2002 World Conference on Women and Sport

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

B. Work Started Between 1994 and 1998

Sport on the women's agenda and women on the sport agenda: the highest authorities take women and sport seriously.

One of the immediate tasks of the IWG, as identified in the International Strategy, was to secure the consideration and discussion of the principles contained in the Declaration by the United Nations World Conference on Women, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

The planning processes for UN World Conferences are extremely complex, and their agenda focus on such major issues for women as education, health, poverty and human rights abuses such as genital mutilation. It was therefore no simple task to penetrate the planning process, and convince those involved that sport and physical activity were issues worthy of inclusion.

However, through the determination, persistence and close co-operation of several key individuals, some of whom had strong government connections and others who had worked through non-government networks, we succeeded in getting three references to sport and physical activity added to the UN "Platform for Action"(PFA). The main outcome of the United Nations Fourth World Conference for Women held in Beijing in 1995, the Platform for Action is used by governments around the world to guide their policies on gender. The inclusion of the references to physical activity and sport was especially significant because it meant that those governments who signed the PFA were also committing themselves to improving the position of women in sport.

It also meant that, for the first time, sport was on the women's agenda at the highest level. The IWG has since continued to interface with the wider women's movement, including participating in the United Nations Beijing +5 meetings in 2000 and, together with other organisations (IWG, IAPESGW and ICSSPE), successfully lobbying for the inclusion of women's physical recreation, sport, health and empowerment in the official Beijing +5 Outcome Document.

Women's equality was also firmly established in 1995 on the agenda of the major international sports organisations. The IPC discussed gender equity at its General Assembly in 1995, and adopted the Brighton Declaration as a result. Meanwhile the IOC went even further, and not only adopted the Declaration in 1995, but also set up its own Working Group on Women and Sport, chaired by Anita DeFrantz. In 1996, the IOC Working Group made various recommendations to the IOC, perhaps the most significant of which were the targets set for National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and International Federations (IFs). It was agreed by the IOC Executive Board that at least 10% of offices in the decision making structures of NOCs and IFs were to be held by women by the end of 2001, rising to 20% by the end of 2005.

While there was some criticism of the size of the targets (would 50% not be more appropriate?), the fact that the targets were set by the IOC at all helped raise the profile of gender as an issue in sport in parts of the world that would otherwise have ignored it. The IOC's consequent vigilance in continually monitoring and publishing the progress made by NOCs and IFs towards the achievement of the targets has kept the issue of women in decision making positions high on the agenda. Further details of the IOC's work are included later in this report.

The establishment of regional groups and the staging of conferences

Another of the tasks of the IWG was to assist in the development of regional groups. The most popular way of establishing a regional group is to bring people together for a conference, and then attain an agreement to form a group to take forward the resulting recommendations.

European Women and Sport (EWS) pre-dated the Brighton Conference, and did not require help from the IWG. However, it has provided an extremely useful model for others to follow, and the Chair of EWS is a member of the IWG.

The first group to be formed after Brighton was the Arab Women and Sport Association, which was established at an international conference held in Egypt. Led by Dr Nabilah Abdulrahman, who had been a delegate at Brighton, it soon secured the backing of the Arab Ministers for Youth and Sport. Members of the faculty of Physical Education for Girls at the University of Alexandria have since organised a major conference on women and sport every two years, in 1997, 1999 and 2001.

The African Women in Sport Association (AWISA) was formally constituted and elections were held at a conference organised immediately before the World Conference in Namibia in 1998. Similarly, an interim Asian Women and Sport Group (AWS) was set up following a Conference held in Japan in June 2001. Information on the activities of all of these organisations is included in Chapter 3 of this report.

In addition, networking and spreading the message are important features of the women and sport movement, and many conferences advancing awareness of this issue have been held over the last six years. While many tend to cover some of the same ground, the simple fact of so many conferences being held in different parts of the world indicates that more and more people are becoming aware of the issues, taking away the key messages and then trying to make positive changes for women in sport in their own work.

Successful international conferences have been held in Trinidad, Greece, Finland, Norway, Germany, France, Japan, Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico and Venezuela. The IOC has held two World Conferences (in Lausanne in 1996 and in Paris in 2000), which resulted in strong sets of recommendations, as well as a successful series of seminars to support women in leadership positions around the world. IAPESGW has held conferences in Finland (1997), USA (1999) and Egypt (2001) - all of which have provided invaluable opportunities for women physical educators and sport scientists to meet and share their research and good practice.