At the Paris Olympics, 55 per cent of the National team were female athletes and Australia’s first 12 medals were won by women – a record-breaking achievement that was widely celebrated.
So why is it that according to the Australian Institute of Sport, female coaches make up only 9 per cent of high-and-elite performance coaches in Australia? The number hardly seems fitting.
Who comprises the support teams for female athletes? Who are their mentors? Their role models? More importantly, why is it so difficult for female coaches to progress to the top of the coaching food chain?
Former Strength and Conditioning coach for the AIS and current physical performance manager at cricket ACT, Krystle Tate, says the pathway for women in these coaching roles is hardly an easy one.
Krystle Tate, Performance manager at Cricket ACT
“In strength and conditioning particularly, it’s a very male dominated profession,” she says.
“But also, I think there’s still so many sports out there that are very set in their cultures and it’s very hard to change that because they’ve always had male coaches and that’s just the way it is.”
“Something I’ve found when I’ve been interviewing for a position is they say, well, you’ve never played this sport, therefore you can’t be the strength and conditioning coach for it, but sometimes I think that’s just a way out. It doesn’t mean anything because it’s not true, and I know a lot of male S&C coaches that haven’t played the sport, yet they end up in the role.”
The under-representation of female coaches in these high-performance coaching roles impacts not only female athletes who are searching for a coach and mentor who they can relate to in their sporting achievements, but also young women who want to pursue a coaching career but, instead of encouragement, are met with a hall of fame filled with the achievements of men. A discouraging reminder that they likely won’t make it far.
High performance netball coach Marji Parr says that even in female dominated sports, coaches have to constantly work past the added expectations placed on them compared to a typical male coach.
“I think the term ‘mum guilt’ comes up a lot for some people, and you definitely do get a sense of that,” Ms Parr says.
“I’m a full-time worker and a mum as well as a coach, so I’ve had to be very aware of the coaching roles that I’m taking, and what’s required from me in each one. Especially when I’m not home for an evening to be the mum to do tuck-ins and make sure dinner’s fine and that both parents are in the house, that’s definitely when it comes up.”
Marji Parr coaching South Coast Blaze.
“When I was quite a bit younger and my children were really small, I applied for a role that I realised was going to take a considerable amount of time after I was already appointed to it, and that became a really challenging year in terms of making sure that I could be in all spaces over that period of time. You feel a little bit that you’re letting an element around you down. You need to be really honest about what your priority is in your life at each time. Is it your coaching or your personal life? And I think it is something that female coaches have to consider more so than male coaches.”
According to the AIS, the underrepresentation of women in high performance coaching roles in Australia is a critical issue, with less than 10 per cent of the top 36 funded High-Performance sports led by female head coaches.
One reason for this is the negative misconceptions surrounding women in sport. A common one being that men struggle to respond to female coaches – they’re a different gender and therefore they can’t connect with them. So why is it that when the roles are switched, it’s so normalised?
Ms Parr has coached over 20 teams, one of which being the Australian Kelpie’s men’s netball team.
“Being exposed to the male environment was probably the biggest eye opener for me,” Ms Parr says.
“The language they use and how they actually interact with each other is quite specific; they want direct words. They don’t need the flowery, emotive words we tend to use sometimes with younger female athletes. When you tell them, ‘I need you to go here’ or ‘I need you to punch there’, that’s all they need to hear, they respond to that.”
“I don’t think I had to prepare too differently than I would with a female team though, making sure that we’ve got the visualisation training activities covered, the session plan is present, the athletes understand what they’re undertaking and then delivering it quick, short, sharp with clear language, it’s very similar to how we do operate in a female high-performance environment. Those two environments are very connected and very similar, there’s not much difference at all.”
Whilst percentages of female coaches are rising, the increase is slow and sporting organisations and clubs still have a lot to answer for as far as the gender gap goes.
NPL1 soccer player Daisy Canavan has played for the Illawarra Stingrays for the past two years – an all-female club with a male head coach. It’s not an unusual experience for female soccer players.
“I’ve been playing soccer since I was four. I’ve played for the ACT state team and I’ve played for NPL1, and in 16 years I’ve only ever had two female coaches,” Ms Canavan says.
“A lot of coaches get their credibility from where they’ve played, but I think coaches who have played at a high level as a male compared to coaches that have played at a high level as a female are much more credible in soccer because there’s a huge culture that it’s a male sport. With credibility, I think unfortunately men will always tend to win over women in terms of their experience because their competition is ‘better’, they get paid more, they’re televised more and that’s just the way it’s always been.”
“I played in a few boys teams when I was growing up and I definitely found that I was mistreated and there was a lot of bias, particularly from other teams. A lot of people were very quick to judge and to be like ‘oh this team has two girls, they’re not going to be as good’ and ‘I want to play on the girl’ that sort of thing.”
It’s been 124 years since women were first allowed to compete at the Olympics, and whilst 2024 marks the first year of proper gender equality within that environment, the percentage of female coaches at the Olympic games has been less than 15 per cent in previous years, a number much worse than people originally realise.
Ms Tate says there are many programs and initiatives in progress aiming to change these horrifying statistics.
“The Australian Strength and Conditioning Association are fighting really hard to try get as many females into this area as they can and they’re very supportive. The AIS too have been doing a lot with the female coaching initiative they have in terms of leadership programs, and coaching and mentoring programs so they’re doing a lot to get female coaches in but they’ve just been very hard to find,” Ms Tate says.
“There have been tons of surveys done to try find out why we don’t get as many female applications for these kinds of roles, but we’re still not really sure. Whether it’s not appealing enough to females or they feel like they’re not good enough or confident enough to apply, we don’t know, but the AIS are having a lot to do with female athletes that retire and supporting them post-retirement if they want to go into coaching with that career progression, so it’s definitely heading in the right direction, but it’s just not perfection yet.”
Ms Canavan says the need for more female coaches is increasingly important for women in high performance sports in particular.
“I think we definitely need more female coaches higher up in sport and particularly I’d love to see more in male teams,” she says.
“I think there probably would be a lot of positives to have from a female coach in a male environment. It might bring something out of the team that you just don’t get with a male coach. It’s definitely worth giving it a go. And in terms of female teams, I think, females work really well with females and of course that would be beneficial.”
The role female coaches play in these environments are vital for the progression of gender bias in sports. Their visibility and success publicly challenges gender and leadership stereotypes, aiding in closing the gender gap in sport – the act of seeing women in leadership roles meaning others can now envision themselves in the same.
“You learn from great coaches and you learn from coaches that have had challenges as well, but having people you look up to helps you learn and I remember watching a coach when I was a really young athlete and thought, ‘wow, she’s amazing, I really aspire to be like her’ and now I’m so lucky to have crossed paths with her again as a coach. Yeah I’m very thankful.”
Whilst there are more powerful and successful women present in sport today than ever before, the visibility of these women is not near enough. But, with the assistance of these programs run by the AIS and other sporting institutes as well as increased visibility for female coaches and athletes who put their heart and soul into their work, they are paving the way for a new generation of female athletes and coaches that will one day demolish the gender gap in sports.