Is the Swedish sporting movement legitimate? : A study of election committees work focusing on gender and ethnicity

Swedish voluntary sport advocates sports for all and the right for every human to be involved indecision-making processes regarding the sport associations. However, recent studies shows that not allsocial groups are included on decision making positions in the Swedish sport boards in Swedishvoluntary sport organization. This due to historical male domination in sports, and on influentialpositions in sport. With an increased focus on gender equality between men and women in society, anda population that is affected by an increased number of immigrants, this misrepresentation is one ofSwedish voluntary sport's biggest challenges today. This study focuses on the term diversity as acommon denominator for gender and ethnic background. During the course of the study, aninteresting question concerning the legitimacy of Swedish voluntary sport was discussed. Because theSwedish voluntary sport organization are build on the terms that all human should be able to beinvolved in decision making the lack of diversity makes us claim that the legitimacy is at stake.Therefore, the aim with this study was to create knowledge on how election committees in Swedishdistrict sport associations work with diversity in the process of recruitment and nomination to boardpositions. Special attention was given to the criteria used by the nomination committees torecruitment and nomination to sport boards. The result was achieved through semi-structuredinterviews and we found that election committees recruited sport board members by competencies,gender and sports background if current members of the sport board chose to resign .Due to theincreased focus on gender in sports and society overall, the lack of representation of women inSwedish district sport associations are improved. However, the lack of members with other ethnicbackground than Swedish still remain and it is clear that the efforts of this problem must increaserapidly. Due to this, Swedish voluntary sport legitimacy is still questioned and has a remainingchallenge in living as they learn