Creating a Culture to Empower Female Footballers

Women’s football is the fastest-growing sport across Europe. It’s a sport that builds confidence, develops essential skills and friendships that last a lifetime. Beyond the age of 12, football offers a competitive environment with several rewards, but how do coaches ensure that girls and women continue to thrive and enjoy the game throughout their teenage years and beyond?

Facilities

Football clubs are responsible for providing a safe environment that caters to the needs of girls and women.

With weekends taken up by matches and in recognition that football is a winter sport, training will likely involve players arriving or leaving club facilities when natural light is poor. Therefore, your facility or training area must have ample lighting, a safe route back to the car park, and, if coaching juniors, ensure participants know where to find their parents. ALWAYS consider their personal safety.

If your club runs mixed teams alongside their girl’s pathway, encourage female teams to train on the same night to develop a culture of support and growth. Where this is not possible, reduce the fear of judgment by ensuring that teams using the pitch before and afterward are respectful, give the girls space, and respect training areas by only using them at the appropriate times.

Ensure training facilities and the paths and car parks used to access these are adequately lit to promote player safety.

Where coaching juniors, ensure participants are safely delivery to their parents.

Does your club have a dedicated space for girls to change in private? Conscious that the vast majority of female football matches in Wales are played on a Sunday, if changing facilities are in use on a Saturday, does anyone check before players arrive that facilities are in a suitable condition?

Ensure all toilets are seated with locks that work, toilet roll provided, and sanitary bins available to players (and, if possible, spectators). Make sure sanitary bins are regularly changed and cleaned.

Clubs should aim to provide sanitary products for players wherever possible, either by making them freely available in changing rooms or, if this is not possible, by ensuring they are available in the first aid bag and communicating to players these are available without having to ask.

Provide sanitary bins for players, and if possible spectators.

Clubs should aim to make sanitary products freely available to players wherever possible.

Environment

Footballers perform at their best in an environment where they feel comfortable, safe, and free to be themselves. As coaches, how do we ensure the success factors are in place to achieve this?

A lot comes down to the values that we hold. Is there honesty and trust between coaches, players and parents? While we expect a level of respect for coaches’ decisions, female players thrive in an environment where their views are heard and strengths and differences are accepted and appreciated.

As players mature, utilise player leadership groups to empower them both on and off the pitch, allowing them to take ownership of creating a positive environment focused on achieving shared goals.

Utilise player leadership groups to promote player ownership of honesty and trust.

Consider whether the language of coaches, parents and spectators is supportive of the positive environments female players thrive on.

Consider the language and terminology we use within the female pathway and the whole club. Challenge any language from coaches, parents or spectators that devalues women and girls in football. Language can be overt or hidden, while phrases such as ‘darling’ or ‘princess’ are obviously inappropriate; referring to female players as ‘Ladies’ can also sound dated and suggest a level of behavioural expectation that does not fit with the modern game.

It’s crucial to recognise that it’s not solely the responsibility of coaches to create a positive environment. Teammates and parents play a pivotal role here, as do other coaches from your club or the opposition. Consider how the values of the female section of your club are reflected and embraced by the whole club.

Ultimately we must strive to create a culture within football that empowers female players and makes them feel like they truly belong. Small changes can make a big difference!