ABSTRACT
There is a dearth of statistics about women in leadership positions in sport. However, there is some evidence which indicates that very few women hold sport leadership positions. Until 1999 there were only two national sports associations (CHANETA excluded) with women in top leadership positions: the National Sports Council and the Tanzania Amateur Athletic Association; both had a female vice chairperson (Shomari 1999). In 2001 another woman was employed in a leadership position in the National Sports Council. Clearly, to date the number of women in leading administrative positions in sport in Tanzania has been minimal. The first appointment in 1998 by the Directorate of Sport within the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture of a woman to a higher leadership position at the Tanzania Sport Council, as Vice Chairperson, was received with scepticism by women with long experience in sport (Massao 2001). Some regarded the fact that women were appointed to leadership positions in sport as ‘tokenism’, since the women were not given key leadership positions, such as Chairperson or General Secretary of an Association. They believed that it was only in these top positions that women could participate effectively in influencing an organisation’s decision-making. As a result, the appointment of these few female vice-chairs has not been regarded as a very effective step for women in the Tanzanian sport system in terms of decision making.
