Women in Leadership in Sport
On the 9th of November, Fare network organised an online event as part of the SUE project. The event brought together Emine Bozkurt, Amanda Vandevort, Preeti Shetty, Haifa Tlili, Michelle Dorgan and Violeta Birzniece, who discussed the situation around women in leadership in sport in Europe.
We all agreed that there is more work needed for women to be able to equally undertake leadership positions in sport. Emine Bozkurt rightfully pointed that it is not only the structures and payment gap that have to change but also the support and recognition that women receive from mass media. Women sport received less media coverage when compared to men, although things have slightly improved in the past years.
Amongst the conclusions of the event, we want to highlight that:
(1) change in mentality and structure has to take place bottom-up: we need to work on education and change the cultures, with more role models and better governance.
(2) share role models’ messages to empower women, they have a great quantity and diversity of partners that allow them to share the message, for example through education with academic partners.
(3) The women’s game is growing, but the governance structure stays the same, involving men. We’d like to see the governance body changing!
The full event can be watched here: https://youtu.be/vNDgc3J1Gpk