Women and sport

The Committee adopted the own-initiative report by Geneviève Fraisse (GUE/NGL, F) on women and sport. The holding of the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004 and the European Year of Education through Sport led the Committee to propose an examination of the importance of sports coeducation in schools, calling on the Commission and the Member States to give clear priority to projects encouraging women to participate in sport. Recalling that sport had had a democratic role since Antiquity, the report called for a new dimension for sport in schools and sport in leisure and sought to ensure equal rights in top-level sport for female athletes. For these athletes, it called for measures for the prevention and elimination of sexual harassment and abuse in sport and proposed initiatives to protect their health. The Committee also hoped for greater participation by women in decision-making in sports. To that end, it called on Member States and authorities to make subsidies to sports associations conditional on the adoption of statutory provisions ensuring equal representation of women and men at all levels. Sports organisations were invited to promote women's participation in refereeing and adjudication and the presence of women in management structures would have to increase over the next ten years.�