Cantwell heads drive to break down barriers for women in sport

GRAND SLAM winner Lynne Cantwell and RTÉ’s Joanne Cantwell are among the members of a new steering committee set up by Sport Ireland to try to close the gaps for women in sport.

Rugby star Cantwell will chair the group charged with driving Sport Ireland’s first ‘Women in Sport’ policy which will also benefit from the doubling of its annual funding to €2m for female-specific projects and the addition of a new staff member to work in this area.

Speaking at its launch, Lynne Cantwell (right) revealed the extent of the obstacles she and the groundbreaking Irish rugby team of 2013’14 faced.

“Things weren’t OK for those 13 years. There were lots and lots of locked doors,” she said.

“We felt suffocated by constant resistance, and lots of decisions (were taken) on our behalf that were not in our control and not OK.

“What we’re trying to do is that, in five years’ time, we don’t have to talk about those resistances and barriers anymore.

“We shouldn’t even be talking about ‘women in sport’ by then, just ‘people in sport’, so we can be focused on performance, and on good decisions in diverse boardrooms.”

The IRFU produced its own policy for women’s rugby in 2018 and there have been several other women’s sport initiatives recently, including the 20x20 campaign. But this is the first time that Sport Ireland has produced a national policy for women in sport.

It has funded female sports initiatives, designed by sporting bodies themselves, to the tune of €19m since 2005 and will continue that format but be guided by their four-strand policy to get more women into coaching/officiating, active participation, leadership/ governance and visibility.

Only 23pc of Irish sports boards are female and the figure is roughly the same for paid CEOs and the proportion of women chairing national governing bodies.

In the coaching and officiating of sport, only one in every two-and-ahalf coaches is female, and there are 2.3 male referees to every female equivalent.

Asked if they had contemplated using ‘quotas’ to get more women onto boards, Sport Ireland’s Dr Una May said: “We don’t want to force women into positions but create a culture where women are treated equally and given the opportunities and confidence to put themselves forward. Our research found that confidence is key for women.”