‘More female coaches’: Hockey on a mission to change gender imbalance

By Sophie Penney

There is big room for improvement in the percentage of women in high performance coaching, leadership roles and umpiring in hockey, according to the president of the European Hockey Federation (EHF).

In a sport where England Hockey reports a 50/50 gender split in participation and nearly all major tournaments run concurrently for men and women, a lot of work is being done to achieve equal male and female representation off the pitch, led by Marijke Fleuren who is also chair of the International Hockey Federation’s (FIH) Women in Sport committee and a member of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Women in Sport commission.