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Item Exploring sports leaders’ understanding of male allyship for female high-performance coaches in Aotearoa : an exploratory study : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Masters of Business Studies in Management at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2022) Mulhern, EmmaThe sports coaching profession has historically been and remains a male dominated profession, both in Aotearoa New Zealand and worldwide. Not only are female coaches under-represented, but the numbers of female high-performance coaches are declining, leading to the loss of the female voice from the coaching landscape. Sports organisations cannot genuinely reflect their communities without female representation and that includes female coaches. Men in sports leadership and coaching positions can be utilised to support and empower women coaches, by men playing an essential role in enabling gender equity. Little is known about male allyship advancing gender equity and supporting female high-performance coaches. Therefore, this study focused on the following questions: what are the perceptions and understandings that sport leaders hold about individual and organisational male allyship in the context of female high-performance coaches in Aotearoa? And how, and to what extent, is male allyship evident in the support of the development of high-performance women coaches in Aotearoa? This study utilised the Transformational Allyship Model and the theory of allyship as frameworks to guide the study. A purposeful sample was selected from senior leadership teams representing 8 individual national sports organisations currently working with High Performance Sport New Zealand. A total of 10 semi-structured interviews were conducted via Zoom and analysed using reflexive Thematic Analysis which followed a six-phase process. Three key themes were developed from the data: male sports leaders’ perceptions of allyship; the range of male allyship for high-performance female coaches in Aotearoa and supportive actions of ally activists in Aotearoa. Key findings indicated the existence of male allyship for female high-performance coaches in Aotearoa and being an ally activist was identified as the most effective form of allyship. Overall, participants perceptions of allyship were associated with support of female coaches. This study contributes to the literature by adapting the continuum of gender allies for the purpose of this research and it identifies the presence of male allyship for female high-performance coaches in Aotearoa utilising the transformational allyship model.