05 Dec 2021

Sport is an effective platform for promoting gender equality.

Women and Sport Botswana (WASBO) vice president, Dr Shikha Trivedi, said this Saturday at the organisation’s annual general meeting.

She said gender equality and inclusion were important in all sporting codes.

However, participation of girls and women was still low across all codes.

She also stated that WASBO, in collaboration with the Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC), conducted a gender analysis or baseline study in 2017 with the objective to identify forms and extend of gender disparities, gender based violence and discrimination in sport.

She said the results showed that participation of girls and women was low at -2 to 39.1 per cent, while women’s participation in leadership and managerial level was an average of 21 per cent at club level and lower at association or federation level at zero to 36.4 per cent with an average of 19.5 per cent.

She said since 2017, through various interventions to empower girls and women, some positive change had been observed.

“Thus, there is a need to conduct a follow-up study, which will compare participation and empowerment of girls and women levels from 2017-2021 in all sport codes, to explore gender discrimination and biasness in economic and social benefits of sport in Botswana due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify developments based on the International Working Group’s (IWG) Big 5 Legacy,’’ Trivedi said.

On national sport associations (NSAs), she highlighted that WASBO had hosted induction and capacity building workshops for NSAs’ women’s commissions and ex-officios from their national executive committees overseeing women’s commissions.

Trivedi said the aim was to develop and strengthen skills, instincts and abilities as well as provide guidance on processes, procedures to women and girls’ participation in sport.

She added that the platform was used to appreciate expectations from NSAs, WASBO and key stakeholders such as BNSC and the BNOC as well as athletes and media.

“WASBO also received an invitation form Special Olympics, which is an organisation that provides year-round sport training and competitions for people with intellectual disability to present a talk on general sexual harassment in sports,” she said.

On other issues, Trivedi stated that a draft sexual harassment policy was nearing completion and the final policy would be shared with the NSAs by the end of January next year.

Furthermore, she stated that WASBO was committed to fostering and supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in sport as well as creating equity across its systems and structures and fostering and advancing a culture of inclusion, and that it was currently providing input on the BNSC diversity, equity, and inclusion draft policy.

For her part, BNOC board member, Tebo Segaise, said fostering and supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in sport was critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal number five of Agenda 2030, which called for the need to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Segaise said she was happy with the update on progress made with the WASBO Sexual Harassment Policy.

“We need such instruments for the protection of the integrity and reputation of sport, and most importantly the protection of the girl child and the boy child in sport and safeguarding is a topic we can longer ignore,” she said.

Segaise also stated that great progress had been made in terms of balancing the total number of athletes participating at the games, however, many other challenges and gaps remained and it was upon the associations to ensure to address such.

She further said the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was making efforts to address such inequalities through leadership development, advocacy and awareness campaigns and appointing more women to leadership roles within the administration and key governance positions.

Segaise said BNOC had also made strides by achieving 57 per cent representation of women in the board.

“This was made by the men and women who lead our NSAs, demonstrating that as sport we are now unified towards achieving gender equality,” she said. Ends