Football: Females

(asked on 4th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to support girls and women pursue careers in football.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 9th June 2021

We are absolutely committed to supporting diversity in sport at every opportunity including through employment.

We support the Football Association’s work in encouraging more women and girls into football. On 19 October 2020, the Football Association published its new women’s and girls’ football strategy ‘Inspiring Positive Change: FA Women’s Football Strategy 2020-24’. The strategy includes a commitment to developing a diverse, well supported and highly skilled workforce including coaches, referees, sports development officers and administrators at every level of the game. An example of how they plan to achieve this by 2024 is by encouraging more coaches in the women and girls’ game, with a greater proportion being female and from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

In addition to this, in October 2020 the FA launched their Football Leadership Diversity Code to increase diversity and inclusion across English football. This included the target of 30% of new hires being female in senior leadership and team operation roles.

UK Sport and Sport England’s Code for Sports Governance (published in 2016) seeks to improve the diversity of governance structures in sport and applies to any organisation seeking public funding for sport. Latest figures show that women now account for 40% of board members across bodies funded by either Sport England or UK Sport.

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