WOMEN In Sport chief executive Ruth Holdaway says funding cuts must remain the ultimate sanction for sports whose governing bodies fail to comply with the government’s gender equality directive.
Under a code backed by funding bodies, the boards of sports backed by public money must comprise at least 30 per cent of the less-represented gender – whether it be women or men – by April 1.
Holdaway was speaking on the day Women In Sport launched its ‘Beyond 30%’ campaign, which seeks to broaden the focus on diversity in sport beyond the boardroom to more elementary non-participatory levels.
Holdaway said: “The funding organisations have committed to the 30 per cent target that Women In Sport campaigned for, and, having mandated organisations to achieve that 30 per cent minimum, they must now enforce that.
“I think quite rightly the funding organisations have said that for those organisations that are not meeting the target, they need to look at changes that can be made.
“We know in some cases this requires constitutional changes and this is not an easy thing to do and cannot happen overnight.
“Women In Sport wants to see that those targets and timescales which are implemented are realistic for the sport – but then that they will be enforced, and we know funding will be under threat if those timescales are not met.”
The British Taekwondo Council is the only national governing body without any female board members and therefore appears to be most at risk of sanction.
But BTC chief executive Trevor Nicholls said a number of board positions at the organisation were currently vacant and that no female administrators had applied to fill them.
Nicholls also pointed out that Taekwondo Organisations Ltd, the umbrella body for both the BTC and the high-performance British Taekwondo, has two female board members and a female chairman, Adele Stach-Kevitz.
Nicholls said: “We recognise we need a more diverse and widespread board, but our current advertising for non-executive directors has received only male applications.
“The perception of taekwondo as a tough, male sport has changed immensely over the years with the exploits of the likes of Jade Jones, and we would welcome and encourage more female participation at boardroom level.”
Women In Sport’s seventh annual audit of women on board and in senior leadership roles within national governing bodies revealed an average involvement of just above the 30 per cent threshhold.
But Holdaway acknowledged the charity must broaden its campaign with regard to female inclusion if it is to guard against complacency while encouraging more young women to pursue non-participatory roles.
Holdaway added: “If women are brought in to take one or two roles on a governing board and we’re not developing our volunteer base, then we are not making sustainable cultural change, and that is what is really important.
“When you look at all leadership roles... we have seen a big improvement over the seven years of this report, but in the last couple of years, now that we do have an average of 30 per cent across the sector of women in leadership roles, there is a risk it will get stuck at this level.
“That is why we need to look at diversity at every level. We need to have more women playing sport and ensure that then interests those women or girls who may now want to work or volunteer because they will be motivated and inspired to do so.
“It is unacceptable in 2017 for us to have any aspect in society that doesn’t fairly reflect gender diversity in the population.”
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