FISU Gender Equality Round Table

GWANGJU – The 2015 FISU Gender Equality round table heralded one of the important events and issues in sports. This initiative which was introduced to help aid better involvement of women in FISU, might not have yielded the immediate desired results but the members of this committee will keep going until it achieves the ultimate goal which is equality for men and women in sports.FISU President Gallien

The round table which was attended by the members of the Gender Equality Committee, representatives of Continental University Sports Federations; AUSF, EUSA, FASU, FISU America and OUSA. Also in attendance was the FISU president Claude-Louis Gallien: “This is a programme I expect to continue, but we need to work at it, it is true we don’t have enough women in the Executive Committee of FISU but we hope that would change, we need to start the representation from our different federations and at the continental level, this way we can bring women forward during elections so that they can be voted for.”

Lee Kyung Hoon with the department of sports and leisure studies, Kwanguan University, Seoul Republic of Korea, presented a study on the women intercollegiate athletics and sports in Korea; issues regarding gender equality. The statistics of women participation in FISU was given by Hilkka Latine, this showed a decline in the participation of women in FISU games, Verena Burk gave an over view of the FISU Media and its effort to aid Gender Equality. The different Continental University Sports Federations gave an account of the progress of women participation and the solution to the issues discoursed. Also contributing to the topic was Ibrahim Bangura, treasurer of the Federation of Africa University Sports, who said that it is necessary to include men in the committee for gender equality because this cannot be totally achieved if the men are not in agreement.

In conclusion, Committee Chair Rosaura Mendez said, “We have talked about this too often, we need to work together not just during the games but other times in our different continents as well.”

Chidiebere Ezeani (NGR), FISU Young Reporter