Quotas in sport management make gender equality initiatives more common: the case of Spain

ABSTRACT

Research question

How do gender quotas transform sport management, beyond increasing the proportion of women among sport managers? Building on findings from the literature on quotas in sport management, this article asks whether quotas make gender equality initiatives more common. This research question fills a research gap, since the aforementioned literature is based principally on the case of Norway.

Research methods

This article analyzes the impact of the 2014 gender quota imposed for boards of national sport federations in Spain (of at least three women or 33% of board members) with the help of interviews with a purposive sample of 86 board members (43 women and 43 men) comprising 66% of national sport federations.

Results and findings

This study shows that the Spanish quota made gender equality initiatives more common.

Implications

To scholars and sport managers alike, this article provides a tool to understand change in sport organizations once quotas are adopted.

KEYWORDS:

• Quotas
• sport
• management
• gender equality
• Spain

Acknowledgments

For invaluable comments on earlier versions, I owe thanks to Mara Bustelo, Xavier Coller, Marsela Dauti, Juan Fernández, Roberto Garvía, Carmen González, Rodolfo Gutiérrez, Esther Ruiz and anonymous reviewers. This article is dedicated to Rosemary Barberet, as a sign of deep gratitude for her continuous support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To avoid repetitions, gender equality measures, initiatives, programs or policies are used here interchangeably.

2 There is a body of work on gender quotas in politics (Clayton, 2021; Clayton & Zetterberg, 2018; Hughes et al., 2019) and corporate boards (Huse, 2012; Mensi-Klarbach et al., 2021; Rigolini & Huse, 2021). Due to space constraints, these studies are not reviewed here.

3 With the first theme, I studied board members’ self-described perceptions. With the second theme, I analyzed board members’ self-reported behavior.

4 In this article, all translations from Spanish to English are done by the author.

5 Due to technical problems, I did not record four interviews. Realizing this error soon after the interviews, with the help of my memories and my notes, I synthesized their content the day of the interviews or soon afterwards.