Umeå University's logo

The sports movement plays an important role in generating democratic upbringing and participationamong Sweden´s population. The assumption that sports associations constitute a school in democracyis well established in sports policy and is the basis for today's public sports support. Equality workoccurs within the sports movement where the Swedish Sports Confederation works to ensure thatwomen and men throughout the movement have the same power to shape sports and their ownparticipation and that no gender should be represented by less than 40 percent. This study aim todescribe and analyze election committees within wrestling associations in Sweden in their work ofrecruiting new and retaining existing board members from an equality and gender perspective. Byinterviewing seven people that represent different election committees, we were able to analyze thewrestling associations recruiting processes. The result shows that a recruitment process exists but is notinterpreted. The attitudes and perceptions of gender equality in a board are positive – several selectionboards advocate more women. The problem, however, lies in the fact that there the election committeeshave an androcentric approach which to some extent contributes to a reproduction of the powerrelations that exist within wrestling today, in order to break the structures and norms and succeed ingetting more women in, the associations may need more help from superiors