Tangible move towards gender parity in sports administration a promising start
Kirsty Coventry's election as IOC president marks a historic moment for women in sports, paving the way for gender equality in leadership roles.
The monumental import of Kirsty Coventry’s election as International Olympic Committee (IOC) president has just set off its first ripples. In Coventry’s ascent, women in sport everywhere – athletes, coaches, officials, management executives, administrators, technical officials – see the creation of a space for their tribe that no matter what, cannot be uncreated. For decades, women were treated as invisible on the field of play first and more recently, in sporting boardrooms. But today, with this sudden crack of lightning, no more.
The very induction of women into the IOC first took place in 1981, less than fifty years ago. The first woman on the IOC’s Board was American Anita DeFrantz in 1992. Today, only two of the 30 international federations (IFs) under the IOC Summer Olympics umbrella have female presidents. Both are Swedes, Annika Sorenstam for golf and Petra Sӧrling for table tennis. The only other two women who head ruling IFs connected to the Olympics as associate members are Zena Woolridge from squash and Regula Meier from ski mountaineering.
Coventry though is not just the fifth woman at the top of an international sporting organization. She is at the very top of the tree. In the most powerful sporting job on the planet, heading an organization that has more members (206) than the United Nations (193). Closer to LA2028, all 37 summer and winter Olympic IF bosses will look to President Coventry for direction. She was asked about dealing with US President Donald Trump and said with a smile, “I have been dealing with let’s say, difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old.”
There has also been, naturally, a rumbling of online snarkiness about Coventry’s win. About the backdoor ‘politicking’ that led to the overwhelming support for her during the elections. Which translated into a grand total of 9 votes for the head of World Athletics, the 68-year-old ‘Lord’ Seb Coe. Even Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr, 65, as entrenched an IOC dynast you could find, couldn’t do better than 28 of the total 97 votes cast. Seven men beaten by a very long distance by a 41-year-old woman from Africa.
Naturally, the disgruntled sprinkled their share of mud. Better then, to first wipe away the grime. Before the elections, Coventry’s presidential bid was accompanied with the annotation that she was ‘favoured’ or ‘choice’ candidate of outgoing IOC president Thomas Bach. That reference was meant to outweigh Coventry’s own credentials both in sport and its administration.
For the record, she out-medals all her election rivals, seven Olympic swimming medals (two gold, four silver, one bronze to Lord Coe’s four, in case you wondered) across four Games. Then there’s an eight-year term on the IOC Athletes Commission starting 2012. Currently, she was one of six female members voted into the 15-strong IOC Executive Board.
Insiders say Bach is “one of the most political” of IOC presidents, his tenure marked by an outreach beyond familiar first-world networks. Towards countries / heads of state outside the Olympic bubble with a rethink of who the Games must reach, what they must stand for – and most significantly – a push for gender parity.
Post-Rio, in March 2017, the IOC launched a Gender Equality Review Project to study the state of gender equality in the Olympic movement. The report released 25 recommendations across five themes – Sport, Funding, Governance, Portrayal and Human Resources. Among its governance recommendations were two significant ones.
The first establishing, “strategic mechanisms to increase the pipeline of female candidates for governance roles in general as well as for executive board positions.” The second to ensure that the IOC’s electoral process “reflects its commitment to a diverse and balanced membership.” After the 2023 Mumbai IOC session, the IOC’s female membership percentage rose to a little over 41 -- 44 women to 63 men among 107 members. In 2025, there are 47 women to 63 men (a tad under 43 per cent) amongst 110 IOC members. Plus the IOC has its first female president.
How is this to be interpreted across the Indian Olympic spectrum? Yes, we already have a female IOA president in PT Usha, but given that she is currently she is battling her executive council over the appointment of a CEO, any comparisons to the IOC are feeble and laughable. Similarly the IOA’s first-ever Athletes’ Commission does not serve the cause of athletes as was seen during the wrestlers’ protestors. It is nothing more than an establishment-dictated box-ticking exercise to keep its nose clean for 2036.
In the aftermath of Coventry’s election, we forget that not so long ago, the IOC was in fact giving the IOA stiff competition for bad governance role-playing. The IOC’s has only modernised and professionalised its governance structures only this century following a reform process that was finalized and confirmed in December 1999, following the scandal over bidding for the 2002 Winter Olympics. It was to end the dark ages of Juan Antonio Samaranch’s 20-year-reign, put in age (70) and tenure (eight years plus a single extension of four more years) limits for IOC members and executives.
Yes, yes, not all athletes make good administrators - there’s enough proof of that kind in India - but all good sports administrators have athletes’ welfare at heart. Those administrators are not easily found at IOA and our national federation level, which is why they would never accept the idea of having, never mind listening to 40 percent athletes on any committee.
The IOC is far from perfect but over the last quarter of a century, it has made visible and tangible change. A century-plus male-dominated sports organization with only nine male presidents until last week has just voted in a female boss – with real power. That is both proof and pudding.
