“It’s Like This One Man’s Baby”: Gender and Decision-Making Power in Sport for Development and Peace Organizations

Within this article, the author draws on Rao et al.’s theory of the deep structure of organizations to analyze the extent to which decision-making power across sport for development and peace organizations is gender inclusive. Findings from interviews with women and men leaders indicate that decision-making power across the organizations is inclusive to women, with women holding positional power and having a voice to influence. However, the author emphasizes that caution must be taken in claiming that such decision-making power is fully gender inclusive. This is because “women” in positions of power mostly represent privileged profiles, and men hold the most powerful positions. These findings are strongly linked to the origin stories of the organizations, with all having men (co)founders. The gendered implications of such men-dominated organizational histories were found to span both inward- and outward-facing organizational elements and were reported to be difficult to challenge.