BUILDING a work force that can cope with the needs of sport is important, and it is something that we have to tackle now. While many continue to increase their investment into women’s sport, they have to realise that this will increase the pressure on officials, administrators, judges, etc – so there is a necessity to invest also to cope with future growth.
We cannot insist on professional standards from our players, without ensuring that the back-up roles, that are necessary to support these standards, also have a robust recruitment process in place and are invested in.
This statement is also relevant to those who work behind our screens, bringing sport to life in our homes, and I was very happy to join a group of people who debated this recently.
It is spearheaded by Lucy Lake from QTV, an award-winning Scottish production company, delivered a brilliant event in partnership with SVG Europe Women, which was their first in-person community event for two years, and Glasgow was the venue!
Their focus was “Exploring the Scottish Skills Shortage”, and they were looking for solutions to help support the pressing need for more crew for sports broadcasters and looking at how to increase diversity – particularly by welcoming more women into the profession.
The panel on the night was amazing and the plans in place on how to break down those old barriers of mistrust and work together was refreshing to hear.
As always when you have a female speaker who has broken down barriers very early on in her career, working in a male-dominated environment, you can hear some harrowing tales. But the chink of hope that was coming through the conversation, is a very welcome right step forward.
This is the start of a very important conversation, one that won’t be put in a box and labelled with a tick.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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