Badminton is making significant strides in Gender Equity in 2020, and Badminton Europe is asking you to play a pivotal role. 

Twenty-five years after the United Nations’ Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action pledged to take the necessary steps to ‘remove all obstacles to gender equality and the advancement and empowerment of women’, support for gender equality, as well as equity, is strong around the globe.

The badminton world has this year made considerable steps in support of this positive direction. In July this year, the BWF approved the proposal to ensure geographical and gender representation on the BWF Council by establishing a framework that guarantees global board representation and minimum representation of each gender.

Now Badminton Europe is building a team of ambassadors to proudly promote and represent Gender Equity across our continent. 

Although women are mostly given an equal opportunity nowadays, they are still less likely to participate in sports or to be given equal opportunities in sports governance. This hot topic is being actively invested in, most notably by the International Olympic Committee, whose Gender Equality Review Project produced 25 recommendations to achieve gender equality on and off the field of play, sooner, rather than later.

Gender Equity in badminton constitutes a key subject for BEC and the terms of reference clearly state the main objective to focus on: ''Strengthen and establish the role of women in the European badminton community, encourage the development of female representation in all Member Associations and make recommendations to the Board of Directors in terms of providing new ideas, solutions and inspiration''. 

Women in Badminton scholarships are one of the projects that aim at achieving this global objective. An overview of the scholarships, given to female recipients where there is a low female participation rate since 2016 showed that 40 out of the 54 Member Associations applied at least once for one of the four categories available, for a total of 109 applications altogether.
 

Development & High Performance Manager, Tania Teoh, explains how this project fits in with current initiatives and what an Ambassador can expect to gain from the role.

-As the interest from our MAs has been increasing over the past years, we believe that the Gender Equity Ambassador project and the Women in Badminton scholarship initiative will supplement each other. It is important to highlight that the GEA project is open to all and we look forward to receiving nominations from both male and female nominees. It is an interesting project where the chosen ambassadors are going to be exposed to networking, brainstorming and cooperating with BEC, towards one goal – increasing female participation in badminton.

The new Gender Equity Ambassadors (GEA) project is one of the new projects launched in 2020 and aims at actively promoting Gender Equity, thanks to the help of a Team of Ambassadors. Whether administrators, volunteers, umpires, technical officials, players, etc., you all can play a role and represent Badminton Europe as a Gender Equity Ambassador, by applying or suggesting applicants to your National Federation.

Klavs Andreassen, BEC Board Member and Gender Equity Commission Chair emphasises the mutual goal to gain more visibility about this topic. 

-The Gender Equity Commission is introducing the ‘Gender Equity Ambassador’ as a new initiative, where I hope you will help recommend persons who can help Badminton Europe and our Member Associations promote Gender Equity.

GEA missions will be to: 

• Be a role model, actively involved in badminton activities; 

• Engage Member Associations and foster a Gender Equity mindset to all badminton stakeholders;

• Assist BEC in increasing female participation in badminton across Europe

The nomination process is now open to all Member Associations wishing to nominate people to represent BEC as a Gender Equity Ambassador. 

For more information, please refer to the Gender Equity Ambassador webpage, here or contact BEC Development and High Performance Officer, Justine Cammal at justine.cammal@badmintoneurope.com.