such as Sarah Hunter<\/a> and Emily Scarratt with England, but male coaches are the significant majority.<\/p>\nOne major part of having more female coaches into international rugby is getting their foot in the door. Loughborough Lightning\u2019s assistant coach, Rachel Taylor, has praised World Rugby for its internship programmes that give women more experience and she believes coaches\u2019 home unions have a big role to play. \u201cYou have to get the right coach for the right job,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because you are an ex-Welsh player doesn\u2019t mean you should go on and coach with Wales, but it is a really good avenue to get in. If you think of Lou Meadows, she had a really good experience with the Red Roses in terms of coaching exposure and now has that opportunity to go into another union [with the USA]. It is difficult if you don\u2019t have your home union championing you from the off.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a limited number of women in coaching roles it means others cannot see it as a clear career path, says the Wales under-18s head coach, Siwan Lillicrap. \u201cYou have to see it to want to be it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have been there in a playing sense, but there are not enough women coaches out there for people to aspire or think there is a path.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe roadmap isn\u2019t clear so therefore people aren\u2019t getting out there. Even if you aren\u2019t a pro player, there are people out there who will be good coaches. Do they see that career roadmap? They probably don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The perception of what a head coach looks like also needs to change, according to the former Ireland player Anna Caplice, who has coached Laos. She said: \u201cI have this theory that if you said \u2018that is the new coach\u2019 and you turned around and it was a man with his hands in his pockets there would be absolutely no question about his ability.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhereas if you turned around and saw a woman who had everything ready and knows her stuff, immediately there are question over what you do until you deliver it. Even after you have delivered it, there can still be question over it. That is a societal thing we have to battle with every day, in many areas of life, not just rugby.\u201d<\/p>\n
The initial development of female coaches is lacking too, according to many in the game. Different voices had different ideas of how that would be fostered: Caplice wants to see more player-coach roles, the Wales development coach, Elinor Snowsill, suggests unions introducing paid guest coaching periods in international camps, while Taylor puts forward female coaches being mandated at all levels of the game.<\/p>\n
Jo Yapp stood down from her position as Australia coach after last year\u2019s World Cup. Photograph: Bob Bradford\/CameraSport\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Another factor on why there are fewer female coaches is because of the slower recent professionalisation of women\u2019s rugby. Snowsill said: \u201cIf you look 10 years ago the game was still amateur. There were no full-time players so they all had full-time jobs alongside that. For them to retire and say \u2018I am going to cancel my career as well and go into coaching\u2019 was a lot less likely.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were also no paid roles within the female game. There was nothing for them to go into anyway. That is why we have a generation of missing coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shore added: \u201cLots of men when they are in academies and are professional rugby players take this pathway and go through coaching qualifications. They get opportunities to coach, get their 10,000 hours in; 95% of our women have a job as well as playing. They do not have another 20 hours a week to coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has been suggested female coaches can bring empathetic communication styles, as well as a deeper understanding of female biology, particularly the effect of the menstrual cycle on athletes, to coaching roles. Preparing players for difficult environments is another area female coaches who have played the game can do well.<\/p>\n
Snowsill said: \u201cI have had conversations about how do we prepare these players to be able to mentally and psychologically be strong enough and know how to challenge environments, know if they ever find themselves in environments that are not right or are not healthy,. How do they, as a playing group, challenge it?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have found, as players, it took a toll on us and we weren\u2019t well equipped or well supported. So we are massively motivated to make sure the next generation has those other skills. Whereas would [our male equivalents] ever think that is needed? Because they may never have felt like that in an environment. Without women in these positions or environments we aren\u2019t getting that development as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 10-point plan will be introduced by Premiership Women\u2019s Rugby next season that aims to increase the number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-565337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}