‘It’s been a long wait’: The women fighting for a place in coaching and refereeing
Over half of female football coaches say they have considered quitting the role due to sexism on and off the pitch.
This comes as the prospect of pursuing a non-playing career in football for women continues to bring the unwelcome additions of discrimination and exclusion.
In March, the Kick It Out campaign group revealed that four in five women football coaches had been subject to some form of sexism while in a coaching environment and 54% of those polled saying the experience made them consider leaving the profession.
This abuse is a contributing factor to the lack of female participation in coaching, with less than half of head coaches in women's football being female at the start of this season.
Female under-representation in non-playing roles in football is prevalent, with the FA revealing as of August 2023 that women make up only 8% of referees operating in men's football, and just 2.5% of officials working in the professional game.
Stefany Alibrando Martin is UEFA licenced and currently works as the goalkeeping coach for Coventry City Women FC. She is also a qualified FA referee on the men's football pathway.
Alibrando Martin currently works in football part-time with ambitions of becoming a full-time coach and says that she is fortunate to have been supported by her colleagues, but the absence of female representation throughout her career has been all too apparent.
She says: "When I was an assistant coach at a player development centre of a professional team, there wasn't a single female head coach or even assistant coach for over 30 development teams.
"It has been a long wait for an opportunity to work as a coach and referee, but the changes are happening and now is the right time."
The FA pledged in 2020 to boost the percentage of women in head coaching roles in women's football from 65% to 75% by 2024. However, as of 2023 this number has actually decreased to just 46%.
The number of registered female referees has risen from 1,477 to 2,508 in the same period, but the percentage of these referees progressing through the FA's women's promotion pathway has plateaued at 3%, some way short of their 2024 target of 7%.
A three-year plan commenced this season to develop the women's refereeing pathway to provide more suitable opportunities for new officials in an effort to prevent refs from quitting the profession, including due to sexist abuse.
From her experiences of refereeing men's football, Alibrando Martin says: "Coaches and players are more critical of female referees than male referees, making comments that they are not confident enough and that they don't make decisions with conviction.
"I do feel that some coaches or parents tend to try and persuade my refereeing decisions, but I'm not sure how much of this is to do with me being a woman."
Misogynistic attitudes within football continue to hold back women trying to make a difference at all levels of the game.
Lubna Azam is the co-founder and coach of grassroots women's team RARA AVIS FC, and describes the obstacles faced trying to create an inclusive environment for women in a male-dominated game.
She says: "We've had kids jeering and making silly comments when we've been playing on community pitches, but we have spoken to them and they were apologetic. We're all about educating and changing attitudes.
"We've also had the old 'make me a sandwich' comment from a random person stalking our social media."
RARA AVIS' experience is far from an anomaly, with Kick It Out's report finding that 57% of female coaches felt they were spoken to differently based solely on their gender.
The Leicester-based team have also faced difficulties receiving equal treatment to their male counterparts when it comes to resources.
"There is obviously more funding that goes into men's football than women's football and therefore more opportunities and venues, so we've had issues when it comes to booking pitches and winter training facilities. Finding a qualified female coach for the team also isn't as easily accessible."
However, Azam remains committed to providing a place for female footballers to not just exist but thrive, having completed introductory coaching training with the help of community football club Leicester Nirvana.
She says: "Leicester Nirvana pitched the idea of coaching to us, which has opened up a whole new world where we've been able to share our work with other coaches and hear of their experiences.
"With the coaching training and skills we've picked up, we are on our way to inspiring other players to become coaches and inspire girls to get into football.
“We’ve had people tell us they wished they had had the opportunities we offer so it’s really humbling and extremely gratifying.”
Kick It Out is hoping its most recent research can accelerate the push for better safeguarding of women working in non-playing roles in football, with Chief Operating Officer Hollie Varney saying that football needs to start "taking sexism seriously - We encourage those who experience sexism in coaching or throughout the game to report it to us."
However, the ever-presence of misogyny throughout all aspects of society means it is arguably unfair to expect the solution for this marginalisation within football to come solely from the sport itself.
Annie Zaidi is a UEFA licenced coach who has been awarded a British Empire Medal for her services to football coaching and has held coaching roles with the FA, West Bromwich Albion and Solihull Moors.
Zaidi, who currently works with Coventry Sphinx FC, said: "With all due respect to Kick It Out, this narrative has been repeated so many times.
"Football is no different to society, sexism happens every day in all industries so we can't put the microscope on football when the rest of society is in disarray."
Looking to the future, Alibrando Martin says: "I can see football and referee associations working hard to support and increase female representation even in senior positions.
"Just as in any other profession, provided that the person has the technical skills and competence, there shall be no difference."
Labour hold in Shiregreen and Brightside
Mark Simon Rusling in for Sheffield's Shiregreen and Brightside ward with 1547 votes to Labour.
Darfield ward results coming up
Darfield candidates are next to be called.
The incumbent councillor is Kevin Osborne who said earlier today that he was 'hopeful' to retain his seat.
Richmond goes to Labour
And another Labour hold in Richmond with David Charles Barker retaining his seat.
Reform got 502 votes in the ward and the Tories got 401 but it was a resounding Labour victory at 1728 votes.
Labour takes Burngreave
With 1078 votes it's a Labour hold in Sheffield's Burngreave with Safiya Saeed keeping her seat.
Monk Bretton announcement to come shortly
We have our first result coming up here shortly in Barnsley.
The Returning Officer has just called for the Monk Bretton candidates to come forward for the announcement.
More to come.
University attendance monitoring apps spark controversy amid surveillance and deportation fears
Concerns are growing across UK university campuses that mobile phone apps used to record attendance could be used in surveillance and to potentially even wrongfully deport international students.
Since Covid, universities have increasingly adopted mobile phone software that students must download, allow to track their location, and use to mark their own attendance by entering a one-time code when they arrive at class.
One of the main reasons that universities introduce these digital check-in apps is to prove to the Home Office that international students are at university, and to report people to immigration authorities if they are not.
Some students and staff at universities that have adopted these apps are worried that they could put international students at risk of wrongful deportation.
Dr Lucy Mayblin, a political sociologist at the University of Sheffield and expert on UK migration, said: “International students are in an Orwellian situation. The idea that these apps are impervious to human flaws is a complete myth. The apps are just a faceless computer. Students are getting trapped in the system which doesn’t care and is oriented to deporting them.”
Student deportations based on bad data have happened before. After a BBC Panorama documentary in 2014 which revealed cheating by some international students in English language tests, thousands of them were wrongfully accused and forced to leave the country. There are fears it could happen again.
“The stakes are really high for international students,” said Dr Mayblin.
The pressure is also intense on universities to provide data to the Home Office, because they risk losing their visa license to sponsor international students if they fail to keep up with Home Office requirements. The consequences of losing sponsorship status would be dire for universities, who are financially dependent on international tuition to balance the books.
The University of Sheffield is one of the many schools that have started using an attendance app to streamline their reporting to the Home Office.
Andy Winter, Director of Student Support Services at the University of Sheffield, said: “We launched a digital check-in tool to make recording student attendance faster, easier and more consistent across the University.”
Universities say that these apps also make it easier to identify students who may be struggling with their coursework and might need extra support.
In January, the university started requiring both UK and international students to check-in to class on iSheffield, an app which uses software licensed from Israeli company Ex Libris.
If location tracking on students' phones is set to 'always', Ex Libris is able record and store data on the whereabouts of them everywhere they go. Ex Libris operates attendance apps for at least 11 UK universities, and is only one of several companies providing similar services across the country.
For some international students, the new app is making them feel even less welcome in the country than they already do.
“I don’t feel like a human being, I feel like a number. Why can I be tracked 24/7 by my university?” said Jonas, an international student at the University of Sheffield. Jonas, who is gay and from the Middle East, asked to use a pseudonym for protection from anti-LGBT discrimination in his home country.
He said: “The fact that my university, who is supposed to help students find their voices, is instead tracking us… That says a lot.”
Student activists at the University of Bristol and Goldsmiths, University of London, have recently staged boycotts against the check-in apps at their schools. “The controlling and monitoring of our locations is fundamentally an affront to our freedom of movement as well as a threat to our privacy,” said Student Action Bristol.
The University of Sheffield has told staff that it will not use the geolocation data for anything other than check-in verification. Rachel Scheer, a spokesperson for Clarivate, the parent company of Ex Libris, said: "All Clarivate products operate strict data security protocols and the data within our apps is only available to the university or institution who licensed the app.”
Some staff, however, continue to question if this is the case for international students. Dr Annapurna Menon, an associate lecturer in Politics and International Relations, said: “We don’t want to be complicit in deporting our own students. We haven’t gotten any assurance from the university that if the Home Office demands specific location data, will the university refuse? We are educators, we are not the police.”
A wide variety of technical issues are also causing distress for international students struggling to get their attendance recorded accurately. Like many students at the university, Jonas regularly struggles with technical problems: “What if my phone is dead and I turned up to lecture? Multiple times I would be in a building with no service and I wouldn’t be able to check in.
“The reports that we’ve gotten from students is that the app is really fallible,” said Colombian international student Maria Jose Lourido, education officer at the University of Sheffield Students Union.
“A lot of students say that lecturers are not putting up the attendance codes, that the app is not properly tracking them when they’re in the room, that the codes are not working, that the app is slow. The university cannot come in and make sure the internet across campus is excellent, so where the internet is not strong, it will fail.”
Mr Winter said the university is attempting to resolve the issues: “The option to be checked-in by a lecturer also remains for anyone who experiences any difficulties or cannot access the app.”
Ms Jose Lourido says that isn’t a solution: “When the university tells international students that they have to register their attendance or they’ll have immigration problems, the students have to spend 15 minutes, when they have class, saying to the lecturer 'please, I’m trying to log on but it’s not working’.”
Despite the issues with the attendance taking app, teachers and students interviewed for this article all agreed that some form of attendance taking is a good thing.
Imad Tak, an international master’s student studying data analytics, sees benefits to the app: “People are forced to come to the classes, and it’s good to have students in lectures.”
Many suggested alternative ways to take attendance. Most of the people interviewed for this article prefer a system where students would scan their ID cards at card readers installed in classrooms, which would reduce technical issues and prevent universities from giving location data to outside companies. “We have university ID cards – why are we not using ID cards when we already have them?” said Ms Jose Lourido.
Dr Menon, who teaches classes in the politics department said: “We already were able to catch if students were falling through the cracks with our earlier attendance system when teachers recorded attendance manually. We could go back to that.”
The Home Office’s student visa sponsorship guidelines do not actually require universities to report attendance, only to prove that they have a “a single academic engagement policy that applies consistently” to all students. This could include data showing any combination of proof that students are submitting coursework, doing research or laboratory work, and attending classes.
Mr Tak suggested a big rethink for universities trying to maintain their visa sponsorship status: “Rather than focusing on student attendance, universities could focus on our grades.”
Labour to hold Mosborough, says source
Labour source says Tony Downing has kept his seat in Mosborough, a ward the party was very anxious about losing, which was very closely contested last time and they were worried the area would swing to the Liberal Democrats.