One of the few: the experiences of female elite-level coaches in Norwegian football

Opportunities and barriers that females face for study and employment in sport

“…They also talked about knowing and appreciating their 'skill set' and capabilities, at which, they believed, women tended not to be as good as men. These beliefs about the need for having self-confidence, and understanding one's capabilities and identity supports previous research (Fasting, Sand, & Nordstrand, 2017;Kilty, 2006;Mazerolle et al, 2015;Sartore & Cunningham, 2007;Walker & Bopp, 2010). The lack of self-belief may be explained by gender role theory, in that females socially identify with the roles and expectations deemed appropriate, which are incongruous to the types of skills required in a sport-related environment, or a senior management environment.…”

“…It is great to have them as role models, but it is tokenistic. [Liz, graduate] Similar conclusions have reached by other researchers regarding educational courses (Fasting et al, 2017;Lewis et al, 2014). Participants also said that, although token gestures were being made, there was still a predominance of educational courses and jobs that were more attractive to males such as football coaching, and those more attractive to females such as health.…”

“…For instance, the university students commented on there being no or very few females on the course, no female lectures or coaches, and how examples they had in lectures were mainly of males. Educational materials being dominated by male values and images has been reported previously (Alsarve, 2018;Fasting et al, 2017;Lewis, Roberts, & Andrews, 2018). The high school students also talked about there being a lack of role models, with certain jobs being seen as gendered, such as personal trainers, coaches, physiotherapists, and sports trainers being associated with males, and jobs in nutrition and sports massage being seen as being female.…”

“…One of the group members, for instance, stated: 'All the females that are in higher positions are in administrative roles' [Laura, graduate]. The disparity was most likely to be due to the nature of the participants' employment, or could have been due to the graduates accepting the normalcy of the discrimination, in a form of hegemonic masculinity (Fasting et al, 2017;Taylor et al, 2018).…”

Gendered discourses in coaching high-performance sport

“…Although much of the coaching literature on gender has focused on the underrepresentation of women and the experiences of women coaches working at the amateur and high-performance levels (e.g. Fasting et al, 2019; Norman, 2010a, 2010b), a small body of research explores the gendering of coaching itself. For example, Fielding-Lloyd and Mean (2008, 2011, 2016) and Lewis et al (2018) explored the gendering of coach education.…”