Women in box seat

AIS focuses on coaching equity

AUSTRALIA’S silent culture of handing out the best coaching jobs in sport to men could be about to change after being put under the microscope.

It is one of the worst-kept secrets in Australian sport that the odds are stacked against women coaches when they are up against the blokes.

For a country that talks a good game about gender equity, the imbalance in the coaching ranks is shameful — and the gap is growing wider.

At the 2012 London Olympics, only 12 per cent of Australia’s accredited coaches were women.

Four years later, in Rio de Janeiro, that dropped to 9 per cent — bucking the global trend where most developed countries were increasing opportunities for female coaches.

Swimming Australia, as one example, chooses about six to eight coaches for each Olympic Games but the last female selected was Tracey Menzies in 2004, when she was coaching Ian Thorpe.

Australia’s only other Olympic female swim coach is Hall of Famer Ursula Carlile, who coached Shane Gould in 1972 — and the number of female coaches is not much better in Australia’s teams.

“As a system, we probably haven’t done well enough in terms of providing the right opportunities but to be honest, I don’t think any country has really nailed it,” Swimming Australia chief strategist Alex Baumann said.

All sports are allowed to select their coaches as they see fit and Swimming Australia is behind the push for change with Baumann joining the taskforce the Australian Institute

of Sport has launched.

Concerned that Australia is falling behind the rest of the world in developing coaches, the AIS has set itself the task of making Australia the world leader in coaching development before the end of the decade.

The taskforce includes some of the brightest minds in sport, whose focus is not only on repairing the neglect of female coaches but also on how to develop better Australian coaches and keep them from being poached overseas.