Fewer than 10% of high performances coaches are women
Female athletes make up more than half of Australia's Olympic team for the Paris games, but in the coaching ranks, the gender divide is stark. Fewer than 10 per cent of high-performance coaches in Australia are women, and with the 2032 Brisbane games on the horizon, the push to break through the coaching glass ceiling is on.
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00:00Stacey Peters spent her 20s on golf's professional tour, but after starting a family, staying
00:09in the sport at the elite level was tough.
00:11I needed help with Zoe, whether that be on the road, whether that was my husband coming
00:16occasionally, whether it was extra child care.
00:19Only 6% of golf coaches around the country are women, but Golf Australia is determined
00:25to grow that number and make sure coaches like Stacey stay in the system.
00:30The dropout rate of female coaches across all sports has been dubbed the leaky pipeline
00:36by the Australian Institute of Sport.
00:39We've engaged with over 150 women coaches throughout this last two and a half years
00:45and we've really worked hard to uncover their lived experiences.
00:48Its research shows the sexist stereotype that men make better coaches persists and in flexible
00:55work and poor recruiting all contribute to the loss of women from the field.
01:00The findings ring true for one coach who's taken an indefinite break from elite sport.
01:06I'd always get told you're just an up and coming coach, even though I had athletes of
01:10the same calibre.
01:11I didn't feel like my opinion was valued.
01:14Coaches would listen to male staff over female staff.
01:18The coach says she was offered no support when she became a mother and had to leave
01:22her young child behind for frequent trips overseas.
01:26She says though it crossed her mind to ask if her child could come with her, she knew
01:30the answer would be no.
01:32Stacey first took her daughter on a work trip at 18 months old.
01:36I was a little apprehensive about whether Zoe would be a distraction and I found it
01:41absolutely like the complete opposite.
01:43I found having a child there actually assisted the team environment.
01:48A plan to address the gender imbalance has been developed by the AIS with the goal of
01:53equality across the high performance workforce by the 2032 Brisbane Games.
01:59We believe very strongly that having a diverse workforce is a performance enabler and a performance
02:05advantage.