The Final Conference
17/09
9h00 → 13h00
Royal Museum of Fines Art of Belgium
Rue du Musée, 2
Auditory 490 - Entrance from the Museum Square
What is it?
200 leaders from international sport sectors, school networks, institutions, and city leaders, will attend a final conference on the role of school and sport to promote gender equality and girl’s empowerment.
”Gender equality, a pathway for green and sustainable communities”
With the ISF She Runs Active Girls’ Lead event, ISF wishes to bring forward a sport dimension when defining the link between Gender Equality and Environmental topics, noticing that UN Development is stating that:” Gender equality is a critical missing piece of the climate puzzle” . Indeed, the generation with which the ISF is investing in is perhaps more aware than others of ecological challenges as well as of issues of gender equality and integration of diversity. It is a generation in which the number of girls and women studying has never been so high, in an environment surrounded by interactive screens and an increase in non-communicable diseases often resulting in difficulties for a high number of them in becoming involved in organised sports activities. It is also a generation that saw a young Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg, become a globally renowned leader, inspiring so many other young women across the world, such as Anuna De Wever and Kyra Gantois in Belgium.
For the ISF, education through sport aims to make school sport an activity through which young people learn to invest in themselves as citizens for the rest of their lives. School sport activities, from local to international, allow students to discover and assimilate the tools and programmes that enable them to understand and importantly, overcome major challenges of society. Sport is an essential platform which brings together young people from different backgrounds, to become familiar in the most holistic way with the themes most relevant to the development of individuals and of societies. It is through these two approaches that young people can be empowered to become tomorrow’s leaders in their own lives and as an active part of society.
Aside from having its Headquarters in Brussels, the profile of the city fully encompasses the message ISF wishes to deliver to the participants of this event. Indeed, the Belgian capital city is the second most multicultural city in the word in terms of the number of different nationalities amongst its citizens. Exemplifying this are several key factors, including the city having a long history of being the shelter for many types of fragile or unprivileged communities contributing to their inclusion, being the host of major international organisations headquarters, having a strong tradition in sport and cultural activities, being a green city (with forests and many parks within its territory) which invests in all aspects of environmental policies starting with the approach of mobility for citizen’s wellbeing and a shared living approach.
Aware of the challenges to be tackled and which are identified in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the ISF is convinced that sport and its values teach its youngest practitioners that the best way to meet these challenges is to combine cross-disciplinary subjects. It is for this reason that the ISF decided from the first edition of the She Runs – Active Girls’ Lead event Paris 2019, to link these two essential themes not only for the future of mankind but because they are linked to the future of sport and its practice and moreover that they are part of the sporting values, consisting of respect, equal opportunity, fair play, integration, and inclusion. We endorse the vision of UN Women, when presenting this year “Five Ways to Strengthen Gender Equality and Sustainability”, namely: Empower Smallholder Women / Invest in Care / Support Women’s Leadership / Fund women’s organizations / Protect women’s health.This question takes on a particular dimension this year, since the EU Commission has published its report on Gender Equality in Sport, entitled “Towards more gender equality is sport” and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women has defined the year 2022 as a “Priority theme: Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes.” The revised European Sports Charter of the Council of Europe in 2021 refers to both Gender and Environmental topics. On the Article 6. 2.c.: “work towards gender equality in and through sport, by implementing the strategy of gender mainstreaming in sport” and in the introduction “there is a close interrelationship between sound environmental conditions, sporting activities and a need to integrate environmental considerations and the principle of sustainable development into sport”.
While the OCDE has published in its 2021 Report: “Gender and the Environment Building Evidence and Policies to Achieve the SDGs”, the year after having organised the “Global Forum on Environment: Mainstreaming Gender and Empowering Women for Environmental Sustainability”in March 2020. Let’s also recall that in the year 2016, the International Women’s Day (8th March) which is the usual period in which the She Runs Active Lead Girls is usually taking place, was devoted to “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality.”
As stated by Natalie Elwell and Yasmine Williams for the World Resources institute: “In attention to the different needs and priorities of men and women and the disparities between them when it comes to rights and natural resources is a barrier to achieving environment and development objectives.
Without proactively identifying and addressing relevant gender issues, environmental projects have the potential to not only perpetuate disparities but may even widen the gap between men and women” .
Since its founding, just 50 years ago, the ISF has managed to consolidate a high participation of young girls in sporting events throughout its history. Since 2018, this policy has been strongly pursued and is focused on three axes. The creation of a Gender Equality Committee, a greater presence of women in management structures, and the development of events intended only for young girls. This led to the signing of UN Women’s ‘Generational Equality Framework for Sport’ and the inclusion in the European Commission’s Healthylifestyle4All programme and commitment of a strong gender equality component. In addition, a partnership was developed from the 2019 edition of ISF She Runs with VinylPlus® under the slogan “Towards more sustainable sporting events with the help of VinylPlus®”. VinylPlus is the European PVC industry’s Commitment to sustainable development. The programme strives to apply internationally recognised sustainability principles as well as the high standards of the European Commission’s Circular Economy Action Plan. It is also registered as a SMART partnership on the United Nations Partnerships for Sustainable Development Goals platform.
Taking into consideration all events since 1972, the participation of female student-athletes has risen to 47%. For the traditional sports of the World School Championships, this concerns both individual and team sports. A quick overview of these statistics shows perfect parity for badminton (1998-2018) swimming (1997-2017), volleyball (1978-2018), while for athletics (1973-2017), 3×3 basketball (2014-2018), orienteering (1987-2017) participation is 49%, with 48% for tennis (2003-2017), beach volleyball (2011-2017), and lastly 47% for basketball (1973-2017), table tennis (1998-2018), handball (1973-2018), cross-country (1973-2018).
Based on its success with gender equality policies, it is obvious for ISF that an efficient manner to tackle environmental issues can only be done by involving various stakeholders and in particular young girls who are expected to play an increased role in leadership positions in the future. We are convinced that thanks to sport and its direct and concrete link with the environment in which it is naturally practiced, these women leaders of tomorrow will acquire another dimension because they will have integrated additional
values and experiences that they will apply in their personal and professional lives.
Therefore, it is necessary to instil in the youngest, a holistic education integrating classical subjects, the values and practices of sport as well as human rights.
Agenda
09h00 → 09h05
Welcome and Event presentation
Hayley Edmonds
09h05 → 09h20
Welcome Words
Benoît Hellings
Florencia Van Houdt
Valérie Glatigny
Laurent Petrynka
09h20 → 09h50
Key Partners Presentation
Yves Le Lostecque
Benoît Hellings
Brigitte Dero
09h50 → 10h20
ISF She Runs 2022 Delegations
Girls participating to the She Runs 2022 Design Sprint activity presenting projects they will implement in their own countries in the next months.
10h20 → 10h30
ALL
Break