The Football Association’s chief executive, Martin Glenn, suggested female footballers may be less tolerant of “banter” than their male counterparts on the day the governing body announced plans to adopt the “Rooney rule” in an attempt to improve inclusivity in the sport.

Glenn confirmed at least one BAME (black, Asian, minority ethnic) candidate will be interviewed to be the next England manager after Gareth Southgate. However, when outlining an action plan on “enhancing the culture around the women’s senior team” following a bruising six months for the governing body and its senior executives, Glenn risked drawing further criticism by asserting there is a gender divide around acceptable interaction between players and management staff.

The FA is trying to rebuild its reputation after the Eniola Aluko crisis. Glenn insisted he was not referring to alleged racist remarks made to Aluko by the former England manager Mark Sampson, which he judges to be much more serious.

But he said: “I think culturally what women will be prepared to put up with has been a bit different from guys.”

Asked to explain what he meant, Glenn added: “I guess banter would be a case in point. Now our grievance and whistle-blowing procedures are common across men’s and women’s teams. Our coaching guidelines are common across men’s and women’s teams. But I think it’s fair to say from what we’ve seen is there are probably some differences in what they would expect to hear or say.”

Under the Rooney rule initiative, a BAME candidate will be interviewed for all England coaching jobs in the future to follow the Football League’s announcement that it would be adopting a similar pilot scheme.

There are only five BAME coaches across the 92 clubs in the pyramid, with Brighton’s Chris Hughton the only BAME manager in the Premier League. In November Sports People’s Think Tank said only 22 of 482 coaching roles in the top four divisions were held by BAME coaches.

The Premier League has no plan in place to implement the Rooney rule but Glenn said he hoped it would have a trickle down effect. The rule is named after the late Dan Rooney, the former owner of the American football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was adopted across the NFL before spreading to sports around the world.

“We are there to set an example,” said Glenn. “We are also quite a big employer as well if you think about the number of 28 England teams now, if you include men’s, women’s and disability.

“I think in talking to people at the Premier League and the FA, I don’t see any resistance to it and, to be fair, the EFL has a Rooney rule in place.

“We’re doing this for two reasons. In soft terms because it is the right thing to do but there is also a business case for it,” added Glenn. “If your management team reflects more the people that you are serving, then you’re going to make correct decisions. What we’re seeing now is more BAME players and what we want to do is make sure that post their playing career there’s an opportunity for them to carry on contributing and that they feel the FA is also for them.”

Across all of the England teams which the FA controls, including age group, women’s and disability teams the only BAME coach is Kevin Betsy who coaches the men’s under-15s. There has never been a black or ethnic minority manager of the senior men’s team. Ged Grebby, founder of Kick It Out, described the FA last year as tending to be “stale, pale, white old men”.

Glenn pointed out the FA has more BAME employees than the national average. “Organically we have been diversifying just because of natural selection and people coming through and there are BAME representatives both in the England set-up and across the development teams,” he said. “We are 13% BAME across the wider workforce and that’s higher than the national average – but then again, it’s probably not as high as the playing population.”