For well-balanced and sustainable social development, men and women must have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities: gender equality. Sport can make an important contribution to improving the position of women. Basically, there are two ways of stimulating gender equality. Gender mainstreaming aims to achieve equality in all activities of an organisation: policy, structure and culture. Activities specifically aimed at improving the position and participation of women are necessary as well: empowerment. A combination of the two strategies is the most effective.

Projects aimed at sports participation by women must be set up with care. There are several obstacles: women may feel unsafe, they may have other obligations and limited time, and may be subject to norms in relation to gender and sexuality. It is extremely important to take these aspects into consideration in the design of programmes and projects.

This theme too shows the usefulness of cooperation between sport organisations and development organisations. The gender issue is pre-eminently a theme for development cooperation. Sport organisations do not need to reinvent this particular wheel, but can build on procedures and methods that have been tried and tested in practice. Similarly, development organisations do not need to break their heads over the question of how to train female sport leaders or how sports activities can be set up so as to be attractive to women. Sports associations already have this particular expertise. It is recommended that the experiences of predecessors are used as well as the knowledge and expertise of specialists in setting up and implementing sport and development projects.