5
Through the Female Lens
Part Five of Five

What changes —
and how
to start

From awareness to action. What the female lens actually changes in daily practice — for every role in the game.

Mirelle van Rijbroek  ·  2026
The foundation — not the destination

Awareness is where
everything starts

The female lens is only valuable if it changes something — if it alters the way you work, not just the way you think. If the ideas in this guide stay at the level of interesting frameworks that people nod at and then return to doing things the same way, they have not done their job.

What matters is what you do differently. And what you do differently depends on who you are and what role you play in the lives of female players.

The changes that come from consistently applying the female lens are real, and they are within reach for everyone reading this. They do not require a transformation of the entire system before anything can change. They require individual decisions — made on training pitches, in scouting chairs, in selection meetings, in hiring processes, in development conversations — that, accumulated across many people and many contexts, add up to a different game.

Frameworks do not change games. People do. Decisions do. Investment does. Culture does. The female lens only becomes real through the choices of the people inside the game.

Role-specific guidance

Every role matters —
what changes for you

The female lens shows up differently depending on your role. Here is what it means in practice — for each of the people who shape the world female players grow in.

If you are a coach
Before a session: ask not just what football problem you are solving, but how you are creating conditions for players to engage with it fully — with confidence and genuine willingness to try things that might not work. A session designed to develop decision-making, run in an environment where players fear wrong decisions, will not achieve its objective.
In feedback: the standard is honesty inside relationship. Not softened feedback that avoids the truth. Not harsh feedback without care. Both at the same time. Build the trust first — then deliver the honesty it can hold.
In how you handle mistakes publicly: every response to a mistake that makes the player feel safer to try again next time is an investment in the team's willingness to take risks. Every response that makes her feel smaller is a withdrawal. The compound effect of these decisions, made many times a day, creates the culture.
In leadership: resist looking only for the loudest voice. High-performing female teams distribute leadership across multiple players. Create space for the player who leads vocally, the player who leads through her standards, and the player who holds the group together emotionally.
Ask regularly: does every player in my environment know that I believe in her potential? Not just the starting eleven. Every player. Because the player who knows she is believed in will show you things the player who doesn't know that will never show you.
If you are a scout or talent identifier
Before you go: gather context. What pathway has this player come through? What club, what coaching quality, how many training sessions per week, what level of competition? Without this, you are comparing her to benchmarks she may have had no opportunity to reach — and mistaking the gap for a gap in her talent.
During the observation: when you notice a hesitation, a conservative decision, a physical limitation — resist the impulse to categorise it immediately. Ask first what might have caused it. Is this a character trait, or is this what happens in this environment, for this player, at this biological moment?
After the observation: the birthdate question. Always. Am I seeing talent, or am I seeing maturity? Is what impressed me most likely to be a permanent expression of her ceiling, or a relative advantage that her peers will close in the next two or three years?
In the report: describe not just what she showed you, but what shaped what she showed you. Be honest about what context was present and what remains unknown. Commit to longitudinal observation. One observation is information. Repeated observations across different contexts are evidence.
If you are a director or leader
In hiring: ask not just whether the candidate is qualified, but what perspective they bring that is currently missing from the room. Diversity of perspective is a performance argument, not a box-ticking exercise. The decisions made in rooms that include female coaches, scouts and technical directors are better decisions.
In programme design: ask honestly — was this built for female players, or adapted from the men's system and assumed to transfer? The difference is visible in the details: physical programming, psychological support, development conversations, culture-building.
In resource allocation: does what you invest match the priority you say the women's game has? Organisations that claim to take the women's game seriously but invest in it at the margins are making a statement, even if they do not intend to.
In accountability: is progress on the women's game actually measured? Is anyone's career advancement tied to that progress? Structures without accountability produce intention without change.
If you are a parent or teacher
Your language matters more than you think. What you say about girls' football, about female athletes, about what is normal for girls to want and pursue — shapes what a girl believes is available to her. Watch women's football with the same investment you watch men's. It sends a message.
Create space for her to fail. Girls who are socialised to avoid failure will play not to fail. Give her permission to be bold, to be messy, to try things that don't work. The antidote to risk-aversion is an environment where failing is part of learning — not evidence of inadequacy.
Believe in potential, not just current performance. The player she is today is not the ceiling of who she could become. Ask about what she wants to improve, what she enjoyed, what challenged her — not only whether she played well or the team won.
Ask who she can see. Role models are not a luxury. They are how girls learn what is possible for them. Seek out that visibility actively. When a girl can see women doing things she aspires to — playing at the highest level, coaching, leading — the ceiling on what she believes is possible for herself lifts.
If you are a player
Your development belongs to you. Coaches, clubs and systems can create conditions and provide support. But the growth is yours. Know what you want to improve — specifically, not in a general sense. Don't wait to be told. Knowing, and pursuing it with conviction: that is the internal engine that distinguishes elite careers.
The pathway gap is real — and it is not your fault. If you arrived later than you should have, if the resources around you were thinner, the coaching less consistent, the pathway less clear — that is a system failure. It does not reflect the ceiling of what you could become. The inputs you had access to shaped the player you are today. They did not determine who you could become with better inputs.
Belonging is something you help build — for yourself and for the players around you. You have a role in the culture of your team. The standard you set in every session. The way you handle your own mistakes and those of your teammates. These contributions are not secondary to your football. They are part of it.
You are more than this game. Build your identity as a full person — one who plays football at a high level, and who is also other things. The skills you are developing through football transfer: the discipline, the teamwork, the resilience, the leadership. They will serve you in everything that comes after football.
Where systemic change is still needed

Five areas for
deeper change

Individual actions matter enormously. But some changes require more than individual action. These are the five areas where the work is most needed, and where the gap between where we are and where we need to be is still significant.

1
Clearer reference points for the women's game
Many organisations still use talent evaluation frameworks, performance benchmarks and scouting criteria built in or adapted from the men's game. Building reference points genuinely grounded in female football — what elite looks like in the women's game, what development stages look like in female players — requires collaboration between practitioners, researchers and the players themselves. It is achievable. It has not been sufficiently prioritised.
2
Female development knowledge in football education
A real and growing body of knowledge exists on female biology, developmental psychology and female learning environments. That knowledge has not yet been systematically integrated into coaching education, scouting education or technical director development in most countries. A coach can complete a full UEFA licensing pathway with almost no structured input on female development. That gap needs to close — and closing it is not radical. It is a reasonable expectation.
3
Better environments and genuine second chances
Players assessed once, found wanting, and never seen again. A system designed around the realities of female development builds in reassessment — because it knows that one observation on one day is not enough, and the context of the first observation may have been misleading. Building that reassessment into the structure, as standard practice, is not complicated. It requires a decision and a system. Both are available.
4
Less bias in the decisions we make
The language used in player evaluations is not neutral. Words like aggressive, dominant and competitive carry assumptions built around male athlete behaviour. Auditing the language in scouting reports, selection discussions and development conversations reveals where assumptions are doing work that should be done by evidence. Structuring decision-making processes to name and address biases produces fairer and more accurate outcomes for every player who passes through the system.
5
More women shaping the game — with real authority
Every organisation that builds genuine pathways for female coaches, scouts, technical directors and leaders produces a better game for the players they serve. The multiplier is real: every woman who succeeds in a leadership role in football makes the next one more possible. The change needed is not women hired for appearances — it is women given real authority, real development support, real accountability for their success, and real credit when they succeed.

This can only happen if we build it together.

Mirelle van Rijbroek
She was always there.
We just needed to learn
how to see her.

The players are already out there. The talent already exists — in the girl who trained twice a week and never had a scout at her game. In the player who looked hesitant at 14 because nobody had ever made her feel safe enough to be bold. In the young woman who stopped at 16 because there was no clear next step, and nobody came to find her.

The goal of talent identification is not just to find talent. It is to not lose it.

Imagine if every talented girl had early access to the quality the best academies give boys. We have not yet come close to seeing the ceiling of what female players can become. The future is not given. It is built.

Mirelle van Rijbroek  ·  2026