Do Football Players Give Female Coaches the Red Card?

Abstract: In Swedish elite football, the skewed gender distribution between coaches is conspicuous, and this thesis aims to investigate one channel as to why there are so few female coaches in this environment. Previous research has found that students evaluate female teachers more critically than male teachers, even in components that they cannot control; might this be the case in Swedish elite football as well? We have conducted a framed field experiment on the teams in the highest football division for players 19 years or under in Sweden. 505 participants watched a video with instructions of a football skill and evaluated it, half of the players were instructed by a female coach and the other half by a male coach. We find no evidence of a gender bias in this sample at the statistical significance level of 5 %. Neither did we find any significant results when controlling for participants being a member of a male or female team, nor when controlling for currently or previously having exposure to a female coach. A series of robustness checks were conducted and we find our results to be robust.