Sport for all Genders and Sexualities - Acting for more diversity

On 23 May, the working group on gender & sexual diversity in sport in Austria met for the second time. This time, the focus was on the topic of "Open Clubs & Associations", i.e. how sports organisations can open up to gender diversity in mass sports and concretely (re)act inclusively.

A total of 27 sports organisations were represented, including 8 professional and 2 umbrella associations, 5 sports clubs, representatives from NGOs, Sport Austria and the Ministry of Sport.

After an input on relevant terms in the debate, the members worked in six small groups and collected ideas and simple, implementable measures in the following areas

• Public relations: Creating a welcoming culture for all genders and sexualities
• Everyday training: Create an inclusive everyday training where everyone can do sport.
• Facilities & infrastructure: Check facilities for barriers for trans*, inter* and non-binary athletes and develop feasible and creative solutions.
• Anti-discrimination: Protect all sports players from discrimination and abuse.
• Organisational culture & good governance Creating a culture of support and respect
• Regulations, (competitions), events: Identify exclusions and explore (creative?) ways to include all in competitions.

Based on the ideas developed here together with organised sport, fairplay will in the next step develop guidelines by the summer that will help clubs and associations to act in certain situations and at which levels they can take measures for more gender and sexual diversity.

These guidelines, as well as the working group itself, are part of the Erasmus+ funded project "Sport for all Genders and Sexualities". Further steps in the project are the development of a gender diversity awareness training in sport and a campaign that local sports clubs can adapt for their purposes.

Interested?

New members are still welcome to join the working group - if you are interested, please contact Nikola Staritz (fairplay - Initiative for Diversity and Antidiscrimination in Sport): staritz [AT] vidc [DOT] org.

The aim of the working group is to have as open an exchange on the topic as possible, so that the working group is productive and meaningful for everyone and we can take away as many sustainable suggestions and ideas as possible for organised sport. The level of knowledge and discussion of the different organisations is different, the topic of gender and sexual diversity is multi-layered and complex in its implementation in the sports structures - and that is exactly why we find the exchange and getting into conversation with each other so important.