Changing the face of coaching

For more than 12 years, the Female Coaching Network has been connecting, supporting and amplifying the voices of female coaches across the world. Today, FCN is one of the largest coaching communities globally and works alongside leading sporting organisations to create better coaching systems for all.

We Don’t Just Tick Boxes, We Make Change Happen

Women remain significantly underrepresented across high performance coaching, despite decades of progress in women’s sport.

At the Paris Olympic Games, women made up just 13% of accredited coaches.

Across the sporting landscape, the picture is the same. In elite football, women hold only around 10% of senior coaching roles in the women’s professional game.

At the 2025 Rugby Union World Cup, only 3 teams out of 12 had a female Head Coach, while in basketball, the number of women Head Coaches in the WNBA has declined in recent years despite the league being one of the world’s leading women’s sports competitions.

In NCAA college sport in the United States, the percentage of women head coaches in women’s teams has fallen from over 90% in 1972 to around 43% today. And in International Track & Field, less than 8% of athletes competing at major championships are coached by a woman.

Research continues to show the barriers are systemic — from biased hiring practices and inaccessible networks, to limited mentorship, motherhood penalties, unequal investment, and environments where women are still expected to constantly prove their credibility.

At FCN, we believe the issue is not a lack of talented women coaches — it is a system that was never designed with them in mind.

That is why we work across every level of the coaching landscape: supporting individual coaches, educating organisations, influencing leadership, and challenging the structures that shape recruitment, development, visibility, and opportunity.

Real change requires more than conversation. It requires action, accountability, and a collective commitment to building coaching environments where women can thrive.

Who We Have Worked With...

What We Do...

Despite significant growth in women’s sport, female coaches continue to face barriers to progression, visibility, opportunity and support. Too often, talented coaches leave the profession, struggle to access development opportunities or navigate systems that were not designed with their experiences in mind. For more than 12 years, FCN has worked to change that by connecting coaches, amplifying voices and helping organisations create better coaching environments for all.

Empower Coaches

We provide a platform for coaches and leaders to connect, share and develop, empowering them to reach their full potential and achieve their goals, both on and off the field. Our network is one of the biggest in the world of performance sports. It is seen as a safe space for our members, enabling them to openly speak up and share their visions on how to create real change in sport.

• Mentoring

• Networking

• Education & Development

Join the FCN Academy

Changing Systems

We work with sports federations to create change in their coaching landscape, developing an equitable culture for male and female coaches. Working alongside brands including UK Athletics, World Athletics, Tottenham Hotspur, WHOOP, and Nike, we consult with organisations, teams and federations to drive change in sports systems for a more efficient, effective and safer coaching environment.

• Consulting & Advising

• Research

• Speaking

Get In Touch

Founded by coaches, for coaches

The Female Coaching Network was founded by Vicky Huyton in 2014. A coach, coach developer, researcher and international speaker, Vicky is recognised globally as one of the leading voices in coach development, coaching systems and the advancement of women in sport.

With more than 20 years’ experience across talent development, high-performance sport, coach education and leadership, she has worked alongside coaches, teams, federations, universities and sporting organisations around the world to better understand coaching environments and create meaningful, sustainable change.

Combining lived experience as a coach with a deep commitment to understanding the craft of coaching, Vicky’s work sits at the intersection of coach development, leadership, culture and systems change. Her expertise is grounded not only in research and evidence-informed practice, but also in the experiences and insights of thousands of coaches from across the global sporting landscape.

Through consultancy, research, programme evaluation and speaking engagements, Vicky supports organisations seeking to build more effective, inclusive and psychologically safe coaching environments. She is regularly invited to advise governing bodies, federations, universities and brands on topics including coach development, leadership, high-performance culture, communities of practice and the experiences of female coaches.

As a keynote speaker, Vicky has delivered presentations and workshops internationally, challenging organisations to rethink traditional approaches to coach development and explore how coaching systems can better support the people within them.

Driven by a belief that coaching environments should enable everyone to thrive, Vicky founded the Female Coaching Network to address the barriers women continue to face in coaching and to create greater visibility, opportunity and support for coaches worldwide.

What began as a small community has evolved into one of the world’s largest global coaching networks, connecting thousands of coaches across more than 40 countries and working alongside leading sporting organisations to shape the future of coaching and coach development.

One platform. One mission. One network.

For too long, the resources, research, and networks needed to support female coaches have existed in silos, scattered across organisations, institutions, and individuals who rarely talk to each other.

The FCN Academy, launched in July 2026, changes that. For the first time, the world's leading coaches, researchers, and practitioners are brought together under one roof - creating a hub of knowledge and community that coaches and the organisations that support them can actually access and act on.

This isn't another tick-box CPD programme. It's a movement backed by lived experience, built by coaches, and designed for the realities of high performance coaching.

Join a community built over more than 12 years and become part of one of the world’s largest networks of female coaches.