Gender Equity in UK Sport Leadership and Governance

In this chapter, I use a critical sociological lens to look at ways sport organisations and scholars could think about and practice gender equity in institutional contexts in the United Kingdom. Sport clubs or organisations shape the participation of those involved in the sport and those working in and for these organisations as volunteer, coach, manager, referee, director, board member, etc. Differences in organisational forms and settings inform ways sport organisations think about sport, gender, race, abilities, sexuality and class relations. These ways of thinking may enhance and/or resist the use of sport equitable practices. Organisations are constructions, however, and not fixed objects but always in flux and becoming. In this chapter, I use a critical/queer perspective to make visible and question organisational processes that may contribute to the exclusion of women and minorities in sport governance. I specifically focus on the normative embodiment of leadership, dominant heteronormative practices and diversity as an organisational value. I suggest several ways in which attention to these processes could be part of a critical research agenda that focuses on initiatives that promote gender equity. I end with a few examples of what such an approach might look like.

The recent UK Diversity in Sport Governance report (Sport England & UK Sport, 2019) highlighted that two-thirds of boards have no Black, Asian and minority ethnic members and that board diversity is an ongoing problem. In the report, Sport England and UK Sport (2019, p. 5) acknowledged that ‘the sports sector is falling behind other sectors in terms of minority ethic members’. While this is an important acknowledgement, it reflects trends in both research and policy on diversity in UK sport governance that continue to focus on single forms of discrimination (e.g., gender, ethnicity, age or sexuality). In this chapter we move beyond this approach to consider how Black women experience sport leadership and governance through an intersectional lens. The key findings in this paper outline Black women's positionality at the intersections of race and gender and how these influence their sport leadership opportunities and experiences based on (1) their outsider within status, (2) inequities in their salaries, marginalising promotions and occupational stereotyping, (3) their identity negotiation and (4) their experiences with womanism. We conclude by arguing for more research that explores the intersection of race and gender within UK sport leadership and governance, which should be positioned within the context of long-standing and deep-rooted racialised and gendered ideology and beliefs within UK society.

In 1993, the Sports Council's new policy document, Women and Sport, recommended that all national governing bodies of sport ‘establish a single governing body’. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, almost all women sports that were administered separately to their male counterparts therefore ‘merged’ with the men's governing body: squash in 1989, football and athletics in 1992, lacrosse and hockey in 1996 and cricket in 1998. In practice, these mergers became ‘takeovers’, whereby female administrators were forced to cede governance of their sports to male-run bodies whose priority and focus remained men's sport. Work has been conducted on the impact of this process on individual sports, while internationally, studies of similar amalgamations between men's and women's sporting organisations have found that such processes increase male control at the expense of female autonomy. However, there has been no study which considers the impact of the Sports Council's policy on the UK sporting landscape as a whole. Via use of oral histories and archival material, this chapter seeks to begin this process, assessing the impact of a government policy of forced integration of women's and men's sport, which still has potent ramifications in sport governance today.

Within this chapter I explore how national policy that influences gender equity in English sport governance has developed over time. This includes a discussion on the impact of domestic equal treatment legislation and women and sport activism on the development of gender-related governance policy within the sector. I draw upon Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice to aid analysis of the effectiveness of top-down policy in creating transformational organisational change in the sector. I conclude that the extent to which sport governance policy has created transformational change within national governing bodies (NGBs) is uncertain. Some short-term success has been seen with increased average female representation across the boards of NGBs, but internalisation of the value of equitable, diverse and inclusive governance appears to be lacking.

This chapter examines the (in)visibility and symbolism of women in sports governance on the island of Ireland, taking as its main empirical focus available data on the boards of government-funded national governing bodies, north and south. The distinctiveness of the Irish case is explained by three factors: the governance minefield, itself a legacy of Irish-British relations and partition in the 1920s, recognisable patterns in gender relations north and south and the functioning of sport as a safe, largely unquestioned and intriguingly vague symbolism for inclusion and peace in Northern Ireland. These conditions have resonance today, not only for women in sport and the approach to quotas, for instance, but that also play out in the delivery of Brexit and the struggles that characterise Irish-British relations more generally. The chapter concludes with a consideration of future challenges and areas for further research.

Scotland has geographical, economic and social extremes which combine to create its distinct identity within the United Kingdom. The country also has a vibrant civil society which includes sport. The devolved Scottish parliament has, in recent years, been delivering a progressive legislative gender equality agenda. This includes leading the world in 2020 on mandating the widespread availability of free menstrual products for women and girls, an initiative which began as a campaign led by Celtic Football Club fans. Sport occupies an important position in Scottish civil society and this chapter draws on feminist standpoint theory to examine the extent to which gendered power relations have supported an over-romanticisation of progress on gender equality and impeded the implementation of good governance in Scottish sport. The lived experiences of citizens in relation to sport paint a picture of participation rates remaining static, sports fields sold off by councils and sport governing bodies being slow to implement policies and practices on gender equity issues which include leadership, media coverage and investment. This chapter explores how governance structures can be an instrument for gender equality transformation in sport by drawing not just on related legislation, but the governance principles of leadership, accountability, integrity, effectiveness, transparency, and sustainability.

In this chapter, we explore gender equity issues in relation to the governance of sport in Wales. Our focus is primarily on Sport Wales (SW), the national agency responsible for developing and promoting sport and physical activity in Wales and for distributing National Lottery and Welsh Government funding. As a public authority, SW has a statutory responsibility to promote equality and eliminate direct and indirect discrimination. Their recent policy commitments express a desire to advance equality and promote inclusion and diversity within sports organisations in Wales. They also set the agenda for National Governing Bodies (NGBs) in Wales, in terms of providing a policy framework for understanding and pursuing gender equity in sport and sport governance. In this chapter, we present a snapshot of the governance and leadership policy landscape for Welsh sport, with a specific focus on gender equity. We present data collected from publicly available online policy documents relating to SW, and their NGB partners, relevant to gender equity provision. Based on the data, we suggest that there is evidence of progress in terms of the numbers of women on boards in Wales as well as the creation of gender equity policies within NGBs in Wales. We argue, however, that progress is inconsistent across the different NGBs in Wales, and it is less clear whether sport governing bodies can implement policies to effectively challenge organisational culture and ethos. We concluded by suggesting future Wales specific research priorities on this topic.

This chapters adopts Rao, Stuart, and Kelleher (1999) concept of exclusionary power to understanding women's experiences of working at the Football Association (FA) which explores the ways in which power operates in multiple intersecting forms through positional power, agenda-setting power, hidden power, power of dialogue and power of conflict (Rao et al., 1999). Our research draws on interviews with women who currently or have previously worked at the English Football Association (FA). Through the framework of exclusionary power, we explore the way forms of power intersect to influence women's experiences of working within the organisation. Our research expands current knowledge of gender and gender relations in sport governance in the UK through vocalising the experiences of women working within the FA and theorising the ways in which women experience exclusionary power through intersecting, multiple and repeated everyday practices.

Diversity in board composition, in particular the underrepresentation of women, has received significant attention over recent years in many sectors, including sport. Within British horseracing, whilst some maintain that the industry operates consistently as a meritocracy, others argue that women remain underrepresented at senior levels. This chapter explores arguments for increasing the number of women on boards and governing bodies, covering the business case and the ways that ‘substantive’ and ‘descriptive’ representation might embed sustained structural change. It draws on a research study which identified a lack of gender balance in many of horseracing's governing structures. Though emerging from its history as ‘mainly a male world’, structural barriers to impede women's progress remained evident. Women were found to experience a lack of role models, limited access to the mentoring and networking they needed to navigate the industry, and gender stereotyping. The response to these findings resulted in an industry plan for change, instigated by the British Horseracing Authority. This included the introduction of a specialist advisory body, targets for increased women's representation, diversity data collection and analysis, and support for role model and mentoring initiatives. These activities are reviewed herein using the organisational theoretical approaches of ‘institutional theory’, which identifies external pressures to conform to accepted business practice; ‘resource dependency theory’ and the role of inter-organisational arrangements; and ‘network theory’ analysing interdependencies with other organisations. I conclude by evaluating the potential impact of this work for achieving more gender-balanced governance.

At a time when societal issues of inequality and hidden privilege are consistently pervading our media channels, the drive for gender balanced leadership across UK sports organisations has arguably never been more necessary and the importance of effective, relevant development opportunities for women in sport has never been greater. Yet, despite decades of programme interventions from sports councils and other governing organisations providing such development and support for females in the sector, sport in the UK continues to be led predominantly ‘by men, for men’. Drawing on personal experience and relevant research into gender equity in sport, alongside connected doctoral research, this chapter will highlight such inequity and present a case for an alternative approach that challenges the sector to adopt a different perspective on gender inequity in sport. The benefits of a more diverse and balanced workforce will only be achieved when the cultures throughout sport are truly inclusive and embrace difference. In a world where change is an inevitable part of everyday life, readers will be encouraged to contemplate how they can play their part in delivering the range of solutions required for creating the inclusive environments that will actively enable women to take their places alongside men and be recognised as authentic, capable and effective leaders.

In this chapter I provide a sociological discussion of the gender pay gap legalisation by drawing on data in the sport sector across public and private commercial sports organisations. The gender pay gap is a significant reporting tool as it refers to the difference in the average hourly wage of all men compared to all women across an organisation (gov.uk, 2020). It is part of legislation introduced in the UK in 2017 which requires all employers with 250 or more employees to calculate and publish annually their gender pay gap data (gov.uk, 2020). The patterns emerging from the data indicate that the highest disparity in gender pay remains in those organisations where professional sport is commercialised around male performance (average gender pay gap is 59.1% in 2018–2019). In this chapter I draw on figurational concepts of power that enable the analysis of gender relations processually and draw on the role of shame and embarrassment to discuss the ways in which gender pay gap reporting may be used as a power resource to challenge ongoing inequalities in sport governance.

This chapter will outline the importance of engaging and informing Generation Z (Gen Z) about gender equality in UK sport governance and leadership. The chapter presents a live case study from an ongoing (2021–2026) European Commission ERASMUS + Sport Collaborative brief entitled Gender Equality Toolkit for Generation Z (GETZ) project. The theory explaining Gen Z behaviours, expectations and educational requirements will be explored as well as a review of the links between high participation rates and leadership roles in sport for men and the low participation rates and leadership roles for women, and how this issue can be addressed through wider awareness and increased education. The remainder of the chapter will introduce the online educational toolkit created through the GETZ project which attempts to build shared accountability for culture change through a teaching and learning community. Furthermore, considerations from the GETZ projects past, current and ongoing research studies related to areas of gender equality and Gen Z perceptions of inequality in sport will be discussed with the view to providing Gen Z with current knowledge on gender inequalities in sport and insight into the processes that reinforce existing inequalities as well as give them the space and skills to bring about long-term sustainable change.