Diversity
Flying higher (than ever)
How a dedicated Women’s Camp at the 2021 Moth World Championship on Lake Garda also helped to give sailors their voice
Andrew Pindar, trustee of The Magenta Project and long-time campaigner for greater gender diversity in sailing, shares a recent example of how real and perceived barriers are beginning to be overcome and shares the lessons learnt in the process. The International Moth Class has proactively been working to encourage greater female participation within its fleet. The Moth World Championships that were held on Lake Garda, Italy in early September provided an opportunity to open the doors and encourage talented female sailors to join the event alongside the class’s top male sailors.
The Moth Class president Luca Rizzotti, who also sits as a trustee of The Magenta Project, is well versed in the thought process and was able to draw on his wider
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experience in the industry. He put together a programme that not only encouraged and challenged more women to participate in the event, but also ensured an equable and competitive platform across the International Moth fleet. With the closest thing to an organiser’s manual tucked away in various paragraphs of the World Sailing Trust’s 2019 Strategic Review into female participation in the wider sport, Rizzotti used his experience of Foiling Week, of which he is founder and president. The cutting-edge sailing event, which he formed eight years previously, was the hunting ground for relatively innocuous initiatives that have proved invaluable to the development of this pioneering event. These included designating a specific part of the programme to women, promoting an open-arms welcome and simply
Above and right: the International Moth Class staged a very successful Women’s Camp at
Malcesine on Lake Garda in the run-up to the recent Moth Worlds. 18 women attended, including Franziska Mage from Germany (pictured above)
recognising that peeing off the back of a boat might be easy for guys, but is somewhat less so for girls. Rizzotti feels very strongly that male voices need to be part of the discussion around gender diversity in the sport of sailing, and he maintains that looking at events such as Foiling Week and the recent Moth Worlds through an inclusive lens is critical for the success of the sport. ‘It is important that we get more men involved in the discussion around gender diversity as we need to see more women in the sport,’ he says. ‘Through Foiling Week I have been in a position to do this and be a stepping-stone for women into the sport, but I feel very strongly that the dialogue needs to come from both women and men and that this critical male support cannot stop in the meeting room but needs to be clear and visible on the water as well.
/MARTINA ORSINI
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