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CHRISTINE BRENNAN
International Olympic Committee

IOC fails in report on women in leadership roles

Christine Brennan
USA TODAY Sports

RIO DE JANIERO  —The International Olympic Committee is having a bad Olympics, and they haven't even started yet.

Members of the New Zealand Rugby team pose for a picture at Athlete Village prior to the 2016 Rio Olympics Games on Aug. 2.

In addition to making the awful decision to allow the state-sponsored Russian doping machine to compete in the Games, the IOC has just received a grade of D+ for the representation of women in leadership roles, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.

But that's a good grade compared to the international federations for the various Olympic sports, which received an F. National sports federations also we're given an F, as were regional zone confederations.

It has been confirmed that this survey was done in 2016, not 1916.

The U.S. Olympic Committee, not surprisingly, received the best grade within the oldest of the old boys networks, a B-, although its percentage of overall female governance — 31 percent — is less than the percentage of women in professional roles in the league offices of the NBA, MLB, MLS, the WNBA and at the NCAA headquarters, according to Richard Lapchick, director of the institute and primary author of the study.

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It should be noted that for the second consecutive summer Olympics, the U.S. team has more female athletes than male athletes. Often, however, USOC news conferences feature nothing but white male leaders.

For a collection of organizations that say they are trying to encourage the inclusion of women in sports, the report is an utter embarrassment.

“The IOC’s calls for gender equality across sport have had no teeth," Lapchick said.

In the IOC, only 24.4 percent of members are women. It's even worse in the international federations, where women make up just 5.7 percent of presidents, 12.2 percent of vice presidents and 13.1 percent of executive committee members.

More than 8,500 leadership positions were examined by Lapchick's institute in its report.

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