I am interested in your view on the value of female coaches in getting more women and girls involved in sport, but also in keeping and retaining women and girls playing sports, whether professionally or just as an amateur or a hobby.
Lisa Williams: Is that a loaded question? Honestly, it is super important. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. For a lot of the young girls and young boys who we coach—we do not exclusively coach girls—it becomes the norm to have a female coach. It is not, “Oh my gosh, I have a female coach.” We are just coach. They call us coach; they respond to us as coach. They do what we need them to do. The people we coach do not see us as a female coach or a male coach; they just see us as coach. That is how it should be. It is about changing everybody else’s viewpoint and opinion to see that.
As coaches, we instil rules, discipline, skill development, all those kinds of things. I do not think it is any different from a male coach. You might have coaches that might be a bit more nurturing, but there are male coaches who can be nurturing, who can support and develop young people. But you get a lot from having a female coach, because they are going to see the whole you and not just you winning games for them. I do not know; maybe that is a bit discriminating.
Q17 David Burton-Sampson: You have all said, “If you can’t see it, how can you be it?” On getting women and girls involved in sport by seeing that female coach, do you have any examples of where it has maybe made a difference where women and girls have wanted to get involved because they have seen you as female coaches?
Lisa Williams: There is a young lady that I coached many years ago who was the only girl on her under 14s team. She was deciding whether to go to another team and play or to give up, and I was literally like, “Do you want to be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond? What is your choice? Go to this club and develop and see what happens.” She now works for the NBA and she reminded me of that conversation. She said, “Do you know what, if you never spoke to me and told me what I could be, I would never have left the bubble that I was in quite safely, or stopped playing. I moved forward.”
Whether I take that as, “Oh, I made it that she made it to the NBA,” the conversation that we had left an impression on her. As coach, that is the impression that I left on her. Whether that was because I was a female and she felt value in that—I could say that; that would be great for this forum—I just want to say that I was there, and because I was there, she got that advice, and because she got that advice, she went on to what she needed to do.
Q18 David Burton-Sampson: India, what is your view?
India Perris-Redding: This is a topic I could go on and on about. It is pretty much what I have focused on in my career for the last three years. One of the projects that I created and ran at the foundation that I recently left was a programme called Girls Tackle Rugby. Ultimately, I wanted there to be a grassroots programme so that girls could see they had the ability to go to the prem if they wanted to one day, because they need it; they both need each other. I created this programme to be based really strongly on female role models and the delivery was always female coaches.
I used dual career athletes from Sale Sharks and we would go out and deliver into communities, mainly high schools. There is power in female coaches who have played in these stadiums or have a name professional players, or someone who just can relate to them because they have nice hair or a nice hair bobble—the smallest thing that means they are then able to form this relationship. The girls at these high schools who thought rugby was too aggressive and a boys’ sport very quickly change their minds. Seeing someone who they might feel has similar attributes to them, or someone they can just form a relationship with, really inspires their participation.
Even though it is hard work, by telling them, “I will support your first transition to this club. Get down to your local rugby club, and I’ll come and visit you in a couple of weeks to make sure you are doing all right,” these female coaches can take these girls on that journey and that support goes so far. Ultimately, that is what keeps girls in rugby. If we did not have a programme such as that, I would never have seen the number of girls playing now because of these female coaches.
Q19 David Burton-Sampson: Hannah, how about from a football world?
Hannah Dingley: I would not have much experience at that grassroots level as opposed to my experience within the professional game. But, again, that inspirational role model—a female can be a leader, a female can coach—is really invaluable. There are also considerations that we all know as women that we need to consider that maybe men might not think about. We know that dropout is really high around the teenage years, from 12 to 14, when girls are considering body image, periods and so on. So suddenly turning up to a field and finding there are no facilities there is a massive barrier. I am not saying men cannot, but it might not be the first thought in their head. Having females involved might mean it was a bit more front of thought.
I will give you an example from the professional game. I do not know if anybody has seen Manchester City’s new kit, but they clearly did not think about the fact that the women will not wear white shorts. They are gradient coloured, a very light blue that goes lighter. The men’s shorts are white, but the women’s shorts are dark blue, so it does not gradient very well anymore. Again, those are little things that somebody who is designing a kit is not thinking about. Somebody who is going to play a grassroots fixture is probably not thinking, “Oh, where’s the nearest toilet? Are there sanitary bins in the toilets?”. They are really basic things.
Q20 David Burton-Sampson: You have made some good points there. We have heard and often talk about the mental toll of having to advocate for basic provisions for women and girls. Lisa and India, is that something you recognise in your worlds as well? Do you have any examples you want to share?
Lisa Williams: We have had a similar example about kit colours—not picking white, for obvious reasons. But there is also the challenge of keeping the girls in the sport because they do not want to sweat, they do not want to not have nails and stuff like that. It is about making them realise that they can be glamorous when they need to be, but they can be sweaty when they need to be too. It is not a problem; the two can work together.
India Perris-Redding: Absolutely. I have come against countless things like you have mentioned. Ultimately, if we are speaking about kit as a starter, it comes down to choice and it is what those players feel comfortable with. The England women Red Roses are a really good example. I believe they were given a choice of, “Do you want to wear white shorts?” and they all said, “Yes, it’s what we feel best in for our country,” so they went with it. There are a lot of other teams that have changed that, and ultimately just listening to what is right for that team is really important.
But we will still go to local rugby club toilets and there might not be any spare sanitary products in case of emergency. I have mentioned pitches and things before; it might be that the girls do not have a space on the pitch, or they are allowed a 15-metre bit where the light is so they can train for 20 minutes. We are still recognising that a lot of these things are an afterthought; how do we get to a point where they are not an afterthought, so women and girls come and have this experience and do not face that, and they stay? Because, ultimately, that could be that one thing that puts you off coming back.
Q21 David Burton-Sampson: Yes, thank you so much. Hannah, the previous Committee, before we all came along, heard evidence that there is insufficient sports science research focused on female athletes. In fact, some statistics are shocking: 6% of sports science research studies were conducted by women with all female participants, compared to 31% of studies conducted by men with all men participants. That study was 2024; in your experience, has there been any progress lately in that area?
Hannah Dingley: There has. There is now a women’s health section on FIFA’s website around training, particularly around things such as ACL injuries—again, a massive prevalence, I suppose, in rugby and in football, other sort of invasion games. But it is just catching up. The other problem is the research is not there. If you are a young person who goes to university to do a strength and conditioning degree, most of your lectures and practice and the things you learn about will be around male athletes, because that is the generic research that exists.
To be able to get specialists who have the expertise specifically around female athletes to come and work in the female field is a lot harder. What will we do with a player post-pregnancy? We now have players who are having children and coming back to playing: how does that affect their biomechanics, which is going to affect their lifting technique, which is going to ultimately reduce injuries, and so on?
There is a whole body of research that needs to be done and it also needs time to trickle down to our educational institutions, to our governing bodies that are delivering coaching courses for these types of programmes, so that the practitioners that are coming to the game are experienced and it is not just, “Oh, that’s just what we do with the boys,” or “That’s just what we do with the men.” There is a lot of copy and paste that is moved across without an understanding of the differences between a female anatomy and physiology and a male one. There are obviously clearly differences; as I say, if you are lifting a heavy weight, you are probably going to do it slightly differently from a male. All those things are really important.
Q22 David Burton-Sampson: Lisa or India, do you have anything to add?
Lisa Williams: Yes; basketball is trying to catch up. It is a little bit hit and miss. If they are linked to programmes that have sports science provision, they are able to do stuff, but it is within the location of the club. The governing body does a little bit. We try to do a little bit on courses where we encourage participants to go and do some research about anatomy and ensuring injury prevention, but it is not a given. A lot of tutors like myself who have sports science backgrounds will encourage that, but it is not part of the course specification. It is a slowly, slowly catching up kind of thing, but it is really hard because ACL injuries are massive with basketball players.
India Perris-Redding: I echo that. From a rugby perspective, I feel that I have really seen a lot more female-focused S&C insights over the last couple of years since I stopped playing. A lot of clubs are looking at female sports bras, which give you a 1% increase in performance. Small things like that and around minimising movement are really important. As you said, ACLs are a huge problem in the women’s game. I know that there is a lot of research going on around the female cycle—does it have an effect if you are on your period?—and different types of warm-ups. That is the type of thing we are starting to introduce into under-18s: adapting our warm-ups to reduce those types of injuries.
There are really positive steps forward in the elite game. There is more to be done, but how we push that through into the grassroots is really important because girls as young as 15 are suffering from ACL injuries and it is important they know how to lift when they are on their period compared with when they are not. All these are really important bits of information that they might not get told by their coach, so it is important that we feed the clubs that information as well.
Q23 Chair: The point about kit is a really important one. I have seen a really powerful local example of Luton Women and Girls Cricket Club. Of course, it was cricket; everybody just said, “Oh, you’re going to play in white,” and actually, when they heard from the girls and women, they chose their kit and they play in black and gold. I proudly have one of their shirts in my office. It makes such a big difference.
A question I wanted to ask you, Lisa, was around international counterparts and examples. I stupidly went for a drill session with Luton Jets and nearly died. It was great and good fun but it was really physical. It is a boys’ team and Malik—the coach—is brilliant, but the UK is falling behind compared with countries such as the US in terms of sports science and the investment that we see in both men’s and women’s sport.
In terms of our international counterparts for women’s research into sports and sports science, what are you seeing that other countries are doing that we could be doing better? I know that for basketball that is an area where there is a real comparison.
Lisa Williams: Basketball in this country is seen as a second-class citizen because it is not football, rugby, tennis or cricket, so it is not afforded the same platform unless an organisation or university has really soaked into basketball. Universities such as the University of East London or London South Bank University used to have a big basketball prowess, so they would do a lot of research.
In America, all the universities and colleges have a massive focus on student athletes. They research it and go into what they need to do and there is that structure that we unfortunately do not have over here in this country. Those of us who have been involved in basketball for years have been trying to develop that structure and it is slowly getting there. We now have academies from high school age, so they are developing. They now have sports science representation and sports science coaches who will do S&C stuff. Until that becomes the norm across the board, we will always be behind.
Q24 Chair: Would you say that is the same in the other sports?
India Perris-Redding: Ruby is obviously a minority sport over in the US. I have luckily been out and lived, played and coached there for a bit. It is actually one of the countries where I did my ACL in, so I have lived a bit of the sports science recovery piece out there. What I will say is that, although their playing numbers, participation and retention are nowhere near the extent that we are in England, the sports science and their knowledge around injury and recovery are incredible.
I know that they invest a lot of money over there, especially into female athletes. Their university programmes out there in rugby are the biggest; they are huge. Most rugby players ultimately get injured, and they are pretty grateful when they are out there that they have so much there to help them with that process. S&C-wise, the technology that they have is ultimately better than what we have here, but it comes down to investment.
Hannah Dingley: Football is the big boy in terms of the riches. We are one of the top leagues in probably both men’s and women’s football in this country. The WSL would compete with the NWSL in America, so we are lucky in that respect. I suppose the challenge that we might face in the female game in this country is the men’s game; it is trying to get the practitioners who want to really focus on the women’s game and not move to the men’s game or use it as a stepping stone to go across. You want to have specialists in female sport—male or female, it does not really matter—we just need people who really want to become specialists and give our top players that level of quality provision that they deserve.
Q25 Kim Leadbeater: I just have a quick question for Lisa. One of the best things about sport is that there is something for everybody and we have three brilliant sports represented here today. I attended a session this morning with England Netball—[Interruption.] I know—your nemesis! I played hockey for 30 years; that was my sport. I am really pleased that football and rugby are coming up so well for women, but hockey, netball and sadly many other sports do not have as high a profile as maybe many of us would like.
Lisa, I do not know whether you agree, but I am really glad that we are seeing Government funding diversifying, not just for football, but through the Football Foundation to other field-based sports, including rounders, which is great and another growing sport for women. What about court-based sports? I am slightly concerned that there is not enough funding going towards them.
Lisa Williams: We are constantly fighting with badminton. You can get four badminton courts on one basketball court, and if they can get money for four badminton courts they will take the money for the four badminton courts. Unfortunately a basketball court now in London will cost you maybe £85 an hour if you go to a local authority leisure centre. No club can afford that.
Even our club, which is in a school, has to work in partnership with the school; we do sessions in the school in order to get a reduction of the court fee. For most grassroots clubs, court fees are the biggest issue because we cannot play outside. Even though you have events over the summer outdoors, you cannot run a season on an outdoor court, so we struggle for court space. That is the biggest nemesis for most indoor court-based sports.
Chair: I hear the same about hockey as well, because of the pitch fees.
Q26 Rachel Taylor: We are seeing new leisure centres springing up in some areas, but very few of them have additional indoor sports halls and those sorts of facilities. Do you think generally there is a need for more covered court facilities?
Lisa Williams: Absolutely. When these facilities are being built, they need to think about the community and have conversations with local clubs so that they get used efficiently and effectively and it is priced accordingly or find a way to make sure that it is used and clubs can survive. A lot of clubs shut down because they cannot afford the fees.
Q27 Rachel Taylor: There is no reason basketball cannot be played outside; it is just that you need covers on the courts, don’t you?
Lisa Williams: No, it cannot be played outside, because the outdoor concrete courts are not safe. Basketball is from September to May-ish, depending on how well you do, and if it rains or snows you cannot play, as much as we would not want to in a way. It is a winter sport, so we need to be indoors.
There are lots of summer activities; I work with an organisation called Ball Out and we do a three-on-three over the summer. It is massive and it has grown; we have been doing that for the last 10 years. Outdoor courts are fantastic for that because it is three-on-three and it is quick, it is fast and it is great, but for the main game we need to be indoors on a court—a sprung one would be fantastic.
Q28 Rachel Taylor: Is a covered court adequate?
Lisa Williams: You could do it for an ad hoc session, but if you are doing a club session you need to be on an indoor court.
Chair: We have two more sections left and we have the second panel as well. I am just going to hand over to Kevin.
Q29 Kevin McKenna: I would like to explore issues around abuse and safeguarding. In a recent survey, women in sport found that female coaches were twice as likely as male coaches to have experienced bullying. I will start with Lisa. What have your experiences of bullying and abuse been? Is there anything that you have witnessed?
Lisa Williams: I have been fortunate that I have not experienced what I would see as bullying, or not knowingly seen it as bullying. I might have reflected back and thought, “Hang on, that wasn’t quite right.” It would have been in situations where a male counterpart might have said or suggested something and made me feel less than, and I have then reflected and thought, “You know what? That wasn’t right. I’m going to call them out on that the next time I see them.” You might have to come back to me, because I need to think about some other examples of what other people may have experienced.
Q30 Kevin McKenna: India and Hannah, have you seen anything?
India Perris-Redding: I am similar. I have definitely been in situations as a female coach where I felt uncomfortable, or where I have been challenged because I am a female and I know they would not have challenged a male in that way. With regard to environment and culture, I have been pretty fortunate. Saying that, I have had to learn to stand on my own two feet and say when things are not right or say, “You can’t say that,” or challenge something. Ultimately, challenging something is really quite hard anyway, but we have to do it for the people who follow us.
The piece that is really important is educating the people in the environment that you are in. For me, I am under one roof with a men’s team, women’s team, academy, foundation, commercial—everyone. If we are all educated and on the same page and we know what is right and wrong, ultimately that creates a really great cultural environment. That is something I am lucky to be a part of, but it is not always straightforward. I would say most of my challenges have been out in the community, where people do not necessarily know me, and it has been those sexist comments that you just have to put up with to an extent, I guess.
Lisa Williams: I was thinking of an example. Our club had a men’s game and the lady that I founded the club with was coaching. For whatever reason, we did not have a table official so I was doing the table. One of the referees was somebody I had tutored on a referee qualification. The game was going on. The male coach for the other team was cussing and swearing at the referee and he did not bat an eyelid. My head coach for the men’s team—a female coach—was like, “Ref!” He teed her up straightaway and his attitude towards her was really derogatory throughout the whole match. I am surprised she did not get kicked out the way he was going on.
After the match—because I felt I had a relationship with him—I was like, “You do recognise what you did?” He was like, “No, what are you talking about?” I said, “What you did was misogyny in action. You treated her less than. You treated her completely differently from how you treated the male coach,” and he was like, “No, I didn’t.” I then laid out all the things that he had done throughout the whole game and he was like, “You know what? You’re right.” And I said, “You can’t do that. That’s wrong.” He was so apologetic and he went over and apologised. It is about educating these people with the unconscious bias about how they think it is appropriate to treat a woman over a man. It is inappropriate and it is about educating them to recognise that that behaviour is wrong.
Hannah Dingley: I have had some experiences. I am not sure if I would call it bullying, but I was coaching a non-league side and there was a coach in the opposition dugout who used some—it was not even “choice” language; it was bad. He ended up getting a 10-game ban through the FA. It was interesting. Again, I am really lucky to be in an environment where my players and staff would stand up for that, so we went through the process and got that ban.
There was also a colleague within the club environment who was saying things about me behind my back to players. Luckily, we have some good young men in this club who stood up and reported it and that person ended up having to leave the club. I think he jumped before he was pushed. Unfortunately, those things do exist. I was probably quite lucky to be in a senior role within the clubs I have worked at, but I have certainly come across colleagues who have gone in at a more junior level and had to deal with some really tough times, particularly when they have worked in the male game, and then having to leave their role. Unfortunately it is still rife.
Q31 Kevin McKenna: Escalating it through the FA must have been pretty tough. What was that like for you?
Hannah Dingley: It sounds awful, but it was like going to a court of law, because he wanted to defend himself. I do not want to repeat the words that he used, but it was reassuring that obviously the decision came down on my side and he was banned for a long time, which ultimately meant he had to lose his job because he could not coach—I think it was 10 games that he missed. It is tough for women out there sometimes.
India Perris-Redding: Can I just add to that as well? It is really important that females know that there are positive experiences when they have reported; there are a lot of cases where females will not report because they assume or have had previous experiences of other people where it has just been hush-hushed or maybe they move on to a different environment. The powerful piece on that is knowing that females in environments can report these things. No matter how small or big it might feel, if it does not feel right then it needs to be said. When these governing bodies take action on it and do something about it, that is the really important piece.
Q32 Kevin McKenna: How has it changed across your career?
India Perris-Redding: It has got better.
Q33 Kevin McKenna: Is that true in all the sports?
Lisa Williams: I would say you are very lucky if it has got better. I think it is still the same. I have probably been coaching quite a while and those viewpoints or mindsets of others are still the same in 2026 unfortunately. There is that preconceived idea about how you are supposed to conduct yourself and behave as a woman that has not changed. With younger ones coming in, if they have had experience of female coaches they will be used to it. When you come across people who are not used to female coaches and have a preconceived idea about how you are supposed to conduct yourself, that is when that rhetoric comes out and unfortunately it is still around.
India Perris-Redding: I agree. Sometimes as female coaches, we might be really fortunate in the bubble that we are in and then our view of it might feel slightly better. That is not to say that others in the outside world do not still experience it on a daily basis if they go to a different club, play a different fixture or have a conversation with a parent. You are probably right.
Q34 Kevin McKenna: Are there changes between the different competitive levels as well? You talk about the differences between sports and different clubs and bubbles, but are there differences at different levels of playing?
Lisa Williams: I would say there is probably more bullying that happens at the higher level in sport. At grassroots everybody is quite amicable, but as you go higher in the levels it is more competitive; everybody is vying for positions. It becomes very cliquey and you might get, “Oh, we don’t want her in, so let’s all stick together and make her uncomfortable so she feels in a position where she’s like, ‘I’m not taking this anymore; I’m going to step out and leave,’” which happens quite a bit.
India Perris-Redding: I would say so. In the elite level as well, probably across a lot of sports, the roles are sometimes made for someone they already know to slip straight in to. Again, that is one of our issues, that females are not seeing these roles, and then when they get to them, the culture there is not quite ready for them—the men are maybe not used to it, one comment will be made and it is that negative experience. I would say it happens at every level. I know grassroots can be tough for female coaches, especially in rugby when there is maybe one mum who is trying to learn to coach against six dads. That in itself can be a challenge.
Hannah Dingley: I always hear, “But it’s football. It’s football. You can do that, right? It’s football.” It is the same way that parents come to a junior football match and can shout abuse at a 16-year-old referee because it is football. These are rational people in normal everyday life, but not when they are on the side of a football field; they turn into monsters and think that is okay, which is probably a rhetoric that does not help.
In the men’s professional game, they probably have a lot of clubs that do everything right on the pitch, but the stuff off the pitch in terms of employment law actually is not in place. They are a grassroots football club that has invested some money into their playing side, got a few promotions, ended up in a football league—ta-dah!—and then they are like, “Oh, I am an employer. There are legal things and if somebody raises a complaint, that has to be dealt with appropriately.”
I am not sure all clubs in the lower echelons of the game in football have those structures to be able to deal with complaints, good employment and HR practices and do those things in the right way, which may also reflect on why females are not getting the roles as well. If you do not have transparent and good recruitment processes, as I say, that is ultimately going to mean that you will probably get the same type of people getting the same roles and potentially causing the same problems.
Q35 Christine Jardine: Thank you all very much for coming here. I am going to ask about the employment practices. How do you feel you compare in terms of job security, pay and parental leave provision with men in the same coaching positions in the same sports?
India Perris-Redding: In rugby, from a job security perspective it is really tough and challenging, especially if we are speaking about the elite of the elite—head coaches and PWR sides—because ultimately a lot of job security comes down to performance. The further down the food chain we go, the more it is heavily dependent on funding as well and we really need these people in these roles to be able to grow the game. From a rugby perspective, it can feel quite uneasy at times as a sport as a whole, probably more so as a female.
With regard to the maternity and paternity and stuff, if we look at the situation as a whole, because we have so many men in these positions, the most they will probably ever take is a couple of weeks of paternity. If you put a woman into a role, they will already seem more high risk in rugby because they might fall pregnant, for example. Without knowing it, this unconscious bias of putting a woman in that role is already high risk for some people. Job security is one of the biggest challenges in rugby.
Q36 Christine Jardine: Would you say it is the same in all sports? How does that affect the potential for staff development and your career development?
India Perris-Redding: I have lived very much in a bubble of rugby for the past 10 years. With regard to career development, unless you have that ally or role model on your side and see these people in positions that you want to be in, it can be really challenging to persevere in that role. Sometimes with females in rugby, it seems a case of, “Oh, we’ll stick you on that course because we’ll get you that certificate and that might help you.” It is ad hoc career development here and there, not, “Let’s sit you down. I want to get you to this place. This is how we’re going to do that.”
Q37 Christine Jardine: Lisa or Hannah, did you have anything you wanted to add to that? Has your experience been the same?
Lisa Williams: It is really difficult for women to progress in sport—especially, as you said, if they have children. Women are seen as the primary childcare provider, so if they have children, that takes them off any trajectory that they were planning to go on. The opportunities are quite difficult. The opportunities available for basketball coaches are not as rife as they are in football and rugby. Unless you are working as part of an academy, you will not work full time. You are likely to be a community or sessional coach so you will have a second job anyway.
That was definitely my experience when I first started coaching. I coached while I was at uni and then worked for the local authority and still coached. It was not as though there was a job that I could walk into as a full-time basketball coach; they are very few and far between. There are organisations out there that develop basketball coaches. Greenhouse Sports used to do this quite a lot and some individual academies would take on board coaches, but those jobs were primarily taken by male coaches.
That has changed a little bit now. There are a few female coaches in academies working full time, but those jobs do not come up very often and most women who coach do so within the community. If it comes up, you might get the nod from somebody who says, “I know there’s a job coming up.” You might get a look in, but you’re more likely to be overseen for a male coach, unfortunately.
Q38 Christine Jardine: Hannah, just briefly, is there one improvement that you see that would change things? Better paternity leave?
Hannah Dingley: It is really interesting because I was racking my brain thinking, “Can I think of any female coaches who have actually had time off?” And maybe that is because women do not think they can. Emma Hayes did when she had her child. I have to say I do not see the men taking paternity leave either. The culture of the sport is just “Go, go, go.” You cannot have time off or breaks. It goes back to, “It’s football, isn’t it?”
If you ask people about their working week in football, there will be a lot of expectation to work above and beyond 40 hours a week and for probably not a lot of pay—“If you don’t want to do it, don’t worry—somebody else will.” I know there is a lot of that particularly for young people going into football. There are so many people who apply for a job; it sounds awful, but that means that employers can almost burn them out and then there will be another young one wanting to come in and do the hours. Culturally, that is the mindset.
I have to say as a positive that at the club I am at now, our managing director, Charlotte O’Neill, is a mother and she is unbelievable. We have an all-female women’s leadership team leading the club and obviously we have had a very successful season. I am not necessarily saying one adds to the other, but again it shows that you can juggle both more than competently. Again, those biases that exist sometimes make it hard to get to that situation where you can have that.
Christine Jardine: It is a culture change within sports that would make the biggest difference. That is fascinating.
Chair: There is a good international example in Spanish basketball where one of their male coaches took his full paternity leave, which is now 19 weeks, and was very proud to do so. Part of this conversation has to be about paternity leave because, although we are having the babies, we do not have to take sole responsibility for caring for them. That panel was absolutely fascinating. Hannah, India and Lisa, thank you very much. We are going to switch panels now.
Witnesses: Amy Fazackerley, Emily Handyside and Lisa West.
Chair: Welcome back to panel two. Thank you very much. You will have heard the fantastic evidence session that we have just had, so you will be aware of what we are going to be asking and the conversation we have had. It is brilliant to welcome Amy Fazackerley, national partnerships manager at Coach Core Foundation. We have Emily Handyside, coaching lead at UK Coaching, and Lisa West, head of policy, partnership and public affairs at Women in Sport. Welcome to you all and thank you very much for joining us.
Q39 Kim Leadbeater: It is lovely to have you all here this afternoon. Lisa, it is nice to see you; I have done quite a lot of work with Women in Sport, and I have possibly met Emily and Amy at some point over the last few years. We are going to talk first about routes into coaching for young women. Lisa, Sport England told us that there is a gender imbalance in sports-related courses before entry into the workforce. What explains this early gender imbalance in the coaching pipeline?
Lisa West: It goes back to birth. It goes right back to the beginning and the impact of gender stereotyping. From the moment we are born we are stereotyped, which starts to dictate our relationship with sport and physical activity. The narrative that we hear is that boys need to run off steam and girls are good and sit quietly reading their books, and this plays straight into sport.
From our work around primary girls, we see that girls as young as five years old come into school with a skill deficit. Boys, on average, are more able at that point to throw and kick a ball than girls, although that is not true of absolutely everyone. Their experience through primary school is affected. The boys already affect the girls’ relationship with sport. Even at that primary age, boys tell girls that they do not belong and that they are not good enough. We know it starts young. The impact of puberty is huge. We see the absolutely massive drop-out that was alluded to earlier; 1.3 million girls drop out of sport at that age.
When we track it through into coaching and the workforce, our pool is already smaller. Those societal factors around caring responsibilities, whether for children or elderly parents, that were touched upon at the end of the last panel, are gender stereotyping as well. The same causes trigger that, which puts women under pressure in the home to pick up the burden of that work. Women on average have five hours’ less free time per week than male counterparts.
When you think about that, whether you are coaching in a volunteer role or doing it as a sessional coach, we know there are few full-time coaching roles out there. That is just the reality of it. If you have less free time then you have less time to put in. So that relationship with sport, all the way through to the societal impact on how women are valued in a sporting context, plays out hugely when it comes to coaching.
Q40 Kim Leadbeater: What specific actions do you think governing bodies and/or the Government could take to attract more young women into coaching and create more visible pathways?
Lisa West: For the last couple of years we have been leading the Women in Coaching Taskforce, part of which produced the “Reimagining Sport Coaching” report funded by Sport England. When we went into this task force, the problem we were trying to solve was the lack of female coaches. Critically, the purpose of it was not to get more female coaches—that sounds slightly counterintuitive, but the experience that so many women have in coaching had to be the focus of the task force. We call it the leaky bucket. That is the expression that is used. Lisa Williams talked about it a little.
We know the number of qualified women, and NGBs can tell you how many are being qualified. What they cannot tell you is where they are. The report very clearly shows that the experiences of female coaches are not good. You referenced the bullying statistic; one in three women has been bullied and 20% of women reported harassment. It was fascinating to listen to the amazing women talking a minute ago and saying, “I have not really been bullied; just not respected, belittled and isolated.” That is bullying—that is what it is.
In answer to the question about what needs to happen, let’s make sure that the conversation does not jump too quickly to “more”. All that does is land us in a zone where we put on courses for women to come, just to get women through the door, or we fast-track women into jobs they might not be ready to be in yet. Coaching is highly skilled—it takes years of practice to get to that point. It also nods at the quotas question, doesn’t it? If you put women in then you are setting them up to fail and, for the men who sit and question whether women should be there, it is giving them fodder and proving their point.
It is really important that we focus on getting the system right as it is now, and start to look at using the framework we outlined in our report—employment conditions, career and progression, culture, security and the safety—issues that were touched on in the previous panel. Get the basics right before we start trying to push more women in. We have to stop them falling out; it has to be about retention.
Q41 Kim Leadbeater: That is really interesting. Amy, Coach Core has said that apprenticeships remove some barriers that volunteer-based pathways do not always address. Can you tell us a little about what those barriers are and what your views are around how apprenticeships can be used to widen access and encourage more diverse talent to get involved in coaching?
Amy Fazackerley: This will probably pick up on a little of what was discussed in the first panel. One of the biggest challenges is around job security and the reliance at the moment on those voluntary pathways into the sector. An apprenticeship provides a paid employment route into our sector, which gives a level of security that perhaps is not seen through other pathways. By the very nature of what an apprenticeship is, it also provides an opportunity to learn and develop while you are in employment, which is really key.
Coming back to some challenges that were discussed earlier, the barriers women are facing in terms of being told that sport is not for them, or that they do not have the right level of competence, or experience, or whatever it might be, all play out and make women feel less able, less competent and lacking in confidence. An apprenticeship provides that framework to say “It’s okay if you don’t have that prior level of experience. It’s okay if you haven’t done this before.” It is a pathway that really gives you an opportunity to learn, train, and develop as you go with an organisation that hopefully is signing up to an apprenticeship because it is committed to your development and will support you through that journey.
That is where the real value is in the apprenticeship route, particularly for young people considering their pathways into a career. It is a fantastic route for them to have the building blocks to work out what they enjoy, what they would like to do with their career, and be supported in building the steps to do that.
Q42 Kim Leadbeater: On top of that, you have called for improved careers education. It is something I feel quite strongly about. I ended up going back to do my degree when I was 25 because in my academic route, going to a traditional grammar school, sport was not even mentioned as a career. You were either going to be a doctor, lawyer or teacher. I did various other things first, but when I got to 25 I thought, “This is my absolute passion.” I did my fitness qualifications and then went on to do a degree in health-related fitness. What is missing from schools and colleges in terms of the career options they are putting out there for everybody, but particularly girls?
Amy Fazackerley: That is a really important point. It is an issue across the board, not just women’s pathways into sport. Sport is just not seen. It is not understood. It is not recognised. There are a lot of misconceptions about what sport is. It is an elite pathway—you become a professional footballer and earn loads of money. That is what sport is. Unfortunately, it is either seen as that or as something you do as a hobby on the side.
There is not really a broad understanding and awareness that sport and physical activity can provide an amazing career. Coaching is one route, but there are so many other routes into our sector. If you speak to the witnesses today, or anyone working in sport and physical activity, they might have started as a coach. They might have been a grassroots coach on a voluntary basis, a sessional coach, or a part-time coach and that then opened up, over a period of time, a range of different pathways across a number of other opportunities. That is key.
To go back to your first point, unfortunately it is just not seen. If you take a look at virtual work experience platforms, where young people are exploring their options and looking at what career opportunities might be available, sport and physical activity is not there. You see the same sectors continually. You see construction and finance and all these other sectors, but you very rarely see sport and physical activity. Young people are not aware that this is a pathway that they can pursue.
Unfortunately, it also comes down to an over-reliance on academic competency. A lot of young people feel far more comfortable in a practical setting. They prefer to learn in a very hands-on way, and sport is an amazing outlet to enable them to do that as a participant, but also to open up that career pathway. That is the bit that is missing at the moment; it is just not recognised.
Q43 Kim Leadbeater: That is brilliant and it fits in perfectly with the conversations that have been had by the Government and the media over the number of young people who are not in employment, education, or training. Your organisation has described sport and physical activity as an under-utilised vehicle for tackling youth unemployment and improving social mobility. Could you tell us a little more about what you think needs to be done to unlock that potential? I absolutely agree that the skills you learn through working and playing in sport and physical activity are not about getting grades at GCSE or A-levels, but they are extremely valuable.
Amy Fazackerley: The first step is around that awareness and understanding of what our sector is. It is not just professional sport as a professional athlete. It is so broad. There are so many opportunities in our sector. If the elite pathway and the talent pathway is an area you want to progress into, that is great—there are definitely opportunities there—but there are also other routes. That is the first step. It is about building that understanding and awareness of what our sector is, but also what you can actually achieve through participating and working in sport and, as you mentioned, Kim, the skills you can gain and how transferable they can be into other areas of your life.
If you look at the narrative around the youth unemployment challenge coming through, such as the Youth Voice Census, it is telling us that young people are feeling less prepared for their future than ever before and less connected to their communities than ever before, that their levels of confidence are at an all-time low and their levels of anxiety are at an all-time high. Sport and physical activity can play such an important role in supporting physical and mental well-being for everybody, but particularly for young people at this really critical point where there is such a level of anxiety and fear for their future and what it will hold.
We know that, if a young person is out of work at a young age, it has a long-term scarring effect on their ability to gain employment in the future. The ability of sport and physical activity to help young people build skills and confidence and open up a pathway in a career they are hopefully really passionate about by doing something they really enjoy, as well as making a difference in their own community, is a no-brainer.
There is so much potential for our sector that is not seen and recognised. It is seen just as a “nice to have” or a hobby, but it can play such a pivotal role in helping to address what is a really broad societal challenge at the moment. We now have over 1 million young people who are not in education, employment or training. The impact is huge.
Q44 Kim Leadbeater: You mentioned two other sectors, finance and construction. Coincidentally, I was speaking to an inspirational woman last night called Vicky Brook, who set up Women’s Leadership Group. Her organisation looks at how we can get more women into leadership roles, and the role of sport in developing the skills to enable women to go into other sectors such as finance and construction. It might be that some people have a lifelong career in sport, or they might have a short career in sport and go on to do other things. Is that something you recognise?
Amy Fazackerley: Yes, certainly. From the work that we do, we have young people who come through our apprenticeship programme and stay in our sector. They might progress into full-time coaching roles, coach development roles, or other roles in our sector. But we also see young people who move on to other sectors as well because they have built the confidence and the skill set. They have the experience of having a job, which at the moment is really important; that is not particularly easy to come by. Participating, being involved in sport, helping to build those skills, and then being able to utilise those skills across all areas of life is huge.
Q45 Rachel Taylor: Thank you to you all for being here today. You all sat through the initial session as well, so thank you. This is a really exciting piece of work for us. What do you think are the main barriers to women entering and progressing in coaching roles, Emily?
Emily Handyside: There is a web of challenges that women often have to navigate, right from contemplating being a coach and entering coaching—we have heard a bit today about the stereotypes that women are facing and the biases where they might be excluded or overlooked.
UK Coaching did a study in 2025 looking at mums who coach or mums whose children are in sports clubs. They found that four out of five mums were not involved in their children’s clubs at all. One in three of those would love to coach with the right support, but they felt they did not have the sport specific knowledge. We have to bear in mind that women often did not take part in sports in our generation. They just wanted a bit of knowledge and support from somebody in the club. That support was the key piece. It was not just, “Put me on a course, get me qualified, and let me go.”
Women often tell us that those courses are expensive, inflexible, and take a lot of time. We need multiple ways for women to access that training, and then we need ongoing support and multiple pathways for those women to stay in coaching. We have heard about the caring responsibilities of women. We need to look at flexible contracts, whether that is volunteer or employment contracts. We need to consider job shares. When somebody leaves or steps away from coaching, we should not see it as absolute. We need to look at ways they can re-enter.
We have spoken about retention a lot today. There is no data that exists around that retention and we really need to understand women’s engagement in sport, coaching and leadership throughout the whole life cycle. The first barrier is that entry point barrier, but there are many that exist after that. Really the whole system needs to be looked at and we need multiple pathways.
Q46 Rachel Taylor: It is fair to say that there are challenges in terms of women staying in coaching. I heard a story from the tennis club where I play of a female coach who had been coaching a young boy for a few months, but he just stopped booking her coaching sessions. She found out that his dad had gone directly to the male head coach at the club and said, “It is time he had a man coaching him.” It is very difficult for that female coach to stay in coaching if she is not getting the same work opportunities. Do you find there are other instances of that across various sports?
Emily Handyside: There are a number of challenges. There are coaches fortunate to have full-time contracts who are navigating the challenges that the coaches on the previous panel spoke about. They really need support. They need mentors. They need coach developers who can help them to navigate the technical knowledge that they might be missing, but also relational challenges, such as the bullying we heard about and the boundary setting that women often need help with.
We also hear about women who have part-time contracts and are self-employed. They might go off work on maternity leave for a year to have a child, and in that time their clients, the people they coach, have gone elsewhere. There is no protection for those people who are self-employed and experience different challenges from the full-time employed coaches.
We then have volunteer coaches who do not have contracts at all. We think of it as a social contract, whereby they agree to give their time, expertise, emotional labour, and often their own money. Implicitly they hope and expect in return that they will be respected, valued and protected, particularly if there is any conflict. That is not happening for volunteers—that social contract is being broken. A great deal needs to be looked at in all types of contracts across all levels and parts of the workforce.
Q47 Rachel Taylor: According to your research, the number of women in coaching declined by 6% between 2022 and 2024. What do you think has caused that decline? Is it anything specific or things that we have already covered?
Emily Handyside: We have looked at it across the different levels and domains and it has dropped at every stage apart from, interestingly, the elite international level. The biggest decline was at grassroots and volunteer level. There was a 10% decline at that level. We are also seeing a decline in women coaching aged 18 to 34, but an increase in women age 35+ entering coaching. It really points to the life stages of women being a factor. The volunteer nature, that social contract that I spoke about, is difficult for all coaches, but if we add to that women caring at home, they have multiple challenges and layers, it means that women are facing and experiencing even harder challenges than the men are facing because of the multiple things they are navigating.
Q48 Rachel Taylor: I will come to you, Lisa. In the previous panel we touched on FIFA’s requirements for teams to have either an assistant or head coach who is female. In your view, how effective are things such as gender quotas in addressing the barriers to women entering, progressing, and staying in coaching?
Lisa West: Hannah gave a brilliant answer, which is that it cannot be the stand-alone. It cannot be the only answer. We talk a lot about culture being the issue. Women in Sport talks about the need for 50:50 leadership. It means gender-balanced leadership, but terming it that way implies an action plan, an ambition, a strategy and markers to achieve it. The danger we hear from a lot of women is that, with all these programmes that happen, they are so overqualified for some jobs they are in that the hostile environments are hideous. If we drop women into environments that are hostile, we are setting them up to fail.
It is fascinating that, when you talk about role models, there are women who may have had a really tough experience; they desperately want to be a role model and try to tell the women behind them to come and be a coach, but they are having to suppress all the bad experiences and pretend that everything is okay. It is just unfair that we put women in that position.
Ultimately, it all stems from tackling the misogyny that still exists in sport. We know it is there. I have had amazing conversations with some NGBs about how we uproot this. We have been advocating for an anti-misogyny policy in sport for a long time. Crucially, the conversations we have been having are about the increase in reports of misogyny that are coming—the increase in reports from women about the bad experiences they are having. However, because there is no policy in place, there is nothing to hang them on and there are no sanctions. There is no clarity on the sanctions.
Setting out targets is fine but, unless we are putting in the policy and defining what good looks like, we are not investing in the ability to ultimately regulate sport—that sanctions bit and dealing with complaints. Confidence in reporting is low, and the report showed us that, but it is low across men and women. We have to have confidence in reporting; all those things have to be in place before you can say, “Now you must have women in these roles,” otherwise we are just sticking them up.
Q49 Rachel Taylor: Amy, do you think there is enough work going on to understand and address the impacts of intersectional inequalities on entry and progression in the whole range of non-playing roles?
Amy Fazackerley: It is a real challenge, and it was touched upon in the first panel as well. We are absolutely seeing examples, particularly through our work, of young people breaking through some barriers and challenges.
We have an amazing example of a young Muslim girl on our Nottingham programme. She has openly admitted that it has been really hard for her because it is not seen as the norm for a young Muslim girl to be participating in sport, let alone building a career pathway in it. Kim mentioned this earlier, but there are a lot of cultural expectations that some young people are faced with in terms of the career pathways that are seen to be appropriate for them.
There are examples of some amazing young people who are sticking true to what they believe in and are passionate about, but they are unfortunately a minority, because of everything we are speaking about today. The system around them is not necessarily supporting that. They have to break down those barriers themselves and be really determined and clear on what it is they want in their life in order to get to that position. Although we are seeing some really great examples of that, it is unfortunately still the minority because, when you take all the barriers that we are hearing about today and then layer in some additional complexities and challenges that intersectionality can provide, it becomes even more challenging.
Q50 Rachel Taylor: What kind of practical changes do you think are needed to overcome that?
Amy Fazackerley: That is really difficult to answer, because there is no one-size-fits-all answer. If you look at intersectionality, you are thinking about gender, ethnicity, disability, and socio-economic status. There is no golden bullet, unfortunately, to address this.
What is key, and what has come through from the conversations today, is that you can’t be it if you can’t see it. Where we are seeing those examples, in our case, of young people who are battling through those barriers, really making a success of themselves against all the odds, we really need to celebrate that. We need to promote it, because those individuals are becoming the relatable role models that other young people can aspire to be, look up to, and see that, despite all the challenges that unfortunately still remain, there are routes and opportunities.
That is key here. It is about how we celebrate the individuals and the young people who have been able to push through those barriers, listen to those individuals and their experiences and understand them because, even sitting here today, I cannot provide a lived experience of being a young Muslim girl. I cannot begin to understand the additional challenges that might present to somebody who is from that community. It is about listening. It is about understanding. It is about being open to a conversation about what those challenges are and what we all collectively need to do to address them, because there is not one answer. It is about understanding what each individual person and community needs in order to create an environment where they feel safe, protected, and that it is a viable route for them and a route in which they feel they belong.
Q51 Kevin McKenna: I would just like to explore a little the employment conditions facing women in the sector. Emily, what evidence are you able to share on the availability and adequacy of maternity and parental leave policies for coaches across the sector?
Emily Handyside: Working in partnership with Women in Sport, we have set up a project group looking at this. We have a number of organisations and NGBs involved, such as the LTA and others, which have highlighted the scarcity of information. Where maternity policies exist for employed coaches, they are often not well communicated or they are not very applicable. I am a coach developer supporting coaches and one said to me, “I met the person from HR to do the risk assessment before maternity leave and the number one risk assessment she started with was tripping over a laptop in an office.” She is a triathlon coach going overseas in 35° heat, coaching at 6 am and riding a bike. The application of those policies or the communication of those policies is not always there.
There is certainly not enough information around paternity leave. We have heard from male coaches in the sector who say that they just did not feel they were able to take any leave at all for their children’s births, birthdays and so on. We recognise that, in order for women to thrive, we need men to understand that they can take leave as well.
We have also highlighted through that group the need to look at more flexible approaches to support people through that stage of life—men and women. As an example, the LTA has an accreditation scheme for coaches and every year they have to do a certain amount of learning to maintain it. It has introduced a rule where they can pause or suspend it for a year or two while they are on maternity leave. We really only found one or two examples of that across the whole industry, so we need to look at more policies, practices, and approaches that enable that flexibility for all parents and particularly women pre-maternity leave.
That is the other thing we established: even where there are policies around maternity leave, there are lots of challenges facing coaches who are planning their family, particularly in same-sex couples who might need IVF and things like that. Those policies were really lacking pre-maternity leave. We also found, post maternity leave and returning to work, that there were not many good examples of employers or managers having conversations with coaches around phased returns to work, job shares and things like that. It is really scarce and there is a lot that needs to be done in that space.
Amy Fazackerley: A lot of coaching hours can be quite unsociable and we heard from extended staff who we are supporting through our programme that it presents some challenges around the childcare aspect, particularly funded childcare hours, which tend to be connected to nursery or childminder opening times that do not necessarily align to when coaching activity and delivery might be taking place. That is another key aspect of this. It is absolutely everything Emily has said around pre and even during, but also post maternity, coming back into work and thinking about how it enables a woman to return. As Emily was saying, what implication does it have for the wider family and those childcare responsibilities?
Q52 Kevin McKenna: What can governing bodies and the Government do to address a lot of these barriers for women in this situation?
Emily Handyside: A national approach to coach welfare, whereby we outline minimum standards and expectations. Within that there needs to be some requirement for these policies to exist and for sports to demonstrate that they are communicating them to their workforce, paid or voluntary. That needs to be a black-and-white requirement. They have to demonstrate that they are providing flexible and inclusive pathways that are aligned to those policies that do not always currently exist.
Lisa West: We have talked so much about sports participation over the last few years. We have probably missed the point that, without people to lead sport and activity, there is no participation. There is now a move to recognise that the workforce is absolutely critical, but it requires investment. It requires the same level of investment we have put into participation in the workforce, adding to the pressure of women coming back from having children as well.
Coaching is quite low paid. We have heard that. With the pressures that families are under, the childcare responsibility is probably going to fall to the person who is not the breadwinner in the family. We have this problem where we are trying to bring more women into coaching, but if it is not well paid, they are always going to end up dropping out in order to do childcare.
I spoke to an amazing coach who said, “I would not have been able to do this when my kids were young.” She interestingly said, “I do not think I would have been able to do it when I was married.” That is the all-encompassing nature of coaching. There is something about the perception of coaching more broadly. We have seen one version of it—haven’t we?—a very loud, very shouty, very male version of what it looks like. So not only are women fighting their way through coaching, but they are also fighting to rewrite what coaching is and looks like. That is what is going to inspire the next generation, going back to the power of sport, the power of the role model, what that person can do, and what female coaches can do for young boys by giving them those amazing role models that we know they need right now.
Q53 Kevin McKenna: If we are rewriting the rule book on coaching, within coaching is there a difference in pay between men and women?
Lisa West: According to the report, yes. I will defer to Emily on some of this, but there is a lot of ambiguity about coaching jobs—is that fair to say? You do not always know exactly how much is being paid to whom. It is very, “Nod nod, wink wink, you’ve got the job” behind closed doors. Probably one of the biggest problems is a lack of clarity and honesty.
Q54 Kevin McKenna: Is it more transparent for women coaches than male coaches? Is it men who are hiding their pay?
Lisa West: I will defer to Emily. She will be able to answer this better.
Emily Handyside: In general, we heard it in the previous panel: jobs are not necessarily advertised openly and transparently. That is the first problem. When they are, they will often not have a pay scale. The Women’s Sport Collective has a jobs board and refuses to put jobs on there that do not advertise pay scales. That stuff is enabling disparities to exist. We also do not require any organisation to do gender reporting, so we do not truly know the pay gap that exists between men and women.
Lisa West: The report clearly shows that there are issues there.
Emily Handyside: Yes, particularly as you progress up into the high performance.
Lisa West: Even in volunteer roles, women are less likely to be paid expenses or less likely to be paid expenses on time. It is in volunteer roles as well as in paid coaching roles.
Q55 Kevin McKenna: As women progress up, at what stages of the career progression are the biggest barriers for them?
Amy Fazackerley: Unfortunately, there are barriers at every stage. We have spoken a little about seeing sport as a viable career option in the first place. That is one of the biggest barriers to taking first steps into our sector. Unfortunately, a lot of young women do not see it as something for them or that there are opportunities within it. That is the first step.
If you are fortunate enough to be able to take that that first step then the next part to that is culture, which we have touched upon a little today. We are really fortunate in the work that we do. We are working with fantastic organisations that are fully committed to supporting the development and progression of young people. Unfortunately, that is not always the case or the norm.
Culture is another really big barrier that has been touched upon a lot today. It is one thing getting somebody in the door, but if hey then do not feel welcomed or supported, or the hours they are doing are inflexible to their other responsibilities, or the pay is not viable to live off of, those are additional barriers. You then start to move into career progression barriers that the first panel spoke of, of wanting to progress but not being seen, or feeling that there are no progression routes, which Emily and Lisa will touch upon as well.
Emily Handyside: UK Coaching did a report on tackling inequalities, looking at female coach progression through the pathways to high performance. We found that, in the pathway space or moving into it, there was a lack of equal opportunities. A lot of the mentoring and CPD is informal. If you are part of the network, you hear about it, but if you are not, you miss out. There is no equality of opportunity and development to move into it. There is equality for those who make it to high performance. There is equity, there are lots of opportunities, but they are now being experienced as a burden—“I have to do all this extra development, and I have to carry the emotional burden of being the woman doing it right for those who follow behind me.” There are some really interesting differences that we see as a woman journeys through the different levels.
Q56 Kevin McKenna: There does seem to be a bit of convenient opacity to a lot of these practices. Is that true for recruitment full stop? How do the current recruitment practices in coaching affect women?
Lisa West: We had a really interesting discussion at the roundtable that Kim mentioned yesterday. We were talking about men and boys and their relationship with women and girls and sport. Some “hot off the press” stats that we have are really interesting and start to tell the story. What came up at the session was the idea that everyone is recruited on merit, that there is a system in place—but it is farcical, because if everyone believes that everyone is recruited on merit, no one is ever going to do anything differently. All that bias talked about earlier is at the heart of any recruitment practice.
It looks vaguely on paper as if it is on merit, but you are not even in the room. You would not even have thought to have been in the room, because the entire culture has not enabled you to be there. It is only on merit to for the people who have got through the system and already vaguely fit. For women, that is hard enough. For women of colour or with disabilities, it is even harder. There is a lot of hiding behind, “Yes, our recruitment system is fair.”
Q57 Kevin McKenna: There is a lot of assumed knowledge, and men are learning the assumed knowledge earlier or more implicitly.
Lisa West: The network of sport is huge. The idea starts in the playground that you are in the club if you are a footballer, doesn’t it? The football boys are kings at school. That is still just the truth. The network is built from that and from the sports clubs. It just seeps up and you are never quite in it.
Amy Fazackerley: We have seen examples from our young people. I spoke to one of our young people earlier this week and she said that, as a younger person, she was experiencing quite a lot of challenges in her personal life and her outlet for managing and dealing with that was the gym. She knew that was the pathway she wanted to try to explore as a career.
She went to college and started her PT qualification. She said that she was the only girl on that course, and accessing the gym with a group of peers and a tutor she was made to feel that she did not fit. She did not look right in that environment. She was not really athletic. She was not super slim. She was none of the things that were the perception of what you needed to be in order to fit in that environment.
Fortunately, she was strong-willed enough to know it was still the right pathway that she wanted to pursue. Further down the line, it led to her coming on to an apprenticeship with us. She has now gone on to do some incredible work. She is inspiring and mentoring the next generation of young people, who hopefully will also now go on to participate in sport and possibly even build a pathway.
It comes back to the point we were making earlier. There are so many experiences and opportunities for women to feel that this may not be the right environment for them. Therefore, they do not even get to the recruitment stage, because they have had to overcome so many of those barriers prior.
Lisa West: We were talking a little earlier about the impact of the challenges we know young men are facing today, their attitudes and how they are changing. This is what our next bit of research is looking at. That 18 to 34-year-old group of young men do not have the same views as men older than them do about women’s role in society and feminism. We are backtracking; we are going backwards in our views. You have said that young women really feel that. There has been this huge progress in women’s sport and that is absolutely brilliant, but we are in danger of winding it back because of—well, whatever reasons we want to blame it on; that is for a different panel—the pressures that young men are facing and the impact they are having on young women as a result.
Amy Fazackerley: We are definitely seeing that. We see it not just in our sector, but unfortunately with the rise of social media and the influence it is having on our young boys and girls about their role and place in society and what they should ultimately become or their whole purpose for existing. It is a difficult topic, it is a sensitive topic, but it is unfortunately a prevalent topic. It is something that is going to continue to challenge the progress that we have made.
Lisa West: We need the anti-misogyny policy and education around it to exist, so that people understand what it is they are trying to tackle.
Q58 Chair: Lisa, Women in Sport’s research suggests that female coaches are more likely to experience bullying, harassment and aggression; I guess that is similar to quite a lot of workplaces. How would you describe the prevalence and nature of this? Are you seeing it worsen considering the environment that we are seeing in terms of the media, social media and society as a whole?
Lisa West: One main thing is that this is the first survey we have done of this kind, and our ambition is that we will be able to track it and, with all the work that is happening, see the trends. At the moment, we are looking at one point in time. We have anecdotal bits of evidence, but a survey of this kind has not happened before.
To a point I mentioned earlier, it is women saying, “No, that is bullying. What has happened to me is bullying.” This is the tip of the iceberg, because of what was said earlier about women saying, “They were a bit off, but it was not that bad. I could handle it. I powered through.” What the report showed is that for lapsed coaches, feeling disrespected and unheard was the reason why so many women left. You have your outright bullying and harassment and then you have this layer that sits beneath it and women are just walking away, voting with their feet, and that is the leaky bucket.
It is a huge challenge. We have endless stories from women that put the reality behind these numbers. One huge challenge is asking women to speak about this, especially if they are in their career. We know this because it is not just about sport. They will not speak about it. No one wants to be that woman who makes a fuss or complains about their employer, because it will not get you another job. As we do not have that many female coaches in the system, we have even fewer who are retired— that is often the point when women can reflect and say, “This is what happened to me,” but they cannot do that, so they are silenced.
Q59 Chair: It is really important to say at this point that, if anybody does want to put forward or submit evidence and information to the Committee, they can do so anonymously. It really does help and make a difference. We found this with other Committee sessions and inquiries, whether on misogyny in music or women in comedy. We know that women are struggling, especially the ones who are working within the industry currently and are fearful for their careers. Thank you for that point.
When somebody does come forward, how well is it currently being handled by different organisations or governing bodies? Is there more that Government could be or should be doing to tackle and support this?
Lisa West: We have talked a lot about athlete safety over the last few years. We need to be talking in exactly the same way about coach safety right from the beginning. We are starting to put the process in for athletes; get them in for coaches as well. We have to protect our coaches.
There is low confidence in reporting; that is what our report showed. About 25% of coaches reported feeling confident in the reporting structures. A lot said that nothing happened or they did not believe anything would happen, but I believe a huge part of that is underinvestment in those reporting structures. A lot of NGBs say, “If we opened the can of worms and asked people properly to tell us everything that is going on, we would not be able to deal with the number of complaints.” They do not invite people to complain, knowing that they cannot deal with people when they do complain. It is a bit of a Catch-22. How do you inspire confidence in the system, if the system is not ready to deal with the number of complaints that come through? I genuinely believe they are doing what they can with the resource they have, but as a sector, is it good enough? Nowhere near.
Q60 Chair: What is the one big thing that could be done to change that?
Lisa West: One big thing that could be done is investment. Can that be an answer? It just needs investment.
Emily Handyside: We need a system-wide approach. At the moment, it is left to individual organisations and governing bodies to have their own system and mechanisms in place and, as Lisa said, they are overwhelmed. If we have investment in a system-wide approach or mechanism then we can deal with the level of complaints and build trust and confidence in those raising concerns that they will be heard and responded to.
Amy Fazackerley: There is almost another layer to this. If you strip it back to what Lisa was saying, women do not feel confident to report because they are not confident that anything will be done or that they will not be blamed for making that complaint in the first place. There is another angle to this: a common thread from today that is around the culture within our sector, in society, and within organisations in sport and physical activity to really empower women and help them feel that it is a place where they belong and are welcome, as they should be.
Q61 Chair: Culture change is a big thing. What can we do? What can we ask the Government for to change the culture? Is there anything we could be doing that would really push the dial on this?
Emily Handyside: My view is that it is a framework of minimum standards on coaching conditions, which would cover things such as contracts for volunteers and paid staff. It would include policies. It would include information around inclusive and accessible supported pathways for coaches. It would talk about mechanisms for dealing with conflict and concerns. I think we need a national framework that says, “This is the absolute minimum that needs to be in place.” We then need investment to make sure that it can be implemented.
Lisa West: Education about the way misogyny manifests, about the impact of stereotyping—entirely blameless; this is a societal issue, it is nobody’s fault, it is just the way the world has evolved, but we have to understand it. We have to know how to tackle it and how to have difficult conversations. We do not learn how to have difficult conversations.
Chair: We always have difficult conversations.
Lisa West: Maybe this is the wrong building to say that in; the rest of us do not.
Amy Fazackerley: The training piece is also around allyship. The conversation about allyship came up earlier and, at the moment, there may be a bit of fear—“I don’t understand what that means, so I don’t know how I can be an ally for a woman.” This is about how we can empower women, and how we can empower men to stand up for what is right for women because it affects their wives and daughters. It is the future society that their daughters are likely to grow up in. That is the other big side of the education piece.
Chair: It is the society that they are working and growing up in as well. A good society for women is also a good society for men on that front. Whether or not they have kids or wives, they should want a good society.
Q62 Christine Jardine: This is fascinating. One thing we want to look at, which fits in with what we have done elsewhere, is how effective you think the current coaching qualifications are in covering and addressing women’s health issues. Where are the gaps? How could it be better?
Lisa West: Hannah touched on it earlier in a question about research. It just cannot get through the system fast enough. We have a research gap, we have a research lag and then we have the coaching qualifications themselves. Most NGBs are starting to do it, but it comes back to money. The big ones are doing it faster.
There is great sharing, which is really heartening. Women’s sport has brought out this camaraderie of governing bodies that we have never seen before, which is fantastic. The RFU, the FA, the ECB, and England Network are working together on female health. That is in its favour and will gather momentum. All the sharing that is happening never used to happen. Sharing sports science information between sports would have been unheard of but, because everyone is trying to accelerate progress for the good of women’s sport, sharing is going on. That is all good; it just cannot happen fast enough.
It is then about getting it into all those qualifications, and the qualification is just one touch point. For some people, it is just a bit of paper, so it is about reinforcing it through coach development, mentoring, club environments and as many parts of sport as we can possibly communicate it through.
Q63 Christine Jardine: Emily, do you feel there are specific gaps?
Emily Handyside: There have been improvements, and Lisa just highlighted some examples of governing bodies doing work. There are still gaps, there are inconsistencies, but there are two things to note. First, we are not being efficient in how we are developing that education. Everybody is doing their own bit and then trying to collaborate. As a result, there is duplication and there are gaps. It would help if we could have a system-wide approach to this education.
Secondly, there is the research gap or research lag. The Loughborough University Women in Sport Research and Innovation Hub is a really good first start that needs ongoing investment.
Thirdly—I am going to add one even though I said two—there is the ongoing education that Lisa mentioned. At UK Coaching we have free learning and development resources on coaching women and girls. It is almost like a hidden secret; not all coaches know that it is there, so there is a lot of work to do to change the culture so that coaches are continuously seeking out learning. At the moment, there is a culture that you do one qualification and then you are done. We need to build that culture and understanding of where you go to continuously develop and learn. It might be resources, it might be a mentor or a coach developer but, ultimately, investment in all that is needed to grow the system and change the culture around learning.
Q64 Christine Jardine: One specific area I wondered about is research into equipment for women because historically all equipment in sport was designed for men. How big a gap is there or is there no gap? Do we just think it is a gap? How would you characterise it, Emily?
Emily Handyside: I do not know the statistics. There is a gap and I know the Loughborough Women in Sport hub has a specific research lab that will look at technology and equipment. It can give you the specifics of that but there are examples. Trainers are being developed for female athletes and I have seen different equipment such as cycling saddles. I do not know whether others have any other examples. There is an awareness, but investment in the research and then producing the product is the gap.
Lisa West: Even things such as smart watches—the size of them and where they sit on your wrist. It is so extensive. It is starting to happen, but it just cannot happen fast enough for us all.
Amy Fazackerley: From our perspective, in terms of the education piece, the coaching qualifications are absolutely one angle to this. The young people we support will be doing coaching qualifications, but they are also working full time on an apprenticeship, so there is that whole other angle of the education system that also needs to catch up with this and make sure that the research that is starting to evolve and develop is being embedded into those broader educational routes as well.
Q65 Christine Jardine: So that it is perhaps channelled better.
Emily Handyside: I have a good example of England Netball, which is taking education around sports bras to its general membership. It is a really good example of bridging that gap between research and education/information to the workforce.
Lisa West: Netball is such a good example, because women do not know this stuff—we were never taught this stuff either. There is sometimes an assumption that everything is fine with a female coach because she knows things, but we do not know it either. We need to learn it because, as we have said, the science did not exist. Well, it did exist; we just did not know about it. We were not taught about it. What Netball England has done is say that it is critical for women’s sport and, as female coaches, we need to know it and not relying on lived experience is truly fantastic.
Q66 Chair: We are going to have the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities in front of us in two weeks’ time. What is the one policy change you would like to see and urge her to prioritise to improve outcomes for women and girls in sport and in this area in particular?
Lisa West: In sport in its entirety?
Chair: In coaching in sport.
Lisa West: For coaches?
Chair: Yes.
Lisa West: I am only hesitating because it depends. If you are looking at tackling how you keep girls engaged, you are talking about education and experience in PE. We know the Schools Partnership Network is coming. We need to prioritise girls within that, targeting PE as a subject, and create environments where they feel like they belong—simple things such as allowing them to wear their PE kit to school on PE days. We know that makes a difference for them, and we have the evidence now to show that. If it is about keeping girls in sport to enable us to have coaches, it is there. If it is about coaches, it is getting to the heart of misogyny through policy, training and changing the culture.
Emily Handyside: We have spoken a lot about retention today. Making retention data a key metric for organisations is critical. There is no point in just knowing how many qualify. We need to make it a key metric to understand who is retained, when they leave, when they come back and why they leave. The retention piece is key in my opinion.
Amy Fazackerley: I am going to sit on the fence with my answer. It is difficult to give one policy change, because of everything we have talked about today, the complexity and how it all links together.
From my perspective, it is that early career awareness and how we empower our young women and girls to see a viable career pathway into sport and physical activity as a sector, whether as a participant or coach or via all the other routes we have touched upon. That is a really important first step, especially with the backdrop of the things that we have spoken about today and the influence of social media and how young women see their place in the world.
We have made some really good progress in that space but, unfortunately, we are at a point where we might start to see some real challenge around that. We are already seeing it a little. That in itself is not going to change everything, for all the reasons we have discussed. We can get our young women and girls onto a pathway but, if the culture is not right, we do not know enough about retention and there is not enough education around the misogyny piece, it falls down at a later stage.
At the moment, we are not even seeing that pathway for young women, because they have already grown up thinking that sport is not an environment for them. Society at times is not an environment for them. There is so much work that we need to do around how we support our young women and help them feel safe, supported and included. They can make such a valuable contribution. That is my answer.
Chair: Thank you so much to you and to the first panel. I am really grateful. It has been fascinating. For the very sporty members and sport-loving members on our Committee, it is even more fascinating to be a part of this. Thank you so much for your expertise, for your time, for your skills and for sharing your experiences. We are really grateful. That brings the session to a close.