MADRID, 20 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish Sports Association (ADESP) presented this Monday the Sportnet 4 Women network, a “space for accompaniment, knowledge and empowerment of women in sports” that has the vocation of encompassing “all Spanish sports” and create an “interconnection” in which LaLiga also participates.
The president of ADESP, José Hidalgo, has defined it as “a really ambitious project”. “We can all agree that for a little over a decade in Spanish sport there has been a discourse and a series of policies have been established for the appearance of women managers in sport, but they have not been sufficiently effective”, he explained.
The Sportnet 4 Women network, as Hidalgo explains, is based “on several pillars.” “The first of them is that it contains the knowledge and ‘expertise’ of leading women who help other women to reach the top of the sport’s elite. The second is technology, which is used for the interconnection of knowledge and people. And above all, it must be a space for accompaniment, knowledge and empowerment of women in sport, of all Spanish sport”, he explained.
Hidalgo recognized that the network “was born with the ambition of hosting and containing the knowledge of all Spanish sport” with the “vocation to go further”. “We are talking with the CSD and LaLiga and our ambition is for it to be an Ibero-American network,” he concluded.
Currently, only two women chair sports federations in Spain, a figure that ADESP will try to improve from within. “In 2021 we promoted and created the Women and Sports Commission, which brought together 50 women and represented the Spanish federations. From then on, different events have been happening, such as the modification of the statutes so that in the next elections in the year 2024 there will be at least 40% women on the board of directors of ADESP”, he added.
The presentation, held at the CEOE headquarters in Madrid, was also attended by the Director of Institutional Relations and Deputy to the President of LaLiga, Roberto Bermúdez de Castro, and the President of the CEOE Foundation, Fátima Báñez.
Roberto Bermúdez de Castro showed the full support of the football bosses with the project on “an issue that LaLiga and society should not turn their backs on”. “Logically, football is the most important engine of Spanish sport and therefore we have the obligation to give back socially and economically to the rest of the federations in order to develop,” he assured.
MARISOL CASADO: “I SEE MYSELF COMPLETELY IN A MINORITY”
The godmothers of the network’s presentation, led by former Olympic field hockey champion Mercedes Coghen in Barcelona’92, were the president of the International Triathlon Federation and member of the IOC, Marisol Casado; the president of the Royal Spanish Rowing Federation, Asunción Loriente; the president of the Spanish Association of Women, Executives and Sports (AEMED), Theresa Zabell, and the triple medalist Paralympic swimmer in Tokyo 2020 Marta Fernández.
Marisol Casado sees the promotion of initiatives such as the Sportnet 4 Women network as something important. “I see myself as completely in the minority and with practically no resources to be able to value everything I’m doing. Yes, this network is very necessary, because in terms of leadership we have to fight for things that are very complicated,” she said.
“There is no glamor in being the leader of a federation. So I think it is very important to counteract this situation and I think it is a fundamental step for other women who want to work in leadership or in the sports industry. It is something that we have to combat with positive examples, which although few, we do have,” he stressed.
The only president of an Olympic federation in Spain, Asunción Loriente, positively valued the existence of these initiatives. “We have to teach what we do, we have to vindicate ourselves. I understand that we are a reference, but we are in places where very few are and we have to act as, let’s say influencer, to be able to improve the data,” she commented.
The double Olympic gold and president of AEMED, Theresa Zabell, believes that “the world of sport has changed” both for women and men and highlighted the “help that athletes have”. She sees herself as a reference for women who want to access managerial positions in the world of sports. “That you have done something that everyone who comes from behind can notice you and you can influence is something important,” she said.