The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow.”
One of the measures to assess the success of this theme will be the collection of quantitative and qualitative data of female participation in every aspect of sport on and off the field according to age, religion, ethnicity, geographical location, social class and disability.
Even if there exist no robustly collected data over time, it can be conjectured with some degree of subjective ‘certainty’ that female participation in sport has grown over the years, especially with successes in various disciplines such as athletics, netball, cricket, and football.
Additionally, data and understanding of the factors that account for participation or non-participation will be critical for policymakers at the Ministry of Sports and Community Development, Sport Company of T&T (SporTT), Ministry of Education, National Governing Bodies (NGBs) and clubs to guide their decision-making process.
According to Messner (1998), the “women's movement into sport represents a genuine quest by women for equality, control of their own bodies, and self-definition, and as such it represents a challenge to the ideological basis of male domination.”
Birrell and Theberge (1994), state that the structure of sport and physical activities in society is informed by:
· Sport being an institution which privileges males;
· A sexist ideology and stereotypes that disadvantage females in sport.
It is not fundamentally important to engage all energies and time in feckless wrangling as to whether the perspective of Birrell and Theberge [1994] is historically and or contemporarily emblematic of sport in T&T (Trinidad and Tobago), albeit, it will be a cogent starting point of discussion. Rather the conversation should be about constructive and tangible policies, programmes, and implementable actions plans that strive to increase female participation on and off the field across the myriad of sporting activities.
The 1994 Brighton Declaration on Women and Sport was adopted by T&T (Trinidad and Tobago) to promote gender equality in sport in society through greater participation of women as athletes, officials and administrators. The then Ministry of Sport ‘Women and Girls in Sport’ reflected the essence of the outcomes of the 1994 Declaration but it was just a one-day event!
The sixth IWG (International Working Group on Women and Sport) Conference on Women and Sport in Helsinki, Finland, 2014, “approved the updated version “Brighton Plus Helsinki 2014 Declaration on Women and Sport,” by including “physical activity as an essential extension of organised sport, especially for girls and women’s health, well-being, social capital and educational engagement and achievement.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Charter, adopted in 2004, states that one of the roles of the committee is to “encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women.”
Lydia Nsekera of Burundi created history by becoming the first-ever woman to be elected to FIFA’s executive committee in 2013. Annette Knott became the first female secretary general of the T&T (Trinidad and Tobago) Olympic Committee in 2013. In 2014, Becky Hammon became the first full-time, salaried female coach in NBA history. Debbie Hockley became the first female president of the New Zealand Cricket in 2016, in its then 122-year history. Senegalese, Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura became the first secretary general of FIFA in 2016. In 2021, Maria Thomas became the first female president of the T&T Rugby Football Union [TTRFU]. Clare Connor became the first female president of the Marylebone Cricket Club [MCC] in October 2021 in the 233 years of club’s history. These are significant individual examples of change; however, they do not represent patterned changes.
Institutional frameworks have and are being instituted to facilitate gender equality. However, the question is whether they are genuine or just tokens. Only conversations based upon research of outcomes of implemented programmes will allow for determining the true status of T&T toward meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 3) - Ensure healthy lives and promote the well-being of all at all ages and by extension, “Gender Equality Today for a Sustainable Tomorrow.”