Club launches new Women’s Network on International Women’s Day 2022
- Huddersfield Town launches Women’s Network on International Women’s Day
- Aims to get deeper insight into female experience with Town
- Network open to all genders
Huddersfield Town is delighted to introduce its Women’s Network, which aims to get a deeper insight into female experience of engaging with the Club.
As a Club, we have identified that women are under-represented in our workforce and fanbase and we want to redress that imbalance. Forming the network is one initiative to publicly reflect our ambition to increasing female representation to align with our local demographics by 2030.
The Women’s Network is comprised of a diverse group of people who will undertake research to gain insights into female experiences with Huddersfield Town Football Club, and who will work with others to identify and implement priority actions to increase female representation, inclusion, and engagement.
Members of the Women’s Network will lead the way in opening up dialogue with supporters, staff, and other stakeholders of all genders and from all backgrounds to champion, enhance, and celebrate female experiences with the Club, whether in employment, as an outreach programme participant, as players or supporters, and at both home and away fixtures, for everyone’s benefit.
Current members include:
Ann Hough – Operations Director, HTAFC
Zoe Shackleton – HR Manager, HTAFC
Robyn Kennerdale – Head of Supporter Services, HTAFC
Karen Crosland – Head of Safeguarding, HTAFC
Eleanor Haigh – Content and Media Relations Executive, HTAFC
Emily Broome – Huddersfield Town Supporters Association
Alison Bamforth – Chair, Huddersfield Town Women’s Team
Berenice Golding – Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, University of Huddersfield
Sarah Shackleton-Ward – Marketing Officer, Kirklees Apprenticeships for All
Today, Tuesday 8 March 2022, is International Women’s Day, which gives us a great opportunity to #BreakTheBias and celebrate the women in our lives and showcase the work we are doing to make our Club as inclusive of everyone as it can possibly be.
Our recent First Team game against Cardiff City was our Terriers Together game, which fell on the EFL’s Women’s Weekend, where we encouraged women who would not ordinarily attend a match to do so. As part of that event, we took the opportunity to highlight our HTAFC Women’s Team on the cover of our free matchday programme, giving the team a full feature inside to boost the awareness of their team and season.
Our commitment to female inclusion is longstanding and we are well known for our support of the Women at the Game initiative.
Our female-focused initiatives include offering free sanitary products to staff, and supporters from both our and other clubs.
Alongside this, working towards becoming a Menopause Friendly Employer is a key aspect of engaging with our female employees and showing that we will support them through the menopause in a variety of ways. We are proud to be the first football club to sign up to this accreditation and hope to receive the accreditation in the near future. We will continue to invest in menopause awareness training and to support other national and international campaigns related to female inclusion.
The Club entered a partnership with #HerGameToo at the start of the season, a campaign which aims to highlight and combat sexist abuse in football.
We are working with a local secondary school to pilot a female mentoring programme, which we hope will raise the participants’ aspirations to pursue careers in football/sport.
We will also be hosting our inaugural Female Inclusion and Empowerment conference later in the year, with further details to follow.
To find out more about the entire Terriers Together initiative, please CLICK HERE.
