Common sense to have women in top tier sports jobs
In the early 1990s, as I was approaching the ripe old age of 10, I started to focus on my long-term career plan. I decided there were two main options, manage Manchester United or be an Olympic champion.
Unfortunately, neither of those plans came to fruition. I gave the Olympics a fair lash, competing in three of them but at some point the notion of managing Manchester United faded away.
I wonder is it now possible for girls to dream big in sport and go after the top tier roles which would previously certainly have been ‘jobs for the boys’.
The recent appointment of Helena Costa as manager of Clermont Foot 63 football club has caused a media frenzy. Costa will be the first female to manage a team in one of the top two divisions of Europe’s five major pro-soccer leagues. Her appointment is huge in terms of opening doors for women.
Costa’s CV is impressive, she worked in soccer for a long time and is a respected coach from various roles in highly-respected clubs. Her work includes time at Benfica, as head coach for the youth teams, as a scout for Celtic between 2008-2011, as well as stints at Chelsea. Costa clearly knows the game. She has a more impressive, well rounded CV than many other managers out there.
The question should not be can a woman manage a male team but more importantly, whether she will be given a fair chance to succeed.
Will she be judged the same way as her male counterparts or has she automatically more to prove? The questions need to be about the work Costa does at the club and the results she produces, not about her gender.
When Karren Brady became managing director of Birmingham City at 23, she was asked at her first press conference about her “vital statistics”. Brady went on to make a trading profit in her first year in charge.
When the club was floated on the stock market, she was the youngest CEO of a PLC and 75% of her senior management were women.
She made a huge success of the job but revealed she was advised she needed to be twice as good as men to be thought of as half as good.
Whilst Costa’s appointment is groundbreaking, she is far from the only woman playing a significant role in football. Women have owned and held leadership roles in clubs all over Europe.
Possibly the most powerful woman is Marina Granovskaia. Last June in a low key announcement she was elevated to the Chelsea board. Granovskaia has worked for Roman Abramovich for 16 years, she’s believed to be his right hand woman and part of his inner circle. She has a role to play in any major deal Chelsea is involved in. People love to critique and debate Jose Mourinho’s decisions but are they missing a trick? Maybe Granovskaia is a driving force behind many of these decisions.
Sian Massey is a very well-respected soccer lineswoman. Right at the start of her career, she was caught up in a controversy when Andy Gray made the comment “Can you believe that, a female linesman, women don’t know the offside rule”.
Gray was removed from his role in Sky Sports soon after and Massey went on to become one of the best in the game. She may well be the first female Premier League referee.
Next year’s Rugby World Cup will be held in the UK under the watchful eye of Debbie Jevans, chief executive of England Rugby 2015.
She was recently voted the most influential woman in UK sport by The Guardian. She is strong in her views about women holding key roles in sport and points out women make up 50% of the population, so it makes sense they would hold such positions. Otherwise you are effectively ignoring half of the talent pool from which to recruit for top jobs.
Recently Rob Hartnett of “Sport for Business” has been compiling a list of the most influential women in Irish sport. It’s encouraging to see Sinead Heraty, Sarah Keane, Jackie Dunne, Sarah O’Shea and Sarah O’Connor in key decision making roles in sport. I believe there needs to be more female representation at this high level. It’s important women are encouraged into the boardrooms and decision-making levels of sport.
The Irish Sports Council launched their ‘Women in Sport’ initiative in 2005 to address the differences that are present between women’s and men’s engagement in sport. The initiative goes some way to establishing parity but I think there needs to be more engagement at the top level.
In my sport, athletics, our current High Performance manager is male, as were both his predecessors. The chief executive is also male, as is the chairman of the board and the president of the Athletic Association of Ireland (AAI). Recently at the 2014 annual AAI Congress, Brid Golden was voted in as Chair of the High Performance Committee and this goes a little way to balance things up.
I don’t advocate filling roles for women just to tick a box. I feel that there are enough talented, competent and driven women to be working in sport at the highest levels. Women deserve to be there based on merit and not gender quotas. It’s about employing the right people for the jobs regardless of gender.
I may never be the manager of Manchester United but maybe some woman will open that door at some point in the future.
In the meantime, it’s important to encourage women into boardrooms and into top tier jobs in sport. It’s just common sense.
