Report on the Sydney Scoreboard: A global index for women in sport leadership

Dr Johanna Adriaanse, IWG Co-Chair

PRESENTATION PLENARY SESSION: BE YOUR BEST COACH – Pursuing excellence in leadership and coaching

6th IWG World Conference on Women and Sport, Helsinki, Finland

Saturday 14 June 2014 9:00-10:30 Finlandia Hall, main auditorium

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Distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends

I have much pleasure in introducing this plenary session BE YOUR BEST COACH – Pursuing excellence in leadership and coaching. As part of the introduction I present a brief report on the Sydney Scoreboard: A global index for women in sport leadership.

Did you enjoy yesterday’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Brighton Declaration? What a wonderful milestone!To give you some context/ background to this session I’d like to share with you a few lines of the Brighton Declaration in reference to sport leadership:

“Despite growing participation of women in sport in recent years and increased opportunities for women to participate in domestic and international arenas, increased representation of women in decision making and leadership roles within sport has not followed. Women are significantly under-represented in management, coaching and officiating, particularly at the higher levels. Without women leaders, decision makers and role models within sport, equal opportunities (or gender equality) for women and girls will not be achieved”.

Remember that this was written in 1994… today, the situation is remarkably (and sadly) similar. Although we have made good progress on the field – women and girls playing sport – off the field remains a challenge. The focus in this session is on women in leadership roles in three areas:

  1. management including governance
  2. coaching and
  3. officiating which includes roles such as refereeing, timekeeping and judging.

In terms of the first area, management and governance, let’s have a look at the Sydney Scoreboard, a global index for women in sport leadership.. The Scoreboard is the legacy of the 5th IWG World Conference on Women and Sport held in 2010 in Sydney.The Scoreboard is an online database that reports on the representation of women in leadership positions within sport organisations around the world. It provides critical data on three key indicators, which are women in sport leadership as board directors, board chairs and chief executives.

This map gives a picture of the current status of women directors– in some countries they are called executives or executive committee members - …when we hoover with the mouse over the different countries, percentages appear. Let’s start downunder, in Australia, here we see that women’s representation as directors on sport boards is 28%. This is on boards of national sport organisations, also called national governing bodies for sport. Let’s move across to Africa…Botswana with 25%, Zambia, 24 % and Tanzania 22%. Moving up to Iran…11%. The darker the shade of green, the higher the percentage. Darkest green… we find here in Norway, they have one of the highest number of women directors 37%. One small island nation in the Pacific currently has the highest percentage: Cook Islands with 43%.

When we click on this tab, we see the percentages forboard chairs, the most influential, powerful position on the board also called the president in some organisations. We see predominately lighter shades of green which means lower percentages, for example, Japan 5 %, Italy 2%, the Netherlands 4% and the UK 16%. These positions are clearly more elusive for women to obtain.

Moving on to the next key indicator, chief executives, also known as secretaries-general in some organisations, here is Canada with 29%, USA with 5% and interestingly, Czech Republic with 37%, one of the highest...percentages clearly fluctuate from country to country.

For more detailed information on one country, we click on the country, for, example, Finland. Here we see the trend over the past 4 years.Women board directors slightly decreased from 24 to 23%, women board chairs remained the same at 9% while women chief executives increased from 23 to 25%. If we want further detailed information here is the list with all the national sport organisationsin Finland….it includes the source of the data collection and the date when the information was gathered.

In addition, the Scoreboard also has information on women’s representation at International Federations and National Olympic Committees and I invite to have a look at these data at your own convenience.

In sum, lots and lots of critical data on women in leadership positions. This has been a truly collaborative IWG Project. We have had the assistance of many contributors in the various countries to collect the data and they are all acknowledged on the website under “Scoreboard contributors”. Many of them are here with us today in the auditorium and may I ask you to join me in thanking them for their fantastic work!

After absorbing all these figures, you may ask, what is the global trend of women in sport leadership?

Based on 38 countries and 1599 national sport organisations in 2014 these are the key results:

  • The global index of women board directors is 20.7%, up from 19.7% in 2010
  • The global index of women board chairs remains at 10.6% remains the same as 4 years ago
  • The global index for chief executives is up to 19.8% from 17.3% in 2010.

Regional comparison indicates that although there are some differences between the regions, none of them have achieved 40% women’s representation on any of the three indicators. A minimum of 40% representation is generally adopted as a measure of gender equality. This is often described as the 40:40:20 target. Therefore, women’s presence in sport management and governance still is a global challenge and not confined to one region or country.

Overall, it’s clear that we have made some progress but we still have a long way to go towards achieving gender equality globally. As conference participants what can we do to LEAD THE CHANGE BE THE CHANGE?

May I suggest you visit the Sydney Scoreboard web site and use the data to:

  • Promote gender equality in sport governance and senior management
  • Disrupt the status quo and highlight the need for change
  • Contribute relevant data for your country to the Scoreboard
  • Help us accelerate the advancement of women in sport leadership.

Returning to the start of my presentation, the challenge for women is not only in leadership positions in management but equally in coaching and officiating at the elite level. The next speaker and panel members will give their thoughts and insights in these areas. We look forward to their presentations and discussions.

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