SportAccord factsheet on women in leadership positions in sport

A message from Ms Ingrid Beutler of SportAccord, the world's leading union of sports organizations:

Lausanne, 1 March 2012 – The Los Angeles Declaration agreed upon during the 5th IOC World Conference on Women and Sport held from 16-18 February 2012 in California had as one of its main themes the need to bring more women into management and leadership roles.

Much work is to be done if equality is to be reached in the near future. In a Factsheet on Women in Leadership Positions released by SportAccord today, only 13% of SportAccord members have females in Executive Committee positions. While this shows a 2% increase since July 2011 when the first Factsheet was released, only 24 women hold Executive Committee positions (or the equivalent) amongst the 105 international sports federations and organisations who are members of SportAccord.

There are 5 Women Presidents amongst the 105 SportAccord Members (1%), one less than in July 2011. As for women holding the Secretary General position, the increase was also of 1% making the female representation in this post 12%.

Despite the 5% decrease in the number of Executive Committees with 0 women, they still represent an alarming 28% of SportAccord Members. On the other side of the spectrum, an increase of 6% in Members with more than two female representatives in decision making positions was noted.

Almost half (46%) of SportAccord Members have only 0 to 20% of female representation in their leadership positions. As the number of Members with no female representation on their executive committees decreased by 6%, there was a 5% increase in the Members with over 20% of female representation.

Grouping the data in Olympic Programme Sports, IOC recognised Sports and SportAccord Associate Members leads to the conclusion that not much has changed over the last six months except for the 10% increase in SportAccord’s Associate Members with 20% or more women in leading positions.Overall, there was a small but positive evolution towards gender equity in leadership positions within SportAccord’s Members. The acceptance of the IOC 5th Conference on Women and Sport Declaration and the findings of SportAccord’s Factsheet on Women in Leadership Positions serve as motivation and inspiration to keep working towards Gender Equity.

View the factsheet HERE.