It was meant to be a huge year for women’s rugby, and in many ways it has been great. Participation in rugby has grown by 38% since 2021, according to England Rugby. The 2025 Rugby World Cup saw record attendance figures. PWR attendance has grown astronomically.
The standard of women’s rugby is the highest it has ever been.
However, this change hasn’t been remotely transformational for female rugby coaches. There are currently no female head coaches in the PWR. Jo Yapp and Gaëlle Mignot left their roles after the RWC, leaving no female international head coaches.
Coaching levels have shown similar trends. The proportion of female coaches dropped from 44% to 38% across all sports in 2024. Title IX, introduced in the US in 1972 to prohibit sex-based discrimination in federally funded programs, actually led to a decrease in women coaching women’s teams. From 90% in 1972 to 40% today, it proves that legislation and measures aimed at promoting women’s sports don’t usually transfer to a coaching context.
Interviewing a variety of rugby coaches at all different levels was, in a word, depressing.
Most participants shared the same stories of microaggressions, barriers to participation and blatant sexism. All interviewees asked to be kept anonymous.
A common stereotype spouted is that women have just not yet played at the highest levels, and when this generation of female athletes retires, it will be fine. Well, yes and no. There are currently very few women who have retired from playing rugby since the game went professional six years ago.
But as the saying goes, ‘coaches don’t play’ (well, not really). Simon Middleton didn’t have a hugely impressive playing career, playing more league than union. Joe Schmidt had a limited playing career. Eddie Jones made just three appearances for Leicester in the 90s, yet all these coaches have coached at the highest level.
Most coaching jobs are still not advertised, with coaches hired from internal networks. Opaque hiring practices have been shown to exclude people from marginalised groups. The adage of rugby being an “old boys’ club” is still very real.
A coach explained: “There’s still a mentality of the old boys’ club, where who you know matters more than your skills. It’s frustrating.”
Women are not part of these networks, have no opportunity to apply, and are thus excluded from job opportunities. In sports coaching, there is a need to complete extensive unpaid coaching before taking on a paid role.
Women predominantly only have opportunities in women’s rugby, which is paid abysmally, if at all.
It compounds exclusion on the intersection of gender and class. Coaching as a career is simply not viable for many women.
Female coaches within women’s rugby are often relegated to assistant coach roles. Another coach said, “Head coaches are mostly male. Women tend to be assistant coaches or physios.”
This is a result of a broader societal trend of occupational segregation in a wide variety of industries. But, as sport operates under the myth of meritocracy, it avoids the diversity standards applied elsewhere.
It isn’t just the lack of access or experience; it’s a massive, concrete, systemic ceiling keeping women out of high-performance coaching roles.
Multiple female coaches report being excluded from pre-match handshakes by referees, often being mistaken for the physio, and having referees assume male physios are the coaches instead of them.
A coach said, “I went to a boys fixture… the head coach came up to the other male rather than coming to me… even after being told I was the head coach, he still addressed the other male.”
Even by their own clubs, female coaches report having to fight for pitch space, changing facilities and generally fighting with directors of rugby and board members.
A coach reported having to be nice in the face of sexism.
“You kind of have to smile and be polite when they say things that maybe aren’t appropriate… we’re constantly told to be nice to club sponsors because they bring money in,” they said.
Being a female coach is all about balancing identity, being nice to the committees/men’s team and the desire not to just put up with sexism. One coach described experiencing sexual comments.
She said, “There’ve been sexual comments made by players or other coaches, like ‘she’ll give us a good one’—it’s difficult.”
Either that or they have to sacrifice femininity to assimilate into a culture that doesn’t want them there.
“Look at those females in the higher end jobs, they all like really strict and quite -I wanted to use the word masculine in a way like they are quite, like doesn’t take any **** sort of thing”
The RFU has implemented some measures, such as the ‘25 IMPACT programme’, which includes free coaching courses, mentoring, and the excellence in coaching development programme. This led to 1,456 coaches and match officials for women’s teams being trained.
While it will undoubtedly be helpful to some, it doesn’t address systemic barriers and retention of female coaches.
To make the coaching landscape more equitable for women, there needs to be a belief that women are competent to coach high-performance rugby. Hiring processes need to be transparent and fair, and female coaches should have reasonable compensation for their work.
I just don’t see it changing any time soon.
