Women’s leadership in sport: changing organisational culture from the inside

Women’s leadership in sport is often discussed as a matter of representation. Representation matters, but the issue is deeper. It is about who shapes decisions, whose expertise is recognised and which organisational cultures are allowed to define the future of sport.

At the 2025 Social Football Summit in Turin, held at Juventus’ Allianz Stadium, this question was impossible to ignore. The event has become one of Italy’s leading platforms for football innovation, yet the number of women in senior leadership roles remained visibly limited.

That context made a dedicated workshop on women’s leadership and organisational culture especially relevant. The session, organised around the theme of unconscious bias and held in memory of Emanuela Perinetti, brought together women from different areas of the football and sport ecosystem for a practical discussion on barriers, causes and solutions.

The format was simple but effective: a football-pitch-shaped board divided into defence, midfield and attack. Defence represented the barriers. Midfield explored the underlying causes and ideas. Attack focused on concrete solutions.

The first part of the discussion highlighted familiar but persistent obstacles: unconscious bias in hiring and promotion, limited recognition of women’s expertise, few visible role models, and organisational models still shaped around male norms of leadership, availability and authority.

One sentence captured the tension clearly: to be respected, women often feel expected to become tougher in ways that may not feel authentic. This is not just a personal discomfort. It reveals a structural problem. Many organisations still define leadership through behaviours historically associated with men, rather than through effectiveness, clarity, empathy, competence and decision-making quality.

The roots of the issue are cultural as much as organisational. Biases are powerful because they become normalised. In football, especially in Italy, they are reinforced by a wider cultural association between the sport, masculinity, tradition and family identity. That makes change harder, but also more significant.

When women are absent from decision-making spaces, priorities are harder to shift from within. When inclusive leadership training is missing, bias remains invisible. When role models are distant or inaccessible, younger women struggle to imagine their own progression.

The solutions discussed were not cosmetic. They included stronger networks among women, more intentional allyship from men, structured bias-awareness processes and mechanisms that bring younger generations into the conversation.

One idea I strongly believe in is the creation of youth advisory boards within clubs and sports organisations. Groups of young people aged 10 to 18 can help leaders understand how the next generation sees inclusion, identity, participation and belonging. Their sensitivity to these issues is often more advanced than that of current decision-makers.

This matters because sport is not only an industry. It is a cultural institution. Clubs, leagues and federations shape how millions of people understand ambition, leadership, gender roles and social possibility. Progress inside sport organisations therefore creates a ripple effect beyond the sector itself.

For that reason, advancing women in sport should not be framed as a side initiative or a reputational gesture. It is an investment in better governance, better culture and better leadership. Diverse leadership teams are more likely to challenge assumptions, understand broader audiences and build organisations that reflect the communities they want to serve.

From a commercial perspective, this is increasingly important. Women’s sport cannot build modern value using outdated organisational models. It needs leaders who understand culture, data, audiences, athletes, media and partnerships. It needs decision-making environments where different perspectives are not simply present, but influential.

The future of sport will be shaped not only by new formats, new technologies or new revenue models. It will also be shaped by who is allowed to lead, who is heard and how organisations define authority.

Changing the rules of the game starts with changing the culture of the institutions that govern it.