Badminton Europe (BEC) is moving forward towards a balanced representation and participation in badminton. Our sport is one of the most powerful platforms for promoting Gender Equity and empowering women and girls. Find out how we plan to achieve this goal through an exciting new project.
In an inspiring development this year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics is on track for a new record - having an almost equal number of female and male athletes for the first time!
-It has been more of a marathon than a sprint, but female Olympians are at last catching their male counterparts in the numbers game, the IOC said in a statement.
Badminton Europe aims to make big strides in this marathon by establishing and strengthening the role of women in the European badminton community. This in turn encourages the development of female representation in all Member Associations and all areas of badminton.
Over the past five years, BEC has already been actively working on promoting and involving more females in various initiatives around the continent and in BEC activities. One of the most prominent initiatives is the BEC Women in Badminton Scholarship project. This project provides scholarships for administrators, coaches, umpires and Para badminton players the opportunity to participate in the different activities for their self-development. To date, there are 40 MAs who are part of this project.
The Gender Equity Ambassador Project is an extended project which also focuses on enhancing female participation from all walks of badminton in Europe.
A long way to go
-When it comes to equity and inclusion in sports, the world has come a long way, but we still have a long way to go, the Women’s Sports Foundation, a non-profit focused on female involvement in sports.
In 2020, moving forward and facing the fact that females are still underrepresented in certain areas of our sport, or even struggle to fight some prejudices on and off the court, BEC has launched a new project: Gender Equity Ambassadors.
It aims at actively promoting Gender Equity, thanks to the help of a Team of Ambassadors who will act as role models for females in badminton. They will foster a Gender Equity mindset in all areas of badminton and its stakeholders. The team will strive to increase female participation in badminton across Europe.
The chosen nine
Member Associations were invited to nominate Ambassadors and submit their applications to BEC with a statement of their motivation to take on this role for a two-year term. Nine applications, from eight different Member Associations, were successful and this diverse team will be presented on Friday, 13 November.
BEC strongly believes that having such a Team of Ambassadors will greatly help in sharing experiences, good practices but also identify prejudices or biases within our sport. We will be gathering information from all Member Associations about this topic to help learn from each other.
It will be an exciting and progressive journey. We hope you will join us along the way.
For more information about this project and the other development work we do, click
here.