Development

(Photo: Badminton Europe)
BEC Gender Equity Ambassadors delivered!
Date: 12/21/2020 2:43 PM
Published by : Justine Cammal
A committed and efficient team already delivering just one month after the official launch that took place on 13 November 2020. The team of Gender Equity Ambassadors already delivered national activities to raise awareness and share experiences among badminton stakeholders. 

-In this short period of time, we were already able to engage in interesting and promising discussions, both within our Association and with other organisations, says Jill O’Neil, our BEC Gender Equity Ambassador from Scotland. 

Diversity of national activities 
Out of the nine Ambassadors, seven of them were able to organise and deliver activities to develop this topic and gather information, data and multiple experiences. 

Italy
Marianna Viola, GEA from Italy, put her focus on developing national cartography of female participation in Italian badminton. For this, together with the Italian Federation, they organised two different webinars to explain the method and the information needed for this cartography. So far, she received 200 answers to her survey and is in the process of analysing the results. This project will allow the Federation to identify in detail the regions where female participation in specific areas can be improved. 

England
Holly Robson and Rachel Choong, GEAs from England, combined their effort to organise an information-rich webinar about Gender Equity: how is it defined, how is England situated in terms of female participation numbers in different areas of the sport. The webinar was also an occasion for five (four female and one male) speakers to share their experiences. Rachel was among the speakers and brought a lot of insight about her experience as a spokesperson and the high performance Para badminton aspect and the challenges she can face. Of the 46 participants who attended the webinar, 15 were male (33%) and 31 were female (67%). Nick Rimmer, Badminton England Head of Development was very positive following the event. 

-This was a very informative workshop with a great range of speakers talking about their experiences, very well organised and put together by Holly. There were lots of great examples for the clubs and coaches in the workshop to take away and implement and in identifying the challenges faced by women in badminton, the workshop attendees also produced lots of ideas for Badminton England to take away and look at to encourage greater female involvement in our sport. Well done to everyone involved and a great first step to addressing gender equity. 

Georgia
In Georgia, Tatiana Tuzhilkina also organised a webinar with three different speakers from the Georgian Badminton Federation, the Ministry of Sport and the Georgian National Olympic Committee. 

After the webinar, Tatiana interviewed 10 young badminton players (six male and four female) to get their feedback and according to the interviews, all girls faced stereotypes in sport in some form. Only a minority of the boys were aware of the existence of stereotypes. However, all boys are positive about the idea of gender equity in sport. One of the conclusions of the webinar is the need to gather more data to share about gender disparities in sport to target precisely the areas to improve. 

Quotes from two young females players interviewed: 

-When I was a kid, I wanted to do karate, but my parents said that this sport is only for boys.

-I often hear – You play so well for a girl.

Spain
Mari Carmen Casermeiro focused on specific topics relating to high-level female athletes: nutrition, biology, psychology, training. During an online congress spread over two evenings, 90 people from seven different Spanish speaking countries, from badminton but also other sports, attended to listen to the two experts in their respective fields. 

Russia
In Russia, Elina Shcherbacheva organised a seminar about gender equity during an umpire course, where the focus was put on female participation, with almost two-thirds female participants. This event gave her the opportunity to raise awareness and engage into discussion with the 13 participants about the definition as well as the perspectives of improvement towards gender equity, specifically in the area of technical officials in badminton. Andrey Antropov, Vice-President of Badminton Europe stated. 

-We held such an event for the first time in Russia, what is more, in the conditions of COVID-19. We consider this event very important and necessary, as it allows us to improve ourselves in our favourite job.

Scotland
In Scotland, Jill O’Neil together with Badminton Scotland, worked on an educational booklet to help raise awareness among young audiences about gender equity in sports. This booklet will be published on Badminton Scotland’s website and can be shared among many sport and youth organisations. They also organised a webinar about the unconscious gender bias in the use of language. Another two webinars on this topic related to specific sport stakeholders will be held in January. 

Even more to look forward to 
Klavs Andreassen, BEC Director, is very pleased with the work that has already been done so far: 

I would like you to express my thanks to them for their work so far, and I’m looking forward to 2021 and the progress in the projects.

BEC is very much looking for the next two years of the Gender Equity Ambassadors two-year term.

Justine Cammal, BEC Development and High Performance Officer, praises the Ambassadors’ motivation and high spirit in delivering national activities before the end of the year. 

-I have been really impressed by the level of commitment and motivation from all our Gender Equity Ambassadors. Even in such exceptional and difficult circumstances, they were able to deliver activities and start raising awareness about this important topic. 

For more information, please refer to the Gender Equity Ambassador webpage, here or contact BEC Development and High Performance Officer, Justine Cammal at justine.cammal@badmintoneurope.com

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