Mariana Cabral can reel off the list with little fuss: Sarina Wiegman, Emma Hayes, Renee Slegers, Sonia Bompastor. Women who have lifted major trophies as head coaches in the past two years.“It’s not like women aren’t good,” the Chicago Stars assistant manager says. “But right now, they have to be, because they’re the exception to the rule.

They made it.She adds that women are not afforded the same space to make mistakes and learn as their male counterparts.“Gender does not determine the competence of a person,” says Cabral. “I hope we can all agree on that. But because men are so overly represented in this situation, we need to help the women get into these positions.”Of the National Women’s Soccer League’s 16 head coaches, just four are women.

It is the same number in the 12-team Women’s Super League. At the club level globally, only 22 per cent of coaches are female. At the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, just 38 per cent (12 of 32) of head coaches were women; six teams did not employ any female coaches; and only nine of those teams have women employed as head coaches today.

According to the 2023 FIFA Member Association Survey, female coaches accounted for just five per cent of all registered coaches worldwide.Last summer’s European Championship had a record seven of the 16 qualified teams led by women, but there is still ongoing systemic underrepresentation in top coaching positions. In an attempt to remedy the issue, FIFA announced a new coaching mandate last month. It requires all teams in women’s tournaments — youth to senior, club to national — to employ at least one female head coach or assistant coach on their staff, along with two female officials to be seated on the bench and one female member of medical staff.A team would not have to sacrifice a male coach in order to make room for a female coach, and teams can have more than one assistant.

The new regulations will be stipulated in competition participant agreements to incentivise an additional role for a female coach.The quota-based initiative is bold and predominantly welcomed by the women’s coaching ecosystem.“If transformational change is to occur, there probably does need to be a mandate,” says Manisha Tailor, a former youth manager with Queens Park Rangers who is now working as a women’s coach developer and under-19s manager in Asia. “But alongside the mandate, there also needs to be conversations around what that looks like in terms of how we’re going to get there.”Tailor’s sentiments echo some of the uncertainty felt by coaches around the implementation of FIFA’s new rules.Structural barriers, limited access to professional pathways, costly course fees, and restricted progression opportunities have constrained the development and advancement of women in coaching, as well as the fact that, historically, all coach educators have been men.The mandate does not directly address these issues, though there is understanding within FIFA and from coaches that without deliberate regulatory action, progress in this space would be glacial.“As strong an initiative as this is — it grows the game for so many reasons — we need to really put that lens on continuing to build underneath,” says Leah Blayney, a former Japan assistant manager who helped Japan to win the 2026 Asian Cup last month.Ensuring that the mandate enforces federations and decision-makers to reckon with these barriers to access is paramount, some coaches say.

The concern is a mandate that encourages federations to panic-track women to the required positions, creating a carousel of the same faces.“We have a saying at the Stars,” says Cabral. “Sometimes we’re treating the symptoms, but not the actual cause of things. The hope is this doesn’t do that.”One of the key stress points for Cabral is accessing coaching courses — particularly A-licenses and pro-licenses, which are becoming regular qualifications for assistant and head coach positions, respectively, in the women’s game.Despite a history of working with senior women’s teams at Benfica and Sporting CP, as well as being an assistant coach at NWSL sides Utah Royals and now Chicago Stars, Cabral has struggled to gain access to the pro licence courses.According to UEFA, the number of female coaches with UEFA C, B, A, or pro licence rose to 25,000 in 2024, an increase of more than 75 per cent in eight years.Yet, as the demand for these courses has increased across Europe for both men and women coaches, the available spaces have remained the same, leading to oversubscription and bottlenecks, regardless of gender.The added layers of cost and time create more obstacles, says Tailor.

Courses can cost upwards of £14,000, not including travel or accommodation.“Also, what days are the courses on?” asks Tailor. “Can people take time off jobs if you’ve got childcare, which makes it really tricky.”The oversubscription has led to more rigorous admission criteria, particularly for the pro license, says Cabral. Yet, often, experience in men’s footbal