FA report reveals English clubs falling short of diversity targets
The English FA has said that staff at professional clubs “falls short of reflecting the levels of diversity amongst the playing population”.
This comes after the FA published its third annual report on the Football Leadership Diversity Code. Introduced in 2020, the code is an initiative to prompt the collective effort to address inequality in senior leadership, wider team operations and coaching roles.
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Last season among the clubs endorsing the initiative, just nine per cent of senior leaders, 11 per cent of team operations, 16 per cent of coaches and nine per cent of hired senior coaches were individuals of Black, Asian or mixed heritage. Additionally, only 23 per cent of senior leaders and 30 per cent of team operations hires were female.
Within the 53 club signatories, 21 per cent of senior leaders and 29 per cent of team operations are female. Meanwhile, seven per cent of senior leaders and nine per cent of team operations belong to individuals of Black, Asian or mixed heritage.
In the coaching workforce, 13 per cent of trainers and 11 per cent of senior coaches are from Black, Asian, or mixed heritage backgrounds.
This year marks the first instance where participating clubs have disclosed their actual workforce data, including information on LGBTQ+ and disability, offering a more comprehensive insight into the diversity landscape within the professional game.
Although the FA said that the “English football authorities, including the FA, Premier League and EFL, all met their targets this year,” they argued that “the pace of change overall remains slow”. It plans to make it compulsory for all professional sides in the English leagues to report data on age, sex, gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation within their clubs.
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“Progress is being made in some areas, however the workforce across the professional game in England is falling short of reflecting the levels of diversity amongst the playing population – and the hiring rates are currently not high enough to drive the rapid change needed,” the report read. “Whilst some sections of the data do not meet the requirements of the code, there are also clubs who are outperforming their targets and are driving real change, led by their senior leadership.
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“The English football authorities, including the FA, Premier League and EFL, all met their targets this year – with hiring rates exceeding workforce diversity targets across the organisations. This includes the FA meeting the hiring targets for men’s coaches in every year of the code, resulting in 29 per cent of coaches being Black, Asian or Mixed Heritage across all England teams.
“However, the pace of change overall remains slow. In order to expedite progress, we, with support from the Premier League, EFL, Barclays Women’s Super League and Barclays Women’s Championship, plan to make it mandatory for all professional clubs in the English leagues to report data on age, sex, gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation within their organisations.
“The creation of a new FA Rule to introduce this has been approved in principle by the FA Board, and there will be a consultation period to finalise the rule drafting prior to it being introduced ahead of the 2024-25 season.”
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‘All clubs need to be transparent’
“The club results for the Football Leadership Diversity Code are disappointing, but they are not wholly unexpected,” said Kick It Out chief executive Tony Burnett.
“In the process of setting up the code, we expressed concerns that if football wanted to drive change, it needed to be transparent about its whole workforce. Clubs were only willing to provide limited recruitment data and there were no sanctions for failing to comply.
“Now is the time to be bolder. The FA’s intention to make reporting of diversity data mandatory for all men’s and women’s clubs is a step in the right direction. We would urge the Premier League, EFL and all its 92 clubs to make that data transparent.
“But we also need sanctions for non-compliance and future diversity targets baked into FA, Premier League and EFL rules. Without that commitment, we won’t know the true scale of the challenge nor be able to find solutions to make football more representative of the people who love the game.”
(Photo: Jan Kruger – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
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