21 Nov 2019

International Working Group (IWG) on Women and Sport, executive board member, Game Mothibi says International Olympic Committee (IOC) is on the right track in its effort of attaining gender equality.

Mothibi was reacting to IOC president, Thomas Bach’s presentation, who on November 19, at the Leaders Forum in Helsinki, said the organisation had achieved gender equality on the field of play.

At the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018, Bach said they had the first-ever Olympic sports programme with a 50-50 balance; with the same number of male and female athletes competing in the same number of sports and events.

“Likewise, the upcoming Winter Youth Olympic Games Lausanne 2020 will be the first winter edition with complete gender equality as well,” he said.

This, Mothibi said was a positive move, which would likely to see more women participation in sports.  “Fortunately, Bach preaches what he is practicing at IOC.

He is aggressively implementing agenda 2020 as well as the IOC gender review project to ensure that the Olympics are planned towards meeting gender equality,” she said. The 2018 Commonwealth Games, she said they reached 50 per cent in terms of technical officials engaged at the Games.

However, she called on IOC to put programmes in place to reach the gender balance, adding that she was cognizant of the fact that in Tokyo 2020, they were aiming at 48.8 per cent of women participation at the games.

She highlighted that Botswana National Olympic Committee, which is Olympic and Commonwealth affiliates, had no excuse of not achieving gender equality.

Mothibi said sport stakeholders need to be aggressive and ambitious in implementing all protocols, declarations and recommendations they had signed with their mother bodies.

She noted that many National Olympic Committees had responded positively to the Agenda 2020 and to the review of the report. She further called on Botswana National Sports Commission to implement the IWG World Conference Botswana ‘Big 5 legacy’, the gender and sport policy as well as to continue with programmes that were initiated during the conference.  “As for me, it doesn’t matter if all these are implemented through a structure such as Women and Sport Botswana, though the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development but the interest of BNSC and BNOC should be put first,” she said.

Mothibi said a number of women were trained during IWG conference adding that there were women in sport, who were trained through Women’s Sport Leadership Academy (WSLA).

“Where are all those women? What are they doing to help Botswana to achieve gender equality in sport?” she asked rhetorically.

She said those women should be participating in sports addressing challenges affecting women.  “It should be noted that this is not women’s battle, but our battle. Women should not be left to lead the change alone, especially that decision making is upon men. Leadership support is needed. Practical action is needed to achieve gender equality,”  she said. Ends