IOC and UN Women to continue delivering gender equality agenda in and through sport
From: https://www.olympics.com/ioc/n...
The appointment of the new Executive Director of UN Women, Dr Sima Sami Bahous, and the inclusion of sport in UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025 are fertile grounds for the continuation of the longstanding cooperation between the IOC and UN Women to promote gender equality in and through sport. In recent years, this cooperation has delivered through a range of initiatives, from sports programmes at the grassroots level targeting girls in vulnerable communities to policy advocacy at the global level, and leveraging the power of sport to change harmful gender-based stereotypes and norms.
Through its reach and influence, sport is now formally recognised in UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025 as a key partner that can help raise awareness and drive the global conversation on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Importantly, the Plan sets out how sport and other players can help UN Women achieve systemic outcomes such as fostering positive social norms, including by engaging men and boys.
Recently, Tokyo 2020 marked progress in many ways, as these aimed to be the most balanced Olympic Games in history. With two weeks of Olympic coverage, the Games were an opportunity to showcase female athletes equally on the world stage and help raise the visibility and prominence of women’s sport.
Under the leadership of the IOC, and with the support of all stakeholders involved, a number of deliberate actions were taken to ensure that female Olympians got more opportunities to compete during prominent Games-time broadcast slots in Tokyo.
In addition, the IOC published a new edition of its Portrayal Guidelines ahead of Tokyo 2020 to raise awareness and call for gender-equal and fair representation of sportspeople across all forms of media and communication. The guidelines specifically call for the implementation of “gender-equal and fair portrayal practices in all forms of communication” across the Olympic Games and throughout the Olympic Movement.
The IOC is supporting the principles of the Sport for Generation Equality Framework, a UN Women-led initiative, and recently adopted new IOC Gender Equality and Inclusion Objectives for 2021-2024. It further announced its commitments towards strengthening accelerating gender equality at the Olympic Games and across the Olympic Movement by 2024, at the Generation Equality Forum held in July 2021 in Paris, France.
