“Being a woman in the men’s game, it’s brutal”: a longitudinal photo-elicitation exploration of a woman football coach’s well-being

Historically within UK professional football environments, women’s coaching representation has been low, irrespective of gender participation. The involvement of women coaches in the context of men’s football has been contested due to dominant hegemonic masculinity. For the limited number of women coaches in the men’s game, there is a need for deeper contextual understanding of how organizational dynamics and minority status intersect to shape well-being. An auto-driven photo-elicitation was employed to explore a woman coach’s well-being experiences longitudinally over a season whilst working in a men’s professional football club. Bioecological theory was utilized as a theoretical lens to enrich participant interpretations and sensemaking, and longitudinal interpretative phenomenological analysis (LIPA) was implemented to analyze interview data at four time points. Four experiential themes were created “I can’t hide that I am a woman, so it is gonna be different for me,” “I don’t really know which direction to go in,” “I’m trying to get the balance between professional and personal life,” and “If I’m not coaching, what am I?.” Our findings illuminated that the woman coach excessively worked to progress their career in the men’s side of the game, which had deleterious consequences for well-being (e.g., neglecting wider aspects of life). Being an authentic self and seeking a third space away from work and home-life commitments were perceived as therapeutic for well-being. Well-being sensemaking was enriched by utilizing an auto-driven photo-elicitation approach. Our work acts as a springboard for future work to creatively explore well-being within varying sports coaching contexts.