Albion players, coaches and staff have come together on International Women’s Day to show their support for this year’s theme to #BreakTheBias.
International Women's Day is a global celebration of the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women and this year marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.
The campaign focuses on how bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead and players, coaches and staff showed their support by striking the IWD pose and encouraging people to commit to forging an inclusive world.
Chief executive and deputy chairman Paul Barber said, “As a club with equality and diversity at the heart of its values, we are committed to continuing our journey toward fair and equal opportunities for all. The club’s support for International Women’s Day is part of our strategy and we urge all our supporters to share the values of the #BreakTheBias campaign.”
Albion have developed an equality action plan and reached intermediate level of the Premier League’s Equality Standard, enabling us to put in place measurable steps to demonstrate our commitment to equality and diversity.
Our ‘Aim High’ strategy identifies and removes barriers to inclusion and progression for female employees. It includes workshops for women on topics such as self-confidence and emotional agility as well as access to the Women in Football leadership programme and its networking opportunities and events.
As part of our wider female inclusion agenda, we are increasing the number of women and girls playing football through Albion in the Community programmes, increasing the number of women in our coaching set-up and the number of female fans supporting our teams.
The club are committed to improving its gender balance which allows it to close the gender pay gap. This has resulted in a 10% increase in our gender balance, while our female population of headcount has risen to 30%. We are also working to increase the gender diversity of our senior leadership teams.
The club has teamed up with local schools and universities to promote careers within football to girls and ensure there is a broad awareness of the opportunities that exist within professional sport.