In 2017 the EHF took time to look at our self; our strengths, our weaknesses, our opportunities and our threats.
The overall outcome was that we are an equal gender sport on the field of play and indeed have been for more than 100 years. But what about off the field, what about in our leadership roles, our board membership, our coaching and officiating?
The answer was clear, we have work to do!
And so our #EquallyAmazing campaign and Gender Balance Charter were born. The EHF agreed at its Executive Board meeting in December 2017 to set a clear strategic goal to build actions to advocate and support equal and equitable opportunities for all our member nations and their members.
Our first tangible action was to ensure that our showpiece club event, the EHL (men), would be gender balanced. On 21st October 2018 we announced EHL Women which would begin in 2020.
In order that we could ensure a strong group of motivated leaders we initiated an EHF Leadership Forum for the women of Europe, this took place on 23/24 March 2019 and was attended by 27 women from 22 Nations (read more).
And on 19th June, the EquallyAmazing promotional campaign was launched to coincide with the 2019 Olympic Week.
We are very proud that over the course of the summer this successful campaign led to huge awareness in the hockey family that something tangible was happening to ensure gender balance in hockey leadership.
From small steps, the EHF was delighted that at the EHF General Assembly in Antwerp on 16th August, the Gender Balance Charter was signed by the Member Associations.
Speaking about the journey so far, Angus Kirkland, Director General of the EHF said “I said at the time of signing off on the Gender Balance Charter that in order to ensure the long-term goal of the EHF as a 50/50 sport we have to build positive momentum towards gender balance. Over the course of the planning and delivery of the awareness campaign, we have been delighted with the engagement from many people involved in our sport. But all of that would have meant nothing if our Member Associations are not prepared to deliver on goals set.
As you can see from the infographic, 28% of our members have actively engaged in less than a year. This is quite remarkable and demonstrates the sincerity of our membership to deliver gender balance. It is, of course, a work in progress, but we are very sure that we are on the right track and we will continue to deliver on our own targets as well as supporting the members in theirs.
We have now entered the next phase, delivery, possibly the most challenging but also satisfying part of any strategy. We are excited to be working with our members over the coming months and years to guarantee that we live up to being #EquallyAmazing both on and off the field.”
For more information contact our Development and Education Manager, Tom Pedersen Smith: development@eurohockey.org