IWD 2023: World Athletics Taking 'Significant Steps' Towards Gender Equality

The international sports governing body commits to be an organization that practices and empowers gender equality in honor of International Women's Day.

As part of World Athletics's "significant steps" moving toward gender equality in 2023, it aims to place on its Council a 40 percent female representation. It plans to increase the number of female members from the current eight members to a minimum of ten, including one female vice president, Inside the Games reported.

The same percentage of female participants will be placed in its e-learning courses to become future sports administrators. The governing body will align itself with the UN Women #DigitALL campaign and take advantage of the power of digital technology in creating more online courses and exams.

Further, it has pledged to protect its 214 member federations with safeguarding policies.

Actions to take in 2023

Other excellent actions to empower gender equality were enumerated on the organization's official website. 

They plan to build a pipeline to increase female representation across their four commissions from 2023 to 2027 to pave the way for more opportunities for female administrators aspiring to run for Council in 2027.

They will increase their female coaches to at least 20 percent come the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 2025 by encouraging Member Federations to send more female coaches and providing education and training for the underrepresented in other countries already at the coaching level.

World Athletics will be hosting another Gender Leadership Conference at the World Athletics Championships this year in Budapest and two Gender Leadership podcast series, which will focus on empowerment and Technical Officials. Moreover, they will be organizing ten Gender Leadership courses and activities that will be crafted and carried out by their Area Development Centres.

The sports governing body will also launch a spotlight section on its LinkedIn page focusing on women this year. Aside from this, they will also be launching a Mentoring Programme to push women to aim and achieve leadership roles in all six continental areas.

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'Champion equality'

"In order to achieve true equity in our sport, it is important that we offer our female athletes, administrators, and officials the tools and environment they need to be empowered to pursue careers at all levels of athletics - be it by setting quotas for female representation on our Council, or providing more flexible learning and development opportunities that better suit women's commitments - we are absolutely dedicated to making our sport equitable and representative for all, " World Athletics President and International Olympic Committee member since July 2020 Sebastian Coe proclaimed.

He has also stressed how in today's world and generation, equal opportunity is not enough as it should be equity that must be provided.

Coe, who is also a double Olympic champion, assured supporters of the World Athletics that they will continue to champion equality, like what 74 percent of sports fans believe, according to Nielsen research.

He urged the organization's stakeholders to be proactive in their roles to help achieve collective goals. He further invites everyone in the sports industry to stand up for gender equity in all the opportunities presented, especially when there is a need for improvement, which is most of the time.

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