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Fairer Game programme vital to challenge gender stereotypes and find a new bread of coaches
Betfair Fairer Game is a programme intended to increase the talent pipeline of female coaches at all levels of football – and frankly it’s about time. After hundreds of applications, 50 women have been chosen to receive funding to complete their UEFA B licences, creating a new intake of well-qualified coaches who can work with 11-a-side teams from grassroots upwards.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect scheme – I have to admit I’m a little uncomfortable with football’s incredibly close relationship with betting companies, and I feel teeth-grindingly twitchy about the name ‘Fairer Game’ as it reads as twee and cloying and ever-so-slightly patronising to me, with undertones of the nauseating term “the fairer sex”. However, but both those objections are my own issue.
What isn’t in doubt is that coaching qualifications are obstructively expensive, and that women can be put off from working in a male-dominated field – so a 50-woman cohort of coaches getting their UEFA B licences will be terrific. Having some kind of solidarity and support network will, I anticipate, be incredibly valuable for them as they embark on this tough but rewarding journey.
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It’s smart too to get already-qualified women on board as the faces and figureheads of the programme. Former Arsenal and England winger Rachel Yankey was at the launch to run a session with the women, as was Leicester City coach Sarah Jones – both already holding B licences, and examples to the new intake as to what they can achieve.
There’s a truism that a woman has to do a job twice as well as a man just to be considered half as good. There are plenty of male coaches and managers who get multiple opportunities to work at the highest level of the elite game despite less-than-successful track records – and yet there are still so few women in coaching roles in the men’s and women’s games. Does anyone really believe that the best person for the manager’s job is pretty much always a man – that there has never been a woman who could have done better than any of the men who have always managed English men’s teams?
Football continues to be riddled with stereotypes – about gender, race, sexuality and more – and it’s this kind of concerted effort through the Fairer Game programme that can start to challenge them. 30 years ago, academic researchers suggested that one way to improve fan behaviour would be to encourage more women to matches, as they would act as a civilising influence. That kind of nonsense should be dismissed outright – football needs more women working as coaches, and in all sorts of other roles, because restricting the pool of talent will damage the game we all love.
To follow the women on their Betfair Fairer Game journey visit fairergame.com
