Conference delegates stress bridging gap between participation and leadership in women sport

Renowned panelists at the 2010 Lausanne International Sports Management (5-6 Nov 2010) on Friday stressed that despite various gains made in increasing women’s participation in sports at all levels, a lot of work needs to be done to make sport a fair game for both men and women.

Representing the International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG), co-chair Raija Mattila pointed to various gender imbalances in the participation of women in sport.

“Gender imbalance has been allowed to linger in sport far longer than other fields,” she said. “Many women nowadays participate in sport at international, national, and local levels, but they remain underrepresented at all levels.”

Brigette Zufferty, human resources, affiliation, and continental motorcycling union manager with the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM), referred to a study undertaken in three federations- table tennis, motorsports, and motorcycling- to increase women’s participation.

“In our sport (motorcycling), women used to be regarded as flower-bearers. Now we see women are competing professionally. We have many cases and instances where women have shown that women can compete equally with men.”

And in an emotional presentation to attendees, Luisa Rizzitelli, founder of ASSIST, which is an organization dedicated to protecting the rights for women who compete in competitive sports, said that due to rules in Italy, there were no professional women in sports in Italy (women can earn a living from sports in Italy, but are still classified as amateurs by Italian law).

“The likes of Francesca Schiavone (Italian winner of the French Open tennis tournament) regularly compete in international events and take up their sport on a day to day basis,” she said.

“But in Italy, they are regarded as amateurs. They do not have proper contracts with their employers, no pension, no maternity protection, and in most cases, do not receive equal prize money with the male winners in the same event.”

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