On International Women’s Day, the Council of Europe’s Sport Division invited diplomats, sports professionals, and international experts to address the persisting gender inequalities in sport and to exchange on the discrimination female referees and officiators continue to face in their profession. The EU Ambassador to the Council of Europe, Ms Vesna Batistić Kos, joined the Director of the Council of Europe Directorate for Democracy, Mr Matjaž Gruden, in opening the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS) Breakfast Roundtable on Sport officiating and gender equality.
The Director of the recently created Directorate for Democracy, underscored that the Breakfast Roundtable in 2024 is the third of its kind and showcases the Council of Europe’s long-standing effort to stand in for non-discrimination, dignity, and gender equality in sports. While sports should be a platform for teamwork and should provide a level playing field on which only talent, skill, and merit count, it, unfortunately, is often a space in which disparities, discriminatory practices, and biases are laid bare. Therefore, it is crucial to shed light on these challenges and foster open discussions in order to find innovative solutions with the Council of Europe’s fundamental principles at its core. Moreover, Mr Gruden praised the EU-Council of Europe joint project ‘All in Plus’ and its multi-facetted approach to gender equality in sport.
The Ambassador explained that while women and girls are less likely to be active in sports than their male counterparts and that women are clearly underrepresented in coaching and officiating positions, it is important to recall that such gender gaps are caused by organisational, sociocultural, interpersonal and personal barriers and structural lacks of opportunities. The underlying causes of women’s invisibility and underrepresentation in sports must be tackled. The EU Ambassador highlighted the EU’s commitment to the promotion of gender equality in the field of sports through the EU Work Plan for Sport, the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025, the annual European Week of Sport, the EU Sport Forum, and various other initiatives. The EU’s and the Council of Europe’s objectives regarding gender equality and their work in sport are complementary. The EU Work Plan for Sport and the Council of Europe’s Social Charter lay the foundation for promoting fair play, integrity, social inclusion, and equality in and through sport.
The ‘All in Plus’ project is a great example of the complementarity and the organisations’ shared objectives regarding gender and sport. ‘All in Plus’ addresses the invisibility of women in sport, the general lack of awareness regarding gender imbalances, and the data gap regarding gender inequalities in this field, both at the grassroots and elite level. Availability of data is essential to policy development, monitoring, and evaluation. With the methodology which had been developed in 2018-2019 in the context of the ‘ALL IN’ project, the ‘All in Plus’ project, therefore, collects data on sports and gender related aspects such as leadership, coaching, gender-based violence, and media and communication in 25 countries. The project, moreover, will make good practices and resources on gender equality in sport accessible through an online library. To ensure that media professionals in the participating countries are sensitised to the importance and impact of gender balance in sport, the project also develops and delivers training seminars for journalists, broadcasters, and editors who are active in the sports media realm.