
A new 10-point plan will be launched by Premiership Womenâs Rugby to increase female coaches in the Womenâs Six Nations, where currently no female head coaches exist. The initiative aims to address the lack of diversity and support women in elite coaching roles.
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A 10-point plan will be introduced by Premiership Womenâs Rugby next season that aims to increase the number of female coaches at international level, with only one top-10 nation currently being led by a woman.
The scheme aims to create a springboard for more women at the elite tier of the sport, where there is a glaring lack of diversity among top coaches. Whitney Hansen is in charge of New Zealand, but, Jo Yapp and GaĂ«lle Mignot stood down from their positions after last yearâs Rugby World Cup, with the Wallaroos and France respectively.
At the groundbreaking 2025 tournament there were three female head coaches, but there are none in the 2026 Womenâs Six Nations. At PWR clubs all the head coaches are men, and of the 22 women coaching in the league, just six hold senior roles.
âThere is a huge amount of work to do to change everything from perception, experience and pipeline of female coaches,â Genevieve Shore, the PWR chair, said. âEvery single piece from âI have done my coaching qualificationâ to âI have got my jobâ needs intervention. That is the work we are doing.â
While enforcing a minimum operating standard on the number of female coaches at each club is being considered, providing financial investment to bring women into coaching and offering them training and development is also part of the plan.
The league commissioned research with the Rugby Football Union â interviewing coaches and club owners from the womenâs and menâs game â and came up with a 100-page report on diversifying coaching in the womenâs game.
Susie Appleby, the former Exeter Womenâs head coach, said: âThe support you need is immense. It is quite solitary at times. You get quite isolated, not necessarily by choice. You end up doing everything yourself because that is what you have always done rather than reaching out for support.â

Sarah Hunter and Emily Scarratt are part of the England coaching team, but they are a minority in the international game. Photograph: Bob Bradford/CameraSport/Getty Images
Shore added the hope is that more female coaches at league level will translate to the international stage. There are some female coaches in the Six Nations setups, such as Sarah Hunter and Emily Scarratt with England, but male coaches are the significant majority.
Currently, there are no female head coaches in the Womenâs Six Nations due to a lack of diversity and support for women in elite coaching roles.
The 10-point plan aims to increase the number of female coaches at the international level by providing financial investment, training, and development opportunities.
Currently, Whitney Hansen is the only female head coach in a top-10 nation, leading New Zealand, while Jo Yapp and Gaëlle Mignot stepped down after the last Rugby World Cup.
Women face challenges such as perception issues, lack of experience, and insufficient support in the coaching pipeline, which the new plan aims to address.

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One major part of having more female coaches into international rugby is getting their foot in the door. Loughborough Lightningâs assistant coach, Rachel Taylor, has praised World Rugby for its internship programmes that give women more experience and she believes coachesâ home unions have a big role to play. âYou have to get the right coach for the right job,â she said.
âJust because you are an ex-Welsh player doesnât mean you should go on and coach with Wales, but it is a really good avenue to get in. If you think of Lou Meadows, she had a really good experience with the Red Roses in terms of coaching exposure and now has that opportunity to go into another union [with the USA]. It is difficult if you donât have your home union championing you from the off.â
With a limited number of women in coaching roles it means others cannot see it as a clear career path, says the Wales under-18s head coach, Siwan Lillicrap. âYou have to see it to want to be it,â she said. âWe have been there in a playing sense, but there are not enough women coaches out there for people to aspire or think there is a path.
âThe roadmap isnât clear so therefore people arenât getting out there. Even if you arenât a pro player, there are people out there who will be good coaches. Do they see that career roadmap? They probably donât.â
The perception of what a head coach looks like also needs to change, according to the former Ireland player Anna Caplice, who has coached Laos. She said: âI have this theory that if you said âthat is the new coachâ and you turned around and it was a man with his hands in his pockets there would be absolutely no question about his ability.
âWhereas if you turned around and saw a woman who had everything ready and knows her stuff, immediately there are question over what you do until you deliver it. Even after you have delivered it, there can still be question over it. That is a societal thing we have to battle with every day, in many areas of life, not just rugby.â
The initial development of female coaches is lacking too, according to many in the game. Different voices had different ideas of how that would be fostered: Caplice wants to see more player-coach roles, the Wales development coach, Elinor Snowsill, suggests unions introducing paid guest coaching periods in international camps, while Taylor puts forward female coaches being mandated at all levels of the game. World Rugby have said they are not planning to introduce an enforced number of female coaches.

Jo Yapp stood down from her position as Australia coach after last yearâs World Cup. Photograph: Bob Bradford/CameraSport/Getty Images
Another factor on why there are fewer female coaches is because of the slower recent professionalisation of womenâs rugby. Snowsill said: âIf you look 10 years ago the game was still amateur. There were no full-time players so they all had full-time jobs alongside that. For them to retire and say âI am going to cancel my career as well and go into coachingâ was a lot less likely.
âThere were also no paid roles within the female game. There was nothing for them to go into anyway. That is why we have a generation of missing coaches.â
Shore added: âLots of men when they are in academies and are professional rugby players take this pathway and go through coaching qualifications. They get opportunities to coach, get their 10,000 hours in; 95% of our women have a job as well as playing. They do not have another 20 hours a week to coach.â
It has been suggested female coaches can bring empathetic communication styles, as well as a deeper understanding of female biology, particularly the effect of the menstrual cycle on athletes, to coaching roles. Preparing players for difficult environments is another area female coaches who have played the game can do well.
Snowsill said: âI have had conversations about how do we prepare these players to be able to mentally and psychologically be strong enough and know how to challenge environments, know if they ever find themselves in environments that are not right or are not healthy,. How do they, as a playing group, challenge it?
âWe have found, as players, it took a toll on us and we werenât well equipped or well supported. So we are massively motivated to make sure the next generation has those other skills. Whereas would [our male equivalents] ever think that is needed? Because they may never have felt like that in an environment. Without women in these positions or environments we arenât getting that development as well.â