In the spring of 2019, the Swedish Athletics Association launched the new venture together with a sponsor partner after a period of thought.

- We started by pulling together a bunch of female elite coaches and had two hits with them last year. But we also felt that it was not enough to just talk to those who are at the elite level, says union captain Karin Torneklint to SVT Sport

A week ago, you took the next step, then you had a webinar where you invited the associations and their boards. The reason is that you want to make the clubs want to think differently.

- In athletics, most elite coaches are active in the clubs and not the national team, says Torneklint and develops a problem that has become clear:

- Women often want to work more in teams and then you hook your arm with someone, often a male colleague. Then after a while, that colleague has come higher up and you yourself are picked. This often happens to women and if you are not aware of this pattern we will lose even more.

For the federal captain, this is also a structural problem.

- What I experienced as the union captain is that a male coach has more room in being accepted, but if you are a good coach you leave it at that. As a woman, that frame is much smaller, says Torneklint and develops:

- If a man does something crazy, then nothing serious. We say he talks very loudly or is noisy and then you just think: "Well, he is just like that and he is still the best coach in the world", and then you forgive it. But if a woman should talk very loudly, many people think: "She is not really wise".

During her years as the most responsible, she has learned to see the trends.

- The solution when I get a complaint about a woman is almost always that I should remove her. But now that I've been in this role for so long, I question it, if it's not that they have experienced a male coach in the same way before.

The goal of the project is for athletics to have 20 percent female leaders in the elite business in two years.

- That is the only goal we can have for moving forward now. The end goal is what RF says about equal opportunities and then at least 40-60 in distribution applies. So we have a long way to go when it comes to elite coaches.

CLIP: Even the skiing team has few women

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