Sports face cuts for freezing out women – Telegraph.co.uk

Jevans put the failure of NGBs to comply with the previous goal down to “subconscious” resistance.

She said: “I think people default to their comfort factor and their comfort factor is what they’ve always known, what they’ve always been comfortable with and the people they’ve enjoyed working with. It’s the group-think.

“Rather than it being consciously discriminatory, it’s just easier to carry on as it’s always been and not question the norm. But you’re missing out on 50 per cent of the nation and their view, and attracting that side of the nation into the sport.”

Senior executives at many of the non-compliant NGBs, including the Football Association, have made efforts to reform, only to be thwarted by their ruling councils or other decision-making structures. Those structures could also be forced to change under the new code.

“If you have no women in the governance structures that underpin your board, as an organisation, you should be asking yourself why?” Price said.

The same could be said about the lack of female coaches in elite sport, according to Grey-Thompson and Jevans.

“I would love to see an active programme to get more women wanting to be coaching and not thinking that is a male-dominated world,” Jevans said. “I know we had a female coach of the women’s football team for a while, which was great. But I’d like to see that breakthrough in other sports. That, I think, would make a big difference.

“What Andy Murray did appointing Amélie Mauresmo was great. She’s a Wimbledon champion. I remember the quote saying, ‘Well, she can’t go in the changing room’. Nobody ever said to all the male coaches they can’t go in the female changing room.”