The National Gender Equity in Sports Governance Policy (Policy) is a collaboration between the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and the state and territory agencies for sport and recreation (STASR) and seeks to address gender equity in non-executive governance and leadership positions within Australian Sport.
Unless otherwise exempted by the ASC or relevant STASR, the Policy applies to a wide range of sporting organisations, being:
- all recognised national sporting organisations and national sporting organisations for people with disability;
- all state sporting organisations and state sporting organisations for people with disability; and
- organisations receiving specified funding from the relevant agency, for example, recognised active organisations, recreation organisations and peak bodies.
Whilst community clubs and professional clubs and leagues are not captured by the above, they are “strongly encouraged” to adopt the Policy.
The Policy requires that all organisations that are subject to it achieve the following targets:
- 50% of all board directors are women and/or gender diverse;
- a woman or gender diverse person as either the organisation’s Chair or Deputy Chair; and
- for Tier one and two organisations (as defined by the ASC), 50% of all members of both the Nominations Committee and Finance, Audit & Risk Committee (or equivalents) are women and/or gender diverse.
The ASC requires organisations to meet these targets by 1 July 2027. Queensland organisations funded under the Department of Tourism and Sport’s Active Industry Base Fund retain the timeframe of July 2029 for that funding, in line with the Queensland Government’s Activate! Queensland 2019-2029 Sport and Recreation Strategy
These targets will raise practical challenges and the Policy attempts to address these.
Where an organisation has an uneven number of individuals on a board or sub-committee, women and/or gender diverse people must account for a minimum of one fewer than half the total number of individuals. For example, for a board of nine directors, women and/or gender diverse people must comprise at least four directors.
If a director resigns unexpectedly, the Policy requires the organisation to make all reasonable efforts to achieve the gender equity targets “as soon as reasonably practical and in line with their constitutional requirements”. It remains to be seen what will ultimately be considered reasonable timeframe and whether consistency can be achieved in that respect.
It is not uncommon for some organisations to simply not have a Deputy Chair (as an intentional choice or because the constitution does not provide for one). For these organisations, a consequence of the Policy is that the Chair must be a woman or gender diverse person. Where the constitution provides that the Chair is to be elected from within the board (as opposed to being a separately elected / appointed position) this may result in the person most suited in the group at that point in time to being Chair not being appointed – which is not ultimately beneficial to the organisation.
All sporting organisations will be required to submit their board, chair and deputy chair, and sub-committee (if relevant) gender composition through the annual collection of the Sports Governance Standards in Game Plan.
Non-compliance may result in a 50% reduction of recurrent funding and ineligibility for non-recurrent funding programs (for the following financial year).
The Policy and further supporting information can be found at this link .
