Women In Football’s annual conference takes place this week at Wembley Stadium, although it is developments across the Atlantic that pose a grave threat to the reforms that the network has been fighting for. 

President Trump’s war on DEI has significantly shifted the conversation backwards, leading to big business rolling back initiatives and making it harder for those seeking greater representation for minorities to make their case.

That includes Women In Football, which represents hundreds of members working in the sport and whose CEO Yvonne Harrison calls the global picture “really alarming”. 

“It is concerning that people think that because somewhere in the world somebody has said, ‘we don’t need to worry about this’, now we don’t need to worry about this,” she tells City AM.

“It misses the point completely in that more diverse teams lead to better performing businesses, whether that’s from a profitability point of view or actually a cultural point of view.

“It’s naive to think, ‘we don’t have to do that now’ and ‘it’s just box ticking’. It’s not, and there’s countless reports that we can draw upon, statistically valid and robust that would tell you that. 

“To me, it’s worrying, and it also plays to a narrative, particularly within sport and football, of ‘they only got the job because they’re a woman or they’re a woman of colour. And actually that’s not the case, and it’s really disrespectful to women.

“The wider societal piece, in terms of EDI [as DEI is more commonly known in the UK] in particular, is really alarming. We have members who work in men’s football, members who work in women’s football, and people who work across both. And it’s really important that the narrative does not become, ‘you’re a woman, you can go and work in women’s football’.”

Even before Trump’s re-election as US president, equality campaigners had a job on their hands. A survey by WIF last year revealed that 89 per cent of women had experienced discrimination at work, of whom 60 per cent reported no action was taken. 

“That is a worry, because that signifies the culture in our game is not what it needs to be,” adds Harrison, formerly managing director of David Beckham and Gary Neville’s Project 92 business.