In response to comments on social media about gender balance on the European Athletics Executive Board I would like to clarify our policy, the real actions we have taken and our plans for the near future. European Athletics is committed to improving the gender balance in leadership positions throughout the sport. The main reason for this policy is that across Europe our participants are just about evenly split between the two genders and we know that to remain relevant to young people in the future the leadership of the sport must reflect its participant base.
Since 2009, when the European Athletics Congress rejected a proposal supported by the Scandinavian Member Federations to create reserved places on our Council for women, as the IAAF had already done, European Athletics has focused its efforts on promoting female role models at the national level through our biennial Women’s Leadership Awards. The aim is to assist federations to recognise and promote the talented women they have and inspire more young women to go into leadership roles. We monitor the number of women on all the councils, committees and commissions of the federations and we have noted a general, but slow, increase.
After our election in 2015, the Council, which includes just two women, and I made a conscious effort to improve the gender balance on European Athletics’ commissions by nominating and approving more women than ever before. At present, 28% of the members of our five commissions are women.
In October this year, European Athletics will stage its first Congress in which the current Council has a chance to propose constitutional changes. A special project team is analysing the changes made by the IAAF Congress last December with the aim of bringing the two constitutions as closely in line as possible. We have asked that the recommendations include the reserved places for women that were originally proposed in 2009 and a rule that at least one of our three vice presidents should be a woman. As President, I will use all my influence to make sure these proposals are passed by the Member Federations so that they can be implemented in the 2019 elections.
I strongly believe that such a quota system is necessary, at least in the short and medium term, to change the erroneous assumption that men must lead the sport. I am also proud of our efforts through the Women’s Leadership Awards and commission appointments, as these have contributed to changing the culture of the sport from the bottom up and will help ensure that the quota system when it is approved will be a success.