Women in collective sports modalities: An overview of technical and management positions in Brazilian Confederations

There is a consensus in the literature that women continue to be under-represented in leadership positions, and that a patriarchal language and gender stereotypes and desired professional profile still persist in our society, which pose practical and emotional challenges to women seeking positions of leadership in sport (Evans & Pfister, 2020). The research aimed to obtain an overview of the leadership positions held by women in technical committees and in the management of Brazilian Sports Confederations of Olympic collective modalities. The research has a mixed approach, using the document analysis method. Publications of calls for technical commissions and election minutes available online on the websites of the sports Confederations of collective Olympic modalities were analyzed, in addition to consulting the website of the Olympic Committee of Brazil. The data collected regarding the occupation of positions were organized in an Excel spreadsheet, descriptive statistical analysis was performed, in order to describe and summarize the set of data obtained, and content analysis (enumeration technique), for data related to the type of position held by women. 110 positions were identified in the technical committees of all sports analyzed (female and male teams), of which 23 are occupied by women (20%). The modalities of Basketball, Football, Handball, Water Polo, Rugby, Volleyball and Beach Volleyball add up to 43 positions on the technical committees in the women's teams, 13 of which are occupied by women (30%). The same modalities, in their men's teams add up to 47 positions, and of these 4 are occupied by women (8.5%), indicating that while men have space in the technical committees of women's teams, the opposite does not occur. Of all the modalities analyzed, it was possible to verify that few women occupy positions of greater leadership, such as coach/technician, in general, a panorama similar to that found by Ferreira et al. (2013), with the position of physiotherapist being the most occupied by women professionals. When analyzing the distribution of management positions, the panorama confirms the “glass ceiling” concept, which assumes that women rise to leadership positions to some extent. As for operational positions, 121 positions were identified, 40 of which are occupied by women (33%). As for statutory positions, of the 76 positions identified, only 7 of them are occupied by women (9.2%). It was possible to draw an overview of female participation in leadership in sport administration entities and Olympic collective sports modalities, highlighting the under-representation in leadership positions.