Packed stadiums, increasing professionalization and a 50/50 athlete gender split at the Paris Olympics — the growth in women’s sport is visible.

But while the pace of change in a few sports has picked up, decades of underfunding, prevention of opportunity and sexism are taking some time to unpick in a broader sense. That’s particularly true in leadership positions, such as coaching. While equality was achieved at the 2024 Olympics for athletes, it was far from the case for those tasked with improving them.

Though the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have not released data, most estimates put the percentage of female coaches in Paris somewhere around the same level as the Tokyo Games three years earlier, 13%. It’s a pattern repeated across the sporting landscape — just over a third of coaches at the Women’s football World Cup in 2023 were women — and female coaches in men’s sports are exceptionally rare.

Helen Nkwocha is one woman who managed to clear the hurdles required to break those conventions. The English coach became the first woman to coach a men’s European top-division football team in 2021 when she took over as head coach of Tvoroyar Boltfelag, of the Faroe Islands. Despite that achievement, she feels the odds are stacked against her when it comes to future employment.

Up against it

“I’d just like a chance to say: ‘I’m a football coach, and that’s it.’ But you also need to feel that you’re not unfairly up against [less qualified] competition. It’s not an equal playing field if you’re trying to get a job, it’s saturated with people that you wouldn’t ordinarily be in competition with,” she told DW.

Nkwocha now works as director of coaching at US youth football organization Rush Soccer. She has recognized an improvement in development and opportunities for female coaches since she started more than a decade ago, but the pace of change can be frustrating, as recognized by 2025’s International Women’s Day campaign: ‘Accelerate Action.’

The reluctance to hire a female coach and break with old habits is a frustration identified by many of those affected. Those in decision-making roles in sport are usually men and many do not even consider a female coach. Some of this may be due to concerns of a backlash, some may be misogyny but, in many cases, it is just not part of the thought process.

“I always talk about like visibility versus opportunity,” Tamara Taylor, national coach developer for the English Rugby Union, told DW. “Some people, in order to pursue something, whatever that thing is, need to be able to see someone who is a bit like them.

“Some people will do it, whether there’s visibility or not. But are they going to get given the opportunity? I’d probably say that even now they’re not.”

Going backwards

Taylor points to the top division of English women’s rugby, Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR), as evidence of her belief.Three years ago, there were seven head coaches who were female and more than 20 female coaches working as assistants. Now there are fewer than five female assistant coaches and no female head coaches. Increasingly close links to men’s clubs can sometimes lead to decisions being made by people with limited experience of the women’s game and a contacts book from the male equivalent. There is also a perception that women cannot understand the men’s game, which frustrates Taylor.

“You’ll have male coaches who’ve only played men’s rugby and coached in the men’s game who are very happy to go and coach in the PWR, and nobody seems to have a problem with it. And yet, you don’t see the other way around, a female coach who’s only played women’s rugby as coach in the men’s game. There just is not that crossover.”

Both Nkwocha and Taylor have benefitted from programs attempting to redress that balance. Nkwocha now runs a similar course to try and help the next generation.

“I’m overseeing the program, which allows me to do something similar. So I am hiring and having conversations with females who used to play, and I’m saying to them, Why aren’t you coaching?,” she said. “It also gives them a chance to make mistakes, because the judgment is quite harsh in football. We also want to get people exposed to the reality that maybe you’re being judged differently because you’re female.”

Change needs to come from the top

Both coaches see intervention from national and international sporting bodies as one of the key pillars to increase both pathways and opportunities for female coaching, while also acknowledging the importance of support once women are in position.

Taylor is a graduate of the IOC’s Women in Sport High-Performance (WISH) program, which is aimed at helping to redress the coaching balance across the Olympic sports.

“I absolutely loved being able to interact with different sports and find solidarity in some of the challenges that are faced across the board,” she said.

“But also it makes you realize that sometimes your sport isn’t quite as behind as you thought it was. When you speak to other people from other countries, from other sports you think: ‘oh my goodness, okay.'”

Both also remain positive about the future, despite the challenges they, and their female coaching counterparts face. Progress has been made, with lower league football teams in major European leagues starting to give chances to female coaches and the IOC and other governing bodies looking to establish affirmative action programs such as WISH.

“I hope that one day these programs won’t be needed, because actually, sport will just be sport, and coaches will be coaches,” Taylor said.

“It is getting better. But until we can educate, have conversations with those decision makers, the people doing the hiring, until we can support coaches to have equal experiences or more equal experiences, and it shouldn’t matter their gender, then we have to keep battling.”

Edited by: Chuck Penfold