January Newsletter: What is your ‘why’?

Canadian Women & Sport’s January 2021 Newsletter

New Year’s celebrations come with a laundry list of resolutions and to-dos. All those hefty expectations can be overwhelming. In Stacey Abrams’ 2018 Ted Talk, she encouraged us to ask ourselves three questions about everything we do: what do I want? Why do I want it? And how do I get it?

The why is the part that we want to focus on in a time of new beginnings. Because as Abrams said, “when it gets hard, when it gets tough…if you don’t know why, you can’t try again.” So why do you care about equity in sport?

We’re here because we know girls and women deserve better than a sport system that doesn’t work for them. And if you’re a champion for gender equity, chances are you agree. We want to make sure you have what you need to create change.  

In 2021, you can expect we will:

• continue to advocate for gender-equitable recovery and return to play plans
• celebrate International Women’s Day with our partners and supporters, sharing our visions for how we will #ChoosetoChallenge inequity in sport over the next year.
• develop new resources on creating safe sport spaces for trans and nonbinary athletes.
• deliver on our commitment to equity and anti-racism by completing an equity audit and building an action plan to ensure our work is anti-racist and inclusive.
• develop new resources to help sport administrators and coaches keep girls in sport, building our popular Game On program into its second pilot phase.
• collaborate with the E-Alliance to better understand how diverse girls and women experience sport.
• launch new, more accessible gender equity assessment and action planning opportunities.
• continue to build on our successful webinar program with new topics and expert guest speakers.
• Tell more stories about girls and women in sport through our She’s Got It All campaign.
• celebrate the 40^th anniversary of our organization
• launch our new Strategic Plan for 2021 – 2024!

Whew, that’s a long and exciting list. We’re not ready to act on all of those just yet, but in the meantime, here’s what you can do to stay involved:

• Submit your interest to join our Board of Directors before February 1.
• Join our webinar on February 10 to hear from sport leaders who took part in our Gender Equity Playbook Program.