Fri, March 20, 2026
Every team in a FIFA women’s competition to have mandatory female head or assistant coach
FIFA is going to make it compulsory for all teams in its women’s competitions to have either a female head coach or assistant coach across youth and senior women’s football tournaments, national team competitions and club competitions. Furthermore, at least one of the medical staff must be female, and at least two officials seated on the team bench must be female.
This new mandate will apply to the Under-17 and Under-20 Women’s 2026 World Cups, for example, along with the Women’s Champions Cup and the Women’s World Cup in Brazil next year.
During the 2023 Women’s World Cup, just 12 out of 32 head coaches were women. In 2024, when surveying 86 women’s leagues globally, FIFA found 22 percent of head coaches were female.
Jill Ellis, FIFA’s Chief Football Officer, stated “There are simply not enough women in coaching today…
We must do more to accelerate change by creating clearer pathways, expanding opportunities, and increasing the visibility for women on our sidelines…
The new FIFA regulations, combined with targeted development programmes, mark an important investment in both the current and future generation of female coaches.”
Concerningly, according to a recent report titled ‘Women’s Experiences of Sexual Misconduct Working in UK Elite Sport,’ there is a serious sexual safety issue for women working in UK elite sport, with 88% of respondents having encountered at least one form of sexual misconduct in the past five years, and with five out of the 260 respondents having been raped.
UK members of the Women’s Sport Collective, a free, global, not-for-profit network supporting women in or aspiring to work in the sports industry with support from Sport England and Sky Sports, collaborated with author Lindsey Simpson to produce the report. 260 people from the Women’s Sport Collective responded anonymously, and this included administrators, coaches, current and former athletes, tv producers, lawyers and physios.
87% of respondents had encountered at least one form of sexual harassment. 40% had been the target of at least one form of sexual assault.
In another recent survey of 2000 coaches undertaken by Women in Sport and Leeds Beckett University, 30% of female respondents had experienced bulling within coaching compared to 15% of males within coaching, 21% of women said they had experienced harassment compared with 12% of men and 22% of women had encountered aggression or violence compared to 19% of men.
Chris Boardman, Sport England chair, voiced: “It is a clear wake-up call. From safety fears when exercising, to online abuse and bullying in coaching, too many women and girls still face barriers across sport at every level.”
FIFA’S statement can be found here.
Women’s Experiences of Sexual Misconduct Working in UK Elite Sport can be found here.
Women in Sport’s statement on coaching can be found here.
