Sport England chief executive Jennie Price keen to encourage more women into top roles

Sport England chief executive Jennie Price believes a commitment to diversity is key to helping more women secure top roles in sport.

Price was speaking at 'Women on Sports Boards', an event taking place at the Tower of London aimed at increasing the number of women on the boards of sports clubs and governing bodies.

“It has got better recently but only 27 per cent of directors of governing bodies of sport and organisations that run sport are women, so there is a way to go yet,” she told Sky Sports News HQ.

“What’s key here is diversity and having men and women round the table is just part of that.

“If you have a group of people on a board and they all look the same, they all think the same and they’ve all got identical life experiences, you just don’t get such good decision making.

“Particularly with sports being challenged to increase the range of people who play their sport, it is really important they get different thinking and ideas around the table.”

Price believes encouraging women with a diverse range of skills to take up leading roles in sport can only be beneficial, especially with regard to increasing overall participation in sport by women and media coverage of women’s sport.

“I am at the Tower of London today with 100 women who are really interested in becoming directors of sports,” added Price.

“A lot of them don’t come from a sports background and that’s important too.

If you have a group of people on a board and they all look the same, they all think the same and they’ve all got identical life experiences, you just don’t get such good decision making.

“We have women here from the financial sector, from law and all sorts of different backgrounds, who would just introduce different thinking.

“It is a part of the whole story we are trying to tell here for women in sport.

“If you have got women round a board table then the number of women playing a sport is going to get on the agenda more easily.

“Initiatives that might be taken will definitely be thought about. Having plenty of senior women thinking about the presentation of your women’s game on TV and in the media, they are just going to come to the fore more naturally and I think you are going to have a better debate about it.

“It might not solve the problem but it is absolutely part of the answer.”

As for where the UK ranks in terms of women occupying top roles in sport, Price feels Britain is keeping pace but must do more to reach the level of the most diverse countries.

“I think we are fairly typical,” said Price. “In some places, like Scandinavia, gender equality is just better in every walk of life and that’s reflected in sport too.

“In many other countries in Europe and other areas of the world like Australia where we would naturally compare ourselves, I think it is pretty much the same.”