Women Taking the Lead

Abstract

This paper presents the results of three empirical studies that have been undertaken within the project “Women Taking the Lead” at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. The representative survey of all male and female executives in German sports federations included questions concerning their socio-demography, their careers as executive members in the sports organisations as well as their careers in both sport and their profession. The survey reveals significant gender differences in terms of age, family situation, responsibilities in the executive committees, duration of office and career barriers. Further, we conducted 23 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with women in leadership positions in order to explore the women’s individual perspectives. The aim of a second interview study (“drop-out” study), with 9 women and 7 men, was to identify barriers in the voluntary careers of male and female leaders who have left their position earlier than they had originally planned. These informants can be seen as experts with an excellent insight into their organisations and who have experienced barriers which caused them to “drop out”. The respondents’ statements showed considerable differences with respect to the experiences, attitudes and evaluations of women and men.