Women's Sport: How sport is about more than just the game and all about empowerment (Give Me Sport)
Women's Sport: How sport is about more than just the game and all about empowerment
By Hannah Mendelsohn
With International Women's Day and the weeks surrounding it, we often hear a lot about how sportswomen can be important role models for girls and how we need to increase girls participation, but one woman wants us to think beyond those parameters.
Alexandra Chalat is the managing director of Beyond Sport, an organisation that is committed to supporting organisations in sport to develop programmes that achieve a positive impact in societies around the world.
Chalat explains that she wants us to expand our conversations around girls in sport. "I think too quickly when people think about what sport can do for women they think about getting more women into sport and sport participation," she says.
"And while that is, of course, important and I do not want to minimize that at all, there is so much more sport can do around gender equality, addressing that issue and empowering women."
As well as focusing on the stars and how to get girls involved, Chalat believes we should draw attention to the "deeper layer around what sport can do".
Supporting women into sport leadership
For Chalat, there are multiple ways that sport can create social change, one of which ties into her experience as a woman in sport leadership. When Chalat started at Beyond Sport in 2008, she was often the only woman in the room. Now she is in a senior role and has seen more women enter the space.