We kicked off our new Female Leadership programme for sports governing bodies this week.
24 people from 16 different National Governing Bodies (NGBs) have signed up to the programme.
It is designed to support NGBs to develop and deliver their own female leadership programmes within their sports and affect change within their sporting systems to create a more inclusive, accessible and equitable environment, that allows women to thrive in sport leadership.
The first session, ‘Understanding the Landscape: Females in Sport Leadership’, was delivered by Professor Leanne Norman and Marina McGoldrick who shared insights from their recent research and facilitated deep reflection on the challenges faced by women in leadership within their sport and how to drive positive change to tackle these issues.
As a collective, Sport NI and the NGBs realise that although female leadership programmes have great benefits in giving women the skills they need to excel, we also need to critically assess if the system that we ask them to be a part of, is effective in providing equitable opportunity for success.
In the next three sessions, the group will explore how to run an effective female leadership programme and how we might be able to begin to change the system that they are a part of. Topics will include defining the problem and goals, leadership skills, male advocacy, barriers within the system, mentoring and communities of practice.