The number of female coaches is on the rise but New Zealand Football is looking to help even more women get into coaching by introducing a ground-breaking initiative, the Female Coach Scholarship Programme.

The programme is aimed at reducing the financial barrier to coaching by providing assistance towards course fees and will bring further support from New Zealand Football in regards to professional development.

Applications are open to all females actively involved in football but a willingness to pass on knowledge and work to continue developing the women’s game in New Zealand is a must. While previous coaching experience is not a requirement, it would be beneficial to have already been on a NZF Community Coach Education course.

New Zealand Football Women’s Development Manager Holly Nixon is delighted to be able to offer budding female coaches such an excellent opportunity to further their ambitions.

“It is important to have female coaches to provide diversity in the coaching sector, they provide a visible career pathway for young females to enter the coaching profession and they can relate differently to young women as they are a same-sex role model,” she says.

“If we wish to grow and develop the game, female coaches are a crucial element to this.”

Nixon says there are a number of factors which have traditionally hindered women from getting involved in coaching and that New Zealand Football is working hard to break these down. A number of strategies have been introduced in recent months to increase women’s coaching numbers, including female-only courses and other targeted initiatives.

For example, a fully-funded NZF Senior Level 2 Coaching Award was staged last year and brought together 35 participants from across the country’s seven member federations while four female Coach Developers presented the content.

The Female Coach Scholarship Programme has been introduced to take those initiatives to the next level and help support a larger number of female coaches on a variety of advanced coach education courses.

“Female coaches are positively skewed to the community level of the game and the number of female coaches is healthy but, at the advanced level, there is an opportunity for further representation in domestic and national level appointments,” Nixon explains.

“This is common place throughout the world and a strategy FIFA has implemented to help change this is a requirement that all age-group teams at a World Cup must have a female within the coaching team,” she adds.

“We are pleased to be at the forefront of this movement by providing an exciting new scholarship programme and are looking forward to seeing more females coaching our elite teams in the future as a result.”

For more information on the Female Coach Scholarship Programme and how to apply please click here