With this week marking both LOCOG Diversity Week and (today)
International Women's Day, I'd like to share what we said to the conference.
Gender balance
I’m delighted to say that I work for an organisation that offers women absolute
equal opportunities to fulfil their professional aspirations.
The chance to work on the Olympic and Paralympic Games is a huge draw for many
people and, from the outset, LOCOG has been a strong advocate for gender balance
in senior management.
Our philosophy has and continues to be
remarkably straightforward: taking
positive action to effect change – it won’t happen on its own – and promoting role models
to sustain the positive momentum created. Put simply – leading the way and showing the way.
For the first time in a Summer Games we have a female Director of Sport and a female Director of
Communication. We also have talented women
in senior positions in almost every functional area, enabling women of all ages
and backgrounds the chance to work on one of the most exciting projects on the
planet.
Leading the way
LOCOG started with women in key senior management positions with the
expectation that this culture would filter down through the organisation. In
tandem with this, we also worked from the bottom up, training staff in
interview techniques to avoid any bias and introducing assessment centres in
place of one-to-one interviews.
The statistics speak for themselves. Sixty per cent of the LOCOG Communications
department are female; 60% of the HR team; 59% of the Finance team; 58% of the
Commercial team; 54% of the legal team; and both the Sport team and Venues and
Infrastructure team have 50% women. Furthermore, over half of our 70,000-strong Games Maker workforce are
female.
LOCOG is also the first organisation in the UK to achieve the Advanced Level of
Equality Standard for Sport. This was awarded to us in March 2011 in
recognition of our integrated equality in all of our structures, programmes and
policies. We are using every opportunity to take action and use the power of
the Games to inspire meaningful change to women around the world.
Showing the way
At the conference in LA Seb Coe echoed my own sentiments, expressing his
delight at how LOCOG has used the opportunities the Games have presented to
bring about some encouraging developments in the global issue of women
participating in sport.
For example, the International Inspiration programme focuses on empowering young women and female coaches to deliver
and promote sport within their communities; Seb recently visited Tanzania to
see women being trained as sports leaders.
From Fanny Blankers-Koen at the London 1948 Games to modern-day competitors, athletes are a major source of influence and
inspiration to women and girls around the globe. I really hope that a new
generation of females are inspired by Olympians and Paralympians at London
2012.
Change is
not easy and women are still under-represented on sports governing bodies in
the UK and around the world. We are
lucky in the UK to have some fabulous role models in sport, with Dame Sue
Campbell and Liz Nichols at UK Sport and Jenny Price at Sport England
I hope that LOCOG will leave a legacy for future
Organising Committees in terms of our active approach to the benefits and
implementations of gender balance.
My Olympics
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