Men on the bottom equals men on the top? : A study about recruitment processes to board commissions in a male dominated sporting world

The Swedish sport movement is based on an idea that everyone is welcome to join and should be able to contribute and effect on those decisions that affects themselves. Although, recent studies show that a large percent of all power positions in the Swedish world of sports is held by men. The purpose of this study is to investigate the road to a board commission in one of Sweden’s most established sports where a large amount of the practitioners are men. The Swedish federation of Motorbike- and Snowmobile has 81 percent men as their practitioners and 89 percent men of their board members are male. Through interviews with people in the election committee in all six districts of the federation, this study shows the processes and the criterial that is behind a nomination to the districtal board. Overall, the participations show that most of the work behind a recruitment is based on small and internal networks. Not rarely a person that has a finished career of his own is chosen to be the best suited for the job. Strong criterias for a suitable board member is also having knowledge about the sport and to have a lot of time on their hands for the job. The main conclusion of this study is that it’s not that woman are not wanted as board members, but the processes and social constructions about who’s suitable for this kind of job is making it so much harder for a woman to get it. There will always be men on the top of the pyramid in sports if we don’t change the way we recruit people and challenge our mindsets on how a suitable candidate for board membership looks like