VERA PAUW

 

Vera Pauw is the manager of the Republic of Ireland Women’s Senior team in football. She was appointed to the role in September 2019 and tonight will guide the team’s playoff bid to qualify for a first-ever Major Finals at next Summer’s FIFA World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

The impact She has made across football and the wider sporting community is immense, helped by the performances of a team that have captured the imagination and commercial partners in Sky in particular who have amplified what they are doing.

Earlier this year she moved from the sports to the news pages when she revealed for the first time the rape and ‘systemic sexual abuse, abuse of power, bullying, intimidation, isolation and framing’ she had suffered in her native Netherlands while a player 35 years ago, and as a coach of their National team.

Her story in sport and in life has been a prism through which the advance of Women in Sport can be seen in all its colours from the bright to the dark.

Tonight will be a defining moment in the sporting sense for what she has enabled within Irish football. With the right result, they will become even more than they are already a team that the nation loves and follows.

Capped 89 times as a player in her native Netherlands, she led the team to the European Championship Semi-Finals in 2009. She has also managed Scotland, Russia, South Africa and Houston Dash throughout her career to date.

Pauw is a thoughtful and inspiring speaker as we saw at close quarters when she was a guest of honour at our 2022 Sport for Business Women in Sport Conference at the Aviva Stadium

 

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This is the tenth edition of our Sport for Business listing of 50 Women of Influence in Irish Sport.

Read more about the list and nominate who you think should be a part of it in 2022.

We are proud to do so again this year with AIG, an organisation that has pledged its commitment to equality in its partnerships with Gaelic Games, Tennis, Golf and more, for whom “Effort is Equal” and with whom we have ambitious plans to extend the reach of this annual celebration of the Women who are making a difference.

This year’s list will be drawn as before from the worlds of leadership, partnership, storytelling and performance.

We began this journey in 2013 when challenged that we would never be able to produce a list of twenty Influential Women in Irish Sport. The 20 stretched to 30, then 40 and 50 and it still does not do justice to the talent that is out there.

This year once more, to keep things fresh we will introduce at least 30 per cent of fresh names from last year. That will be the hardest part to have some names replaced but if it was too easy it would be of less value.

The list we will build over the coming weeks is a snapshot of those women who are making a mark on how sport is played, consumed, grown and delivered.

They are part of making the role of women in sport unexceptional by being exceptional in what they do.