Exploring the presence of women in the national governing bodies of sports federations in 5 European countries

This paper is part of the results of an Erasmus + project of the European Union that studies gender equality in corporate sport governance in the national sports federations of five countries: Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The paper advances the knowledge of the behaviour of these organizations regarding the presence of women in the sports arena, and considers whether this conduct is the same as that which is produced in other types of organizations such as lucrative companies, where regulations call for an increase in the presence of women in their governing bodies. To achieve its aim, firstly, legislation explicating the existence of gender quotas that increase female directors in strategic decision- making positions is critiqued and analyzed. Secondly, the variables tested focus on the number and percentage of female directors in the national governing bodies including the different sports of each country. The data is comprised of a quantitative database of information collected directly from the websites of all the national sports federations under study during 2018. Through a descriptive statistical analysis, the results show that female participation could be related to quotas, and differs considerably between countries. These findings support the idea that there’s already been considerable research showing that quotas lead to participation in lucrative organizations, and there could be a parallel with non-profit entities