UK Commission Faults Sports Agencies for Holding Women Back - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Female athletes are yet another class of high-achievement women who are held back by an established old-boys network of governing bodies — or so says a UK commission.

• The Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport called for greater gender diversity in top management in sports to lessen a crisis in women’s participation in British sports and to better reflect the increasing population diversity in the country.

• Only 1 in 5 board members of the 46 leading bodies governing UK sports is a woman, the commission said in a report, and 1 in 4 of the bodies has not a single woman on the board, including football (soccer) and rugby.

• “Sport is failing in its core business: performance,” Sue Tibballs, chief executive of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, which manages the commission, told The Times of London. “More women want to play sport but the way sport is led means it is failing to capitalise on the opportunity to grow grassroots participation and enjoy greater elite success.”

• The 12-person commission was impaneled last year by then-Culture, Media and Sports Secretary Andy Burnham. It was created to investigate leadership, investment and visibility for women’s sports.

The Times article