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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Changing gender and race demographics in Olympic Movement leadership, must avoid tokenism

by

Brian Lewis
117 days ago
20241029

Af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion: Chang­ing the race and gen­der de­mo­graph­ics of glob­al sports lead­er­ship is fraught with co­nun­drums, dilem­mas and quan­daries. It is not a quo­ta pol­i­cy, to­kenism or putting some­one in a lead­er­ship po­si­tion sim­ply for putting-them sake. It’s not as sim­ple as it’s your or my turn now. It’s not sym­bol­ic. Equal­i­ty is not al­ways fair.

Not many who seek to ad­dress his­tor­i­cal ableism, ageism, racism and sex­ism have the ap­petite to stom­ach the co­nun­drums, dilem­mas and quan­daries of en­sur­ing sys­tem­at­ic changes to dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pow­er struc­tures.

A harsh re­al­i­ty of life - that the road to hell can be paved with good in­ten­tions. When you are fight­ing for a cause - you be­come so pur­pose­ful and pas­sion­ate that you ig­nore warn­ing signs and cau­tion­ary words from oth­ers whose mo­tives you may ques­tion, such is your de­ter­mi­na­tion and ded­i­ca­tion to the cause you may be fight­ing.

As a vo­cal ad­vo­cate for eq­ui­ty, in­clu­sion, di­ver­si­ty and non-dis­crim­i­na­tion in all its forms, my ally­ship and ac­tivism are well known and ac­knowl­edged. Un­der­stand­ing the chal­lenges and es­tab­lish­ing guide­lines is as im­por­tant as break­ing down bar­ri­ers. There must be eq­ui­ty for there to be equal­i­ty. Di­ver­si­ty is more than a tick box quo­ta.

Shaped by vi­sion lead­er­ship is a mer­i­toc­ra­cy that de­mands an in­her­ent com­mit­ment to ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy. I re­call in 2013 my pre­de­ces­sor telling the me­dia that be­ing a good man­ag­er doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly make you a good leader. While at that time some took his com­ment as a per­son­al dig at me, I took it as a hard truth and chal­lenge that I had to be mind­ful of. Com­pe­ten­cy, ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty as a good man­ag­er and or ad­min­is­tra­tor aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­fer­able to lead­er­ship.

In re­sponse to the civ­il rights move­ment, Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy cre­at­ed a Com­mit­tee on Equal Em­ploy­ment Op­por­tu­ni­ty in 1961 and is­sued Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 10925, which used the term “af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion” to re­fer to mea­sures de­signed to achieve non-dis­crim­i­na­tion.

“Af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion can be de­fined as the laws, pro­grammes or ac­tiv­i­ties de­signed to re­dress past im­bal­ances and to ame­lio­rate the con­di­tions of in­di­vid­u­als and groups who have been dis­ad­van­taged on the grounds of race, gen­der and dis­abil­i­ty.” - Source Wikipedia.

Di­ver­si­ty, how­ev­er, we de­fine it, is po­lit­i­cal­ly con­struct­ed and po­lit­i­cal­ly main­tained. It doesn’t just hap­pen. It’s a choice we make as a so­ci­ety - Louis Menand - Jan­u­ary 13, 2020 New York­er ar­ti­cle.

In the ab­sence of af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion/pos­i­tive dis­crim­i­na­tion/pref­er­en­tial treat­ment, the dan­ger is the re­ver­sion to the sta­tus quo ante. Re­al di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion is not to­kenism.

It is a ‘ call to du­ty’ that re­quires a stan­dard of ac­count­abil­i­ty that can with­stand close scruti­ny. Too many ben­e­fi­cia­ries of af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion be­come part of the prob­lem and the sta­tus quo ante.

A leader with­out the nec­es­sary com­pe­ten­cies may not be ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient in lead­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Ef­fec­tive lead­ers stand on a foun­da­tion of sol­id gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples. They un­der­stand mod­ern gov­er­nance, emerg­ing is­sues and 21st-cen­tu­ry so­lu­tions to com­plex prob­lems.

An ar­gu­ment against af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion is that it is un­fair as it en­ables a sense of en­ti­tle­ment that fos­ters medi­oc­rity as in­di­vid­u­als who are giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty on the ba­sis of af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion may not be equipped to per­form - they aren’t up to the task.

Even as af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion is tak­ing pos­i­tive steps to end dis­crim­i­na­tion, to pre­vent its re­cur­rence, and to cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties that were pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied to mar­gin­alised groups or in­di­vid­u­als. It is a con­tra­dic­tion as it is dis­crim­i­na­to­ry. It must go be­yond the num­bers.


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