According to CBS News, women account for nearly half of the NFL’s fan base, yet they make up just a third of league employees. There has never been a woman head coach or general manager of an NFL team.
But there are a few women towards breaking the sport’s glass ceiling. At an NFL forum held earlier this year for women in sports, Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera encouraged those women to keep pushing to make their football goals reality.
“There are jobs for women involved in the NFL and they’re not on the outside, they’re on the inside,” CBS News reports him saying. “They’re making decisions.”
In 2015, Jennifer Welter served as an intern for the Arizona Cardinals, working six weeks over the summer as an assistant coach under linebacker coach Bob Sanders. She was the first woman to hold such a role on an NFL coaching staff.
During the 2016-2017 season, Kathryn Smith became the first woman to hold a full-time coaching position in the NFL. She worked as a Special Teams Quality Control Coach for the Buffalo Bills, where she helped to formulate game plans and build playbooks for the team. Smith held that position for one season under then-head coach Rex Ryan.
This year, Katie Sowers became the NFL’s first openly gay and second full-time female coach, reports ESPN. Sowers, 31, works as an offensive assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers, making her the team’s first female assistant coach.
In 2018, Kelsey Martinez became the Oakland Raiders’ first female assistant coach in the franchise’s history. She is currently the only woman in the NFL working as a strength and conditioning coach, according to NFL.com.
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