Question reference: S6W-03047
- Asked by: Tess White, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 16 September 2021
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Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 28 September 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the report commissioned by Scottish Women in Sport, which found that only 20% of women fill the most senior roles in sports clubs and associations, what action it is taking to encourage more women into leadership roles in sport.
Answer
The Scottish Government recognises the disparity between men and women in leadership roles in sport. We will continue to work with sportscotland and wider partners to understand how best to identify future leaders and support their development through programmes of educational learning, mentoring and experiential opportunities.
Our National Agency for Sport, sport scotland, run a number of programmes to encourage women into leadership roles. These include the Scottish Sporting Leaders Programme which helps improve the leadership skills or increase the leadership capability of staff within the sporting sector throughout the country. Each cohort will include a mix of delegates from local and national partners. The programme is open to women and men, with women being 54% of the participants across the four cohorts to date.
In addition to these national programmes, the SGBs and local partners in which sport scotland invest operate a range of programmes relevant to their specific context to support women into leadership roles in sport.
The Scottish Government also provide funding to the Scottish Sport Association to ensure there is enhanced governance through increased diversity, skill-base and competence of SGB boards via their On Board for Sport (OBfS) programme.
In order to gain a better understanding on how to support women into leaderships roles, sport scotland are convening a session on 5 October with around a dozen women who have progressed a coaching or leadership career in sport. This will be an open conversation to learn from the challenges and successes these women have faced in their careers, and to discuss what they would like to see to support more women to progress into coaching and leadership positions in sport in Scotland.