Grateful for the tremendous contribution from Sallie Baker over the years, Tarja Krum was appointed as EWS Chair and Sarah Townsend as EWS Vice Chair. They started a new mandate (2024-2026) with the rest of the committee members starting at ENGSO GA in Vienna, Austria (June 2024).
Two co-opted members completed the group in November this year. Meet the new EWS Committee members.
Marie Denitton, ENGSO Office Director was re-elected as Gender Equality Rapporteur at EPAS, Council of Europe.
EWS believes that common goals and coordinated efforts could lead to improving the work on gender equality in Europe. Therefore, EWS continued the conversation with organisations in Europe and gathered key sports stakeholders during a “European Summit on Gender Equality and Diversity in Sport”. This event was possible thanks to the re-granting mechanism of the CERV programme, awarded to ENGSO member OPES. The next edition of the summit will be organised on February 12th, 2025, in Luxembourg, at the occasion of the “All In Plus CoE project” final conference. Read more about the summit here.
On the initiative of the ESP 2024 host, the National Olympic Committee of Kosovo, ENGSO EWS organised and moderated the “EU-Balkan Networking event on Gender Equality and Diversity”. It gathered local actors from Kosovo (UN Women, Ministry, NOGs, ect) to share ambitions, goals and challenges, and to establish a united front in moving forward issues of gender equality in sport in Kosovo. Read more about the event here.
EWS aims to build the capacity of ENGSO members and their networks and provide platforms for knowledge sharing on gender equality. To do so, two online seminars were organised in 2024:
EWS also coordinated and moderated the workshop on “Human Right and Equality in Sport” during the ESP 2024 in Pristina, Kosovo. Speakers discussed how human rights are experienced in sport from different perspectives (athletes, sport federations, research) and how to keep promoting them across Europe and beyond. Read more about the ESP 2024 here.
In 2024, the EWS committee members and ENGSO secretariat took part in more than 20 events to raise awareness and advocate for gender equality in grassroots sport. An estimated 2200 people were reached. For example:
As part of its advocacy work, EWS started a monitoring research to measure the level of implementation of the policies and equality plan within sport organisations in the EU, focusing on challenges and barriers and creating focus groups to explore possible solutions to overcome them.
Finally, ENGSO communication channels were activated to convey key facts on inequalities and barriers to participation in sport, to promote existing EU strategies on gender equality and LGBTQ+, and to highlight the good practices at grassroots sport level. In December, EWS joined the “Orange the world” UN campaign to combat violence against women. ENGSO’s work on equality was highlighted as a success story of the CERV programme. Watch the video here.
Find more about EWS activities in 2024 on the dedicated page on ENGSO Education.
After the departure of Sallie Barker, Tarja Krum was elected on the IWG Women & Sport as the European regional representative. As such, she attended their working meetings (onsite and remotely) and networking events, such as on July 31st at the British Embassy in Paris (read more about the event here) .
In preparation of the IWG Global Summit (July 2026), EWS’s mission is to ensure that voices and concerns of all women in sport in Europe are represented, and to activate the women and sport network across the continent.
As part of its objective to ensure the successful implementation of the ENGSO equality projects, EWS took an active role on several occasions this year.
For example, EWS supported the GAP Women team in organising 2 online seminars, it contributed in the expert group of the CHANGE project on social inclusion and in several tasks of the SURE project, coordinated by ENGSO.
In 2024, two operational focuses influenced the work of the EWS committee: LGBTQI+ and sport for people with disabilities. Its successful delivery included initiatives on capacity-building, awareness raising, and research, as mentioned above, as well as:
Find all resources on equality on ENGSO Education.
Follow EWS initiatives in 2025.