International Women’s Day – March 8 – has been celebrated worldwide for more than 100 years; in fact, this Friday is a national holiday in more than two dozen countries.
We're using the occasion to launch the first Around the Rings’ Golden 25 for Women, made possible by Ernst & Young. We’d like to thank them for their support, and for their commitment to advancing women in sport and business.
As the majority owner of Around the Rings, I take a personal interest in women’s issues and how they play out in the business world. For the 20-plus years we’ve published Around the Rings, we’ve made a point to hire and promote women at all levels, in all areas. I like to think we’ve been reasonably successful.
Unfortunately, the same is not true in many other areas of world sport. The paucity of women in leadership roles in the world of Olympic sport is staggering:
•Of the 101 members of the International Olympic Committee, only 21 are women
•Of more than 200 NOCs, only 10 have women presidents
•None of the three Olympic organizing committees are headed by women
•Only three of the 33 Olympic sport federations are headed by women
On the plus side, women serve as secretaries general at nearly 20 NOCs and at five Olympic sport federations. All three 2020 bid cities have women serving in key roles. It’s entirely possible that at least one serious contender for the next IOC president will be a woman.
In 1997, we launched the first of our Golden 25 series – annual rankings that look ahead to note who will be the most influential in the coming year. I’ll be candid: most years it has been a challenge to maintain even a semblance of gender balance. To date, no woman has been named to the #1 spot.
So you can imagine our excitement when the opportunity arose to extend our Golden 25 brand by recognizing 25 of the most important women in Olympic sport. While there are far more than 25 women of influence in the Olympic Family, this is our attempt to begin to set the record straight.
The women on our list work in many different areas and it would be difficult to select just one as "most influential"; hence our decision to list everyone alphabetically.
But the truth is -- we think every woman on our list is #1.
Sheila Scott Hula