The Swedish Floorball Federation has implemented several changes to promote gender equality during recent years. Now the entire staff, as well as the Central Board and the Nomination Committee, will also undergo training for further integration of gender equality.
– It will be an extremely important step if everyone is to be able to work in the same direction and make floorball grow, says the Inclusion Manager of the Swedish Floorball Federation, Inez Rehn, in the Federation’s press release.
Today, only about 27 percent of all sports activities among children and young people are led by a woman – in floorball, the figure is 15 percent. This means that about seven out of ten sports activities in general and almost nine out of ten floorball activities are led by men.
– The sports movement has a lot to gain from distributing power, influence and resources more equally between girls and boys and women and men. In addition to being a matter of justice, we believe that an equal environment attracts more girls and women to club sports and that the quality we can offer increases, says Inez Rehn.
Gender equality has long been one of the focus areas of floorball in Sweden. For about 20 years, the financial distribution between the women’s and men’s national teams has looked the same, and in recent years new approaches, such as the successful online education Fifty/Fifty and a network for women in floorball, have been developed.
Now all staff within the Swedish Floorball Federation, as well as the Central Board and the Nomination Committee, will also undergo gender equality training. This means that the gender equality perspective must be included in all decision-making, at all levels and in all steps in the process – from proposals to implementation and evaluation.
– It will be an extremely important step if everyone can work in the same direction and make floorball grow. We have high goals in our vision document Swedish Floorball Wants (Svensk Innebandy Vil) and we want to have 50 percent women in floorball in 2030. Gender equality in sports is about everything from who participates in sports activities and who holds positions of power to training times, premises and how financial investments from political views are distributed, says Swedish Floorball Federation Secretary General Mikael Ahlerup.
At the end of November, Swedish Floorball Federation will launch a comprehensive sports policy impact report. It presents, among other things, how Swedish Floorball views the sport’s societal benefits and future, integration and gender equality.
– An important document that will be a future pillar for Swedish Floorball. The report will be interesting for both politicians, media and athletes. Swedish Floorball shows that we are more than a sport. We are a strong player with over one hundred thousand members. Therefore we also think that we have a mandate to have a say in major sports policy issues, Ahlerup concludes.
More on the Fifty/Fifty education in English here!
Source & more information: Swedish Floorball Federation
