Seb Coe is getting some press today as World Athletics has announced it will increase the number of its female council members from 8 to a minimum of 10 members – including at least one female vice president – at the Council elections in August 2023.
That sounds great - I'm all for having a female VP and multiple female board members and a diverse council. But one quote really caught my attention. I am very much against the idea which hs very publicly claims he is for - equity. Let me quote him directly.
“It was an important part of the reforms we introduced in 2016. In today’s world, it is not enough to provide equal opportunity, we must provide equity.
“In order to achieve true equity in our sport, it is important that we offer our female athletes, administrators, and officials the tools and environment they need to be empowered to pursue careers at all levels of athletics.
“Be it by setting quotas for female representation on our Council, or providing more flexible learning and development opportunities that better suit women’s commitments – we are absolutely dedicated to making our sport equitable and representative for all.
“We are happy to lead the way on gender equity initiatives and set the example for other International Federations.”
I think it's great they if they want to mandate at least one female VP but am very much opposed to equity as a general concept goal for society as it ends up being discrimination. Maybe quotas with a large administrative council, where performance is hard to define and if we are doing it just based on sex, it's not that big of a deal. Kind of like the UN, every country gets equal represenation.
But how far do you want to take this equity concept? Equity is basically equality of outcome which is antithetical to the main concept of elite sport - someone wins, someone loses.
Equality of opportunity is what I'm for.
Should we insure that the 100 final be 17% indian, 18% chinese, to match their global population shares? Should the NBA mandate that 75% of the players be white and 18% hispanic to match the US population?
And why do we only do it on race/sex? Why not do it on IQ as well?
Should we aim to have all organizations have 8.9 percent of the members with an IQ under 80 and 8.9 percent with an IQ aobve 120 to match the world population?
Even Bill Maher seems to realize how dangerous equity is as a concept. You really can't have equity with state control/communism.
