AIS launch action plan to remove barriers in 'brutal system' for women coaches in Australian sport

They're all men, and that clear, dominant theme within the top levels of Australian sport is an issue that a bold new initiative is aiming to address.

The Australian Institute of Sport has launched the Women in High Performance Coaching Action Plan to boost the number of women in coaching roles amid severe underrepresentation.

"Data absolutely demonstrates that high performing teams require diversity in every in every respect, contributes to performance," Rowing Australia chief executive Sarah Cook said.

"So it's about addressing how we ensure that we're creating successful high performance teams and making sure that there's a more supportive environment for 50 per cent of the population involved."

The plan is set to address the alarming statistic that less than 10 per cent of the top 36 funded high performance sports are led by women coaches.

It aims to achieve gender equity in coaching with 10 recommendations to lead to significant cultural and systematic change by 2032 - the Brisbane Olympics.

Part of the problem for instance, is that research in the last two years found women coaches exit high performance sports at various stages of their careers, leaving a "leaky talent pipeline", which deepens the gender gap.

"It's not just an Australian issue, it's a global problem. Only 14 per cent of all national teams had women coaching at the Tokyo Olympics," Cook said.

"I had worked as a woman in coaching in rowing, so I knew it was an area we needed to shift the dial."

Rowing Australia were one of the sport organisations that contributed to the extensive survey and data research that led to the action plan's creation.

Cook described some of the experiences she heard from women coaches as "confronting and harrowing stories".

"It has been a brutal system across all sport," she said.

"For those women, being brave to step up and tell their stories, and trusting us to do something with that, to show that we have an action plan to address the issues is really powerful.

"They've experienced anything from discrimination, all the way up to threats and actual physical and sexual violence.

"Furthermore, we know that violence against women is an epidemic, and it's absolutely something they've faced historically in the coaching space.

"But we have an opportunity really to change the narrative and make sport the vehicle by which we're going to make social change like gender equality and the removal of gender-based violence."

According to the plan, the AIS, sports, organisations and individuals are all able to play a role in making that change, with toolkits and resources provided to assist.

"Talented women were leaking out of coaching, so we want to remove some barriers and ensure women have the opportunity to engage in high performance coaching," Cook said.

"We have to start somewhere and the 10 recommendations are evidence-based ... and I have no doubt that if sport can deliver on those, we will be in very, very good shape."

The program was launched during the World Class to World Best conference, which is bringing together hundreds of high performance sport administrators and athletes to Canberra.

"We must be more inclusive and take action to remove the complexity and challenges facing women coaches," Matti Clements, executive general manager of AIS Performance, said.

"We need a systemic approach to embed sustainable change so that by 2032 we won't be talking about women coaches - just coaches."

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