During Super Bowl week in San Francisco, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced the league would implement a Rooney Rule for women, ensuring one would be interviewed for all executive openings in the NFL front office. This week in that same city, the 49ers are telling staffers they will institute the same policy for all business-side jobs, constituting about 75 percent of the team's positions.

The 49ers are the first NFL organization to formally announce adopting the initiative, according to a league spokesperson who noted that the NFL has recommended it as a best practice and that other teams have made other forms of inclusion a part of their hiring practices. San Francisco will also apply the rule to people of color.

The team's Rooney Rule won't apply to football-operations positions such as coaching or scouting. Although one of the NFL's few female athletic trainers is on their payroll, there aren't as many women in the pipeline for those kinds of football jobs, said Hannah Gordon, the team's general counsel.

49ers chief executive officer Jed York said the idea to adopt the rule came from a discussion with his mother, the team's principal owner Denise DeBartolo York. They agreed that the practice would reflect the diversity of the Bay area and would be an important statement about the principles guiding the franchise.

"I owe it to her, and we owe it to people, like my wife and sisters, that if you love sports, you should have an opportunity," Jed York said.

Gordon, who has held several jobs with the 49ers and in the NFL front office during the past decade, said the team wanted to concentrate on the business side so that they could execute it well. But she said the goal is to expand the policy over time.

"What you're essentially developing, you hope, are women who could be presidents of franchises," Gordon said.

The 49ers also have a fellowship named for DeBartolo York, one of the few women whose name is engraved on the Stanley Cup after the Pittsburgh Penguins' victory during her time the team's owner and president. The program, which previously placed female interns in the marketing department and in football analytics, will rotate women through different divisions, including those that have been traditionally male-dominant.

"It's an important way for us to say, this is what sports is all about, instead of saying, we'll put women in marketing," Jed York said.

The original Rooney Rule was conceived as a way to get more black coaches into head-coaching positions and required each team to interview a minority candidate before making the final hire. Critics have said that teams can interview coaches with no intention of hiring them, but the rule does compel teams to be aware of qualified coaches who might not otherwise be on their radar.

Goodell made his initial announcement at the first NFL women's summit in February, which the league has committed to continuing next year. The NFL also held a women's leadership symposium last month in conjunction with owners meetings. All of these are designed to improve opportunities for women within football.

In March, an NFL spokesperson said that 25 percent of vice-president-level executives in the NFL are women, while at the team level that figure is 22.9 percent.

"This is the beginning," Jed York said. "I don't think we want to pat ourselves on the back, but this is a beginning."