Having gender- diverse leadership at board and senior management level in an organisation improves performance by:

• Increasing the organisation’s problem-solving ability – broader discussions and a greater diversity of ideas can help when solving issues
• Increasing capacities – women bring a range of skills to leadership roles including, astute interpersonal skills, self-reflexivity and critical thinking abilities
• Having a greater diversity of leadership styles – the increases the organisation’s flexibility and its ability to solve complex problems and deal with a diverse range of stakeholders.

This toolkit will assist you to:

• Evaluate your organisation’s culture and consider how it is gender inclusive and supportive of women in leadership roles
• Identify areas where you are on track and where there is room for development
• Understand the common conscious and unconscious biases in recruitment processes.

It will also help you to create change by:

• Implementing a diversity policy, which provides an overview of commitment to gender diversity and what you will do to increase this in your organisation
• Attracting a diverse range of skilled applicants to leadership roles in your organisation, by writing a detailed position description using gender-neutral language and promoting your organisation’s good work towards gender equality
• Ensuring you write inclusive position descriptions that describe your skill set you need, so you attract the most suitable candidates
• Targeting your audience through clever placement of job advertisements to attract a diverse range of the best leaders to your organisation
• Selecting the best candidates for the job by setting up structured selection processes that eliminate gender the other biases
• Retaining women in leadership roles in your organisation through flexible working arrangements and professional development opportunities.

The last park of the guide helps you celebrate your wins and recognise and promote women’s leadership in the active recreation and sports sector by:

• Collecting the right data to tell your gender diversity story and communicate your results
• Creating champions of change and role models from within your organisation to promote women in sports leadership roles.