With less than one week to go before the FISUE Gender Equality Webinar on 9 March, take a look at last year’s winners of the FISU Gender Equality Awards, which honours projects or individuals who have made significant efforts to advance and achieve gender equality within University Sport in their country, continent or internationally.

To follow next week’s webinar live, please register here

The FA University Women’s Leadership Programme – British Universities and Colleges Sport

The programme was delivered in 2019 and identified a gap in women’s talent development pathway, which was a barrier to their aims for increasing female workforce representation within the Football Association (FA). The project aims to play a major role in increasing the quantity and quality of female talent in the leadership pipeline to support the FA in assuring a fit for future representative workforce.

Over the course of the programme, participants attended three weekend residential development programmes, designed to develop their skills in different areas such as “Resilience & Adaptability”, “Powerful Communication”, “Collaborative Teamwork”, “Creative Solutions”, “Planning, Organising & Delivering”, “Providing Leadership” to name a few.

The objectives included the increase of knowledge and understanding of the working landscape of football (1), support the participants to define clear career goals/ambitions whether in the short, medium, or long term (2), develop self-confidence and belief in their ability to succeed (3), build understanding and self-awareness of own strengths and potential areas for development (4) and expand the professional network of the participants (5).

Lakshika Madhushani

·       Senior Lecturer, Department of Sport Sciences and Physical Education in Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka

·       Editorial Board member- Olimpianos, Journal of Olympic Studies

·       Voluntary Key Coordinator at the National Olympic Committee Sri Lanka (voluntary position)

·       Former National Volleyball Player and former Captain of University of Kelaniya Volleyball team

·       Awarded Asia’s Outstanding Young Sport Academic Award 2020-21

·       Winner of IOC Solidary Scholarship to complete a Master’s degree in Olympic Studies at German Sport University

·       Youngest academic (at 24 yo), regardless of gender, in Sport Management in Sri Lanka

·       Olimpianos

FISU supports projects that increase the participation of women in the University Sport movement and encourages its members to develop these projects in order to inspire others to increase their efforts and resources committed to this topic.

The winners of the FISU Gender Equality Project will receive a grant up to 5’000€ from FISU and the key criteria will be based on sustainability and replicability. Therefore, preference is given to projects which are being continued by the nominating organisation for a number of years into the future and can be replicated/implemented in other countries.