The FA Asian Women's Football Advisory Group has more than 20 members and Jayna Patel succeeded Dorset FA CEO Sue Hough as chair more than 10 months ago; Sky Sports News has been told that there have been no formal meetings since
Wednesday 13 December 2023 16:19, UK
The Football Association’s Asian Women's Football Advisory Group has been described as “largely redundant” by one member.
Another member told Sky Sports News the group was "largely redundant" with another saying that they "would describe the group as a talking shop, but the truth is the group doesn't even do much talking".
The FA Asian Women's Football Advisory Group has more than 20 members and was chaired up until last year by former Dorset FA chief executive Sue Hough.
Hough currently chairs both the FA National Game Board and the FA Women's Football Board and also sits on various working committees. Jayna Patel succeeded Hough as the group's chair more than 10 months ago. Sky Sports News has been told that there have been no formal meetings since.
Group members are based in different parts of the country and are in touch through a WhatsApp group.
According to the FA, in 2021-2022 the group supported the distribution of 1,200 free Nike sports hijabs across the country with the aim of increasing the participation of Muslim women and girls, including South Asian females.
The group is thought to have had some input into the Women's Football Strategy, with the focus of efforts for this season - according to this year's FA Asian Inclusion update - very much on participation as well as recruiting and raising the profile of future female leaders and ambassadors.
Those objectives remain unchanged from the 2022-23 season published in last year's Asian Inclusion update.
But English football's national governing body does not have any specific initiatives in place to support the development of female players from South Asian backgrounds.
That is despite a lack of readily-available data about emerging players from the community, and the fact that South Asians are the largest single ethnic minority female group in the country.
Derby County Women's footballer Kira Rai - who trusted Sky Sports News to conduct her first interview with a major platform, back in 2021 - and a number of other players from South Asian backgrounds across the game have told Sky Sports News that these issues need to be urgently addressed.
It comes less than a month after Wasim Haq resigned as a member of the FA Council after saying "Adolf Hitler would be proud of Benjamin Netanyahu" amid Israel's ongoing military action in Gaza.
Haq, who served as the BAME football communities representative on the Council and had previously been on the FA Inclusion Advisory Board, stepped away from his role the day after data released by the Football Association - three years on from the launch of the Football Leadership Diversity Code - showed that the 53 clubs signed up collectively failed to meet any of the eight hiring targets set last season.
That came just over a month after Rabbi Alex Goldberg resigned as chair of the FA Faith and Football network over the governing body's refusal to light up the Wembley arch for England's international friendly with Australia. It's since been confirmed the arch will no longer be lit up to mark terror attacks across the world or for social causes.
Following his resignation, the FA thanked Rabbi Goldberg for his service and said the Faith and Football network was an informal group and not part of the FA's governance structure.
The Football Association Asian Women's Football Advisory Group was founded in the summer of 2019 and is also not part of the FA's governance structure.
The FA said the group would inform the actions needed to embed Asian women in football at all levels, adding that the work would form part of the FA Women's strategy, running from 2020 until 2024.
Statistics continue to show South Asian women, year-in, year-out are the least active female group in the country. But the number of pan-Asian women aged 16+ playing football has recovered after a 0.6 per cent drop up to July 2022, rising from 15.2 per cent to 17.5 per cent up to July 2023.
However, this lags well behind wider figures published in this summer's UEFA Euro 2022 Impact Study that showed participation increased at more than three times that level for women aged 16+ from all backgrounds.
The lack of ethnic diversity in the elite women's game has been brought sharply into focus on a number of occasions in recent years, notably in February 2021, when England named a squad comprised entirely of white players for a friendly against Northern Ireland, with Nikita Parris unavailable due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.
Then-Bristol City forward Ebony Salmon was eventually added to the squad, but the chronic lack of ethnic diversity was laid bare for all to see during England's stunning Euros triumph last year when head coach Sarina Wiegman named an all-white starting XI for every single match of the tournament.
Earlier this year, Chelsea manager Emma Hayes described women's football as a "middle-class sport" before a glaring lack of ethnic diversity in this season's Arsenal's first-team squad led to head coach Jonas Eidevall admitting that it "is a problem" for his side, adding it is part of a wider diversity problem in the women's game.
An independent review of domestic women's football - ordered by government and led by England legend Karen Carney - made a series of recommendations back in July, including that the FA should urgently address the lack of diversity across the women's game.
The government has since backed all of the recommendations in the review and has challenged the FA and wider stakeholders to go further and set a new standard for women's sport.
The FA has previously told Sky Sports News its key aims are to provide greater access for more female players while diversifying the talent pool, pointing to its Discover My Talent referral initiative.
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