Leading Change: International Federations and the Future of Women's Coaching

This project explores how three International Federations (IFs) of Sport develop women’s coaching and leadership opportunities.

Through document analysis and interviews, it examines strategic priorities, organisational practices and safeguarding approaches to understand how IFs can strengthen pathways for women coaches globally.

Women remain significantly underrepresented in coaching and leadership roles across global sport.

This gap has important consequences for participation, motivation and belonging. Despite increasing attention to gender equity, many structural, cultural and organisational barriers continue to limit the recruitment, development and long‑term retention of women coaches and leaders. IFs play a central role in shaping the policies, safeguarding standards and development pathways that determine whether women can access and thrive in coaching roles, yet little research has examined how these organisations approach this responsibility.

This project contributes to broader societal goals by supporting more inclusive, safe and equitable sporting systems worldwide. Enhancing pathways for women coaches aligns with international commitments, including those linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to gender equality, leadership diversity and safe sport.

This project is unique in the field of women’s coaching research because it focuses on the role of IFs - organisations that sit at the highest level of global sport governance but remain under‑examined in academic and policy research in this area. While most existing studies focus on individual coaches, clubs, or national‑level systems, very little is known about how IFs shape the strategic, cultural and safeguarding environments that determine whether women can enter, progress and stay in coaching. By placing the spotlight on the global decision‑makers who influence sport structures worldwide, this research fills a critical gap in understanding how change can be initiated and sustained at scale.

Project description:

The study focuses on how IFs define and deliver approaches to women’s coaching across diverse regions and sporting contexts. It explores how historical strategies have shaped current practice, how resources and structures operate today, and how future opportunities for strengthening women’s coaching can be realised.

A combination of document analysis and in‑depth, semi‑structured interviews with International Federations, National Federations and focus groups with women coaches provides a detailed understanding of the political, economic, social, technological, legal and organisational factors affecting this work. The project also adopts a process‑oriented perspective, examining how past, present and future dynamics interact within each organisation.

By building a comprehensive picture of how IFs influence women’s coaching, the research contributes important insights for strengthening gender equity, safeguarding and leadership diversity in international sport. The findings will look to support the development of more effective strategies, capacity‑building approaches and evidence‑informed practices that help create inclusive, safe and sustainable pathways for women coaches worldwide.