European Women in Sport: For adaptative governance of women’s sports practices

Background Various findings and facts show the need to govern women's sports practices both for athletes and for other related stakeholders such as coaching and refereeing. Nevertheless, in the world or in Europe, some good practices are emerging, but they are not always very visible. The lack of pooled data and the fact that organisational methods remain scattered called for this initiative to create, collect and showcase the progress being made when it comes to the governance of women's sports Objectives Because, in the recent years, good practices aimed at facilitating the development of women’s careers in the sport sector have been growing, the project aims at highlighting this evolution. The project aims to address the specific challenges women face in their sports careers and promote the feminization of sports across Europe. Starting of with Football was an obvious choice, given the sector’s rich diversity of profiles and practices. Implementation In 2 years, the project did a deep survey in each partner country, developed tools to raise awareness of the issues faced by women in sports and explored ways to include and support them. Tools have then been tested in sport organizations and led to the preparation of an exhaustive implementation report while the consortium set up an observatory platform as a long lasting space for information sharing, training, networking and ongoing evaluation. All this shared through widespread dissemination. Achievements The project produced all intended results: a report on collected best practices; the development of innovative tools aimed at stakeholders interested in the feminization and inclusive governance of sports; a report on the implementation and evaluation of said tools, and an observatory platform on the feminisation of sport in European culture.