In 2024, football feels less gendered than ever. With the women’s game now engaging men and women alike and schools offering equal access for boys and girls to play football, gender identity has become less of a barrier to enjoying and engaging with the sport.

In fact, to coincide with International Women’s Day today (8 March), a record-breaking 465,000 girls from 5,000 schools across England will take part in the FA and Barclays’ Biggest Ever Football Session, as part of the Let Girls Play campaign.

But despite all the progress that’s been made for players and fans, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to improve representation behind the scenes – especially when it comes to the number of women and girls involved in coaching.

That’s the message behind a new campaign to celebrate the women who are currently involved in coaching and create more space for women and girls to enter this male-dominated space.  

Titled A Seat At The Table, the campaign is the result of a partnership between the London-based charity club Bloomsbury Football and campaign group Momentum On, and it tells the story of three coaches from the Bloomsbury community: Beth, Sasha and Morgan. Through a series of portraits and group pictures shot and directed by the team at Momentum On, A Seat At The Table aims to highlight the value of female coaches and their ability to inspire the next generation of girls.

Jade Keshia Gordon, co-founder of Momentum On and project photographer, says she wants to inspire more women to be involved in football no matter where their talents lie.

“I played for Crystal Palace at U14/16 and then for Bromley, but being the only one in the team that looked like me made me fall out of love with playing,” she explains. “Now we have that opportunity to push women’s representation in sport that I didn’t have when I was younger, and we want to inspire women of all ages and races so they too can be part of this, whether that’s on or off the pitch.”  

She continues: “Highlighting the coaches at Bloomsbury Football is important as it shows girls they can succeed in coaching, which then encourages more girls to join sports, creating a more equal and diverse landscape and leading to new ideas and perspectives that improve coaching and team relationships, leading to better results.”

The presence of female coaches at grassroots clubs is especially important for inspiring the next generation, as there is still a lack of visibility when it comes to female coaches at an elite level. In January 2024, only one-third of Women’s Super League (WSL) managers were women, and with Chelsea’s Emma Hayes leaving at the end of this year and Brighton manager Melissa Phillips being sacked back in February (the club is yet to hire a permanent replacement), that number may well drop next season.

On top of that, only six of the 12 clubs in the Barclays Championship (the tier underneath the WSL) have a woman coach – and the men’s professional game is yet to see the permanent appointment of a female first-team coach. This lack of women being hired and training as coaches is an issue Chelsea’s Emma Hayes has described as “massive”. 

“We’ve got a lot of work to do to close that gap,” Hayes said in an interview with the BBC, where she highlighted the cost and lack of information about coaching as potential barriers. “We have to recognise that the opportunities are few and far between. We need to think of different ways to educate women from a younger age.”

When the Women’s Super League and Championship are taken over by an independent body next year, there are hopes that more work will be done to ensure the number of female coaches becomes a non-issue in the future.

For now, however, there is work being done to try and close that gap. Campaigns like A Seat At The Table are raising awareness of the issue at hand, and the FA now has dedicated grassroots coach developers as part of its strategy for the women’s game. It’s slow, but it’s progress – and this International Women’s Day, it’s important that we celebrate the women doing the work behind the scenes. 

Images: Getty