Announcement of the Gender Equality Commission from EBF

On the proposal of the EBF President Mr. Addie Ophelders, the EBF Presidium in October 2021 decided to establish the Gender Equality Commission (GEC).

The task of the GEC is to create a strategy on how to increase the number of women in bowling’s management, coaching and participation structures.

The GEC wants to include 1-2 men as members as well, since gender equality concerns all people in bowling and different genders need to work in unity to change the current unequal conditions for women. The men will initially be invited as observers to the GEC.

GEC has asked EBF President to send a questionnaire  to all member federations to collect detailed statistics about number of women working on managerial positions within national federations to evaluate the current status of women’s involvement.

Two ideas were already discussed:

  1. To start drafting the policy, which would enable the electability of women to EBF and national federation management boards,we also must find the means and develop a sustainable action plan on how to empower women to run for executive positions. Points a) and b) are to support this idea:
    1. EU Gender Equality in Sport Recommendations and Action Plan (2022) suggests Quota provisions concerning women’s representation in decision making positions and will be published soon.
    2. we will try to organise a half an hour lecture about the GEC tasks and focuses – the goal is to find a representative from one international sport organisation for the next meeting which will be held on June 16, 2022.