Women In Sport Launches Beyond 30% Campaign

UK charity Women in Sport has launched a new campaign to encourage sport’s national governing bodies (NGBs) to broaden their focus from improving the gender diversity of their boards, to addressing diversity across their entire organisations and making wholescale cultural change.

The Beyond 30% campaign coincides with the release of its latest report, its seventh annual audit into the numbers and experiences of women on the board and in senior leadership roles in NGBs in England and Wales.

The research shows that while the average number of women on NGB boards is 30%, in line with the new Code of Governance for Sport requirement, this masks wide-ranging variances in gender diversity in leadership across NGBs.

Around half the country’s NBG’s, including the Football Association, the Rugby Football Union and the England and Wales Cricket Board, are still all at risk of losing government support and public funding because they are yet to meet the latest requirements.

On Monday, the FA unanimously agreed a set of reforms to its corporate governance, including reducing the FA board to ten members, with three positions reserved for female members by 2018.

In November Kelly Simmons, the FA’s performance and participation director, told the Sport Industry Breakfast Club: “It’s well documented that Heather Rabbatts is the only female on the board, but there’s a willingness to get there in the short term because it’s the right thing to do. We also need to build a pipeline of talent coming through, so it’s about supporting women to become leaders in the industry and bringing women through that pipeline in the future.”

33 of the 68 national governing bodies that receive funds from UK Sport and Sport England still do not meet the 30% target, with the likes of the Rugby Football League and the British Paralympic Association also at risk, with the number of women getting top jobs at UK sporting bodies down by 6% since 2014.

Ruth Holdaway, CEO of Women in Sport, said: “The sport sector now clearly understands its responsibility to the public that funds it; its responsibility to be representative of that public. The sector also understands that gender diversity at leadership level is good for business.”

As a result, Women in Sport is calling on the NGBs to move beyond the 30% target for gender diversity on boards and implement broader change to encourage women into the business of sport and to support their development.

This, the charity believes, will be for the benefit of the NGBs’ bottom line, the whole workforce and sports participants.

“It’s about how we make gender diversity in sports leadership sustainable,” continued Holdaway. “It’s time to move Beyond 30%.

“Women in Sport is committed to ensuring sport develops, and benefits from, female leadership. We’ll work with the whole sector; agitating, cajoling and supporting. It’s time to look beyond targets and at the working practices and culture of our organisations. And the time is coming for those who are blocking progress to move on. It’s time to go Beyond 30% – and to truly transform sport.”

England Netball’s board is 90% women, and 80% across all its leadership positions

In order to support the industry and enable progress to be made, Women in Sport has issued an updated ‘Checklist for Change’ with recommendations for NGBs across England and Wales, to help them address gender inequality:

1. Develop an effective recruitment and retention strategy which focuses on attracting diverse talent and nurturing it.
2. Promote a wide range of flexible working practices with the primary goal of attracting and retaining more women in the organisation, but which will, in fact, benefit everyone.
3. Involve both women and men in achieving the shared goal of gender equality.
4. Avoid gender stereotypes. They limit women to certain roles and exclude them from others.
5. Modernise organisational structures and practices to enable more women to rise through the organisation. This includes reconsidering rigid elections by male-dominated membership bodies which, in practice, have the effect of excluding some women from the board.

The full #Beyond30 report from our seventh annual audit is available to download on our website NOWhttps://t.co/ycS3dwCUN9 pic.twitter.com/1mIgJvhAJR

— Women in Sport (@Womeninsport_uk) March 8, 2017

UK Sport CEO Liz Nicholl commented: “As the nation’s high performance sports agency, UK Sport fully supports the Beyond 30% campaign from Women in Sport.

“Our new Code of Governance for Sport calls for increased skills and diversity in decision making, with a target of at least 30% gender diversity on boards. We are pleased to see this is starting to be met across our sector and encouraged that sports are engaging with us on the issue but we know that more could and should be done in this area.

“There is no doubt that better skilled and better balanced boards will be better placed to make better decisions. This diversity of thought at Board level will also support good governance and help create the right conditions for sporting success.

“As we move on from the great successes of Rio 2016 and consider how the high performance system can become even stronger and more sustainable, we can see an exciting opportunity to draw in more diverse talent into leadership roles right across the sporting system.”

The report concluded: “Women in Sport is also extremely concerned by the decrease in the number of women in senior leadership roles. While organisations should continue to tackle the diversity of their boards, they also need to broaden their focus, addressing diversity within their organisations more generally.”