Mansfield Town are one of only three clubs from the 92 with a woman in an executive role but sometimes she is still the recipient of crass remarks in away teams’ boardrooms

Inside Mansfield Town’s One Call Stadium and the mug shots on the wall of Carolyn Radford’s office highlight football’s woeful lack of gender diversity. There are more than 60 individual photographs of players and coaching staff but only one of them, the first team’s sports therapist, Lizzie Read, is a woman.

“That’s the issue,” says the chief executive, one of the most high-profile women in the game. “There are no female managers, assistant managers, or goalkeeping coaches.”

Radford has a keen understanding of how difficult it is to make it as a woman in football. In 2011, when appointed to the role by the chairman, her then partner now husband John Radford, some branded it a “publicity stunt”. She had to endure sexist abuse from the stands and on message boards while some within football derided her ability to do the job.

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“I’ve got a degree from Durham, one of the best universities in the country, and I’m a trained lawyer,” she says in riposte. “If you look at other chief execs and their backgrounds I’m sure I’ve got one of the better CVs.”

Six years on and Radford admits she did not realise at first what she was letting herself in for. “It was overwhelming,” she says, “being young, relatively attractive and female, all those things counted against me. I was made into this caricature and had the most horrible things you can say about being a woman, people calling me a bimbo. If I’d known the abuse I was going to get I’d never have done it but you just have to keep your head down and get on with it.”

Now a mum to three-year-old Hugo and two-year-old twins Rupert and Albert, life is a fast-paced balancing act for Radford, who does the nursery run most mornings, but she is enormously proud of her work at Mansfield. During the 35‑year‑old’s tenure the club have climbed back into the Football League – going into this weekend they were eighth in League Two – and are set to turn a profit for the first time in recent memory.

The FA is an old boys’ club and I really want more female representation

“When we came in the stadium was like a graveyard except for match days,” says Radford. “Now we’ve got a 3G pitch which is used by the community, a sports bar that’s open all the time. We have tribute acts playing, from David Bowie to Take That, and the activity is good for business. Mansfield as a town is almost forgotten about, it is on the periphery of Nottingham, the train links aren’t much good and it was very much down on its knees. We’re trying to pop it back on the map with this football club.

“I introduced a women’s team which had been kicked out by the previous chairman. That was important as it was to allow them to use the same facilities as the men. Women at other clubs are not allowed to use changing facilities, but we make sure ours have access to the pitch whenever they need it and full facilities.”

Radford is one of only five women in executive positions at the 92 clubs in the top four tiers of English football alongside Karren Brady, vice-chair at West Ham United, Leicester City chief executive Susan Whelan, Forest Green Rovers chief executive Helen Taylor and Katrien Meire, chief executive at Charlton Athletic. She views it as her responsibility to speak out about sexism in the industry and pave a smoother path for women who want to emulate her. This year Radford decided to run for two vacant spots on the FA Council. An election campaign video, which Radford says was knowingly cheesy, was sent to voting representatives at the 72 Football League clubs and later leaked to the press. “It wasn’t supposed to be for general release,” she says, “so I found the whole thing quite mean-spirited. It was completely tongue in cheek and I called round different clubs and said it was intended to be funny.

“I just wanted to show how old and stuffy the process had got. The other candidates just sent a sheet of paper saying: ‘I trust I can count on you to re-elect me.’ And these were the same people who get elected all the time. So I decided to do a campaign video in the style of JFK. But no, it’s still the same old characters.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Carolyn Radford and her husband John, Mansfield’s chairman, right, talk to an ESPN panel including John Barnes before an FA Cup game against Liverpool in 2013. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

“The FA is an old boys’ club and I really want more female representation. I’m in a privileged position to have a voice and be able to encourage other women into football. Maybe there’s a lack of women because they’ve seen what other females have had to encounter in terms of sexism. Or perhaps because football’s run by men and the roles are very coveted by men and closely protected by men and things just aren’t changing.”

The Radford family owns several companies in Doncaster, primarily in insurance, and also a beauty salon, and Carolyn is closely involved with all. She claims the variety makes her a more informed decision maker. “When you’ve got a group of blokes there’s a lot of testosterone and there can be lots of impulsive decisions and I think a female voice rationalises things and can bring more of a rounded opinion,” she says.

On match days you go into each other’s boardrooms and a lot of the time they’ll direct conversation to my husband

“The pace of change in football is too slow. When you appoint a manager he brings his own entourage and they’re usually male. It’s just about giving women a chance and I think having a woman in an executive role making the decisions makes that more likely.”

Radford thinks a campaign against sexism – launched by the Football League after the former Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro was sidelined in the wake of her dispute with José Mourinho – has lessened the extent of abuse she receives from rival fans on match days. But Radford claims low-level sexism from other executives is a persistent irritant.

“On match days you go into each other’s boardrooms and a lot of the time they’ll direct conversation to my husband and it’s not just me being paranoid,” she says. “There’s lots of casual comments like: ‘Hope you’re behaving yourself today …’ or, ‘Oh look at you, you look absolutely gorgeous’ in a leering kind of way. Just not things you would say to another man.”

Radford, whose mum is a PE teacher, says she has always been interested in sport but now follows Mansfield everywhere and is close to getting a helicopter pilot licence so she can fly to away fixtures.

“I’ve got TalkSport on in the car the whole time and when we lose it’s so, so painful,” she says. “I never thought I’d work in football but now I do I love it even though I hate it as well, at times. I’d love to take the club into the Premier League so my children could take over and do a good job, too.” By then Radford also hopes there will be a few more female faces on her office wall.