As the world turns its attention to the Olympics in Rio, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida released the 2016 International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles. The report highlights the lack of representation of women in leadership roles and is a startling indictment of the current system. It should serve as a call to action to change the way we run our sports internationally.The results are a striking reflection of an exclusive mens club that runs international federations affiliated with the Olympics as well as their related regional zone confederations and national federations. All received grades of F in the report card. The International Olympic Committee itself received a D+.I have been writing racial and gender report cards on the NBA, NFL, WNBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and college sports since the late 1980s. Not one of those entities has ever received an overall combined grade of F. I consider a grade of C to be poor, and the NFL, MLB, MLS and college sports have gotten Cs for both race and gender over the years. In fact, the NFL, MLB and college sports got?C-pluses in the most recent report for gender hiring practices. But in more than 25 years, with more than 100 reports published, none ever received an overall combined grade of F. There had been only two D-pluses?... until today. That is how badly international sport fared when we evaluated the level of women in leadership roles.Although the hierarchy of international sport has been overwhelmingly conservative and elitist over the years, the Olympics have spawned some powerful moments for diversity and inclusion. Jesse Owens lit up the victory stand with his amazing athletic feats in the face of Adolf Hitlers planned 1936 showcase of Aryan superiority in Berlin. In spite of resistance from the IOC itself, the sports boycott of apartheid forced South Africa out of the Games starting in 1964 in Tokyo. The Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina held the distinction of not just the most Olympic medals won by any female athlete but the most won by any?athlete in Olympic history. Latynina held the record for 48 years, until Michael Phelps broke her record in 2012. Finally, at the Games in Mexico City in 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos shook up America on the victory stand with their stunning, silent scream about racism in the United States.Knowing the possibilities of using the power of sport to affect change, I readily agreed to undertake what became the International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles when I was approached by Val Ackerman, the first WNBA president and current commissioner of the Big East Conference. In October of last year, she started talking to me about how outrageous it was that women have such poor representation in leadership positions in international sport. The results are in the report released today.The report, researched by co-authors Erin Davison, Rodrigo Quirarte, and Caryn Grant, examined more than 8,500 leadership positions. Some of the notable findings include shockingly low numbers for women in leadership roles: ? 5.7 percent of International Federation presidents ? 12.2 percent of vice presidents ? 13.1 percent of executive committee members ? 24.4 percent of members of the IOCAlthough these numbers are better than those of the IFs, the IOC must set a higher standard for the International Federations to follow. It was good to learn that Angela Ruggiero was elected to head the IOCs Athletes Commission and became a member of the IOC Executive Board. She joined Anita DeFrantz as the second American woman on the Board.The United States Olympic Committee comes closest to showing a commitment to gender equality, with women representing 31.0 percent of governance roles. Even so, when compared to data from previous TIDES reports, that is less than the percentage of women in professional roles in the league offices of the NBA, MLB, MLS and WNBA and at the NCAA headquarters.There is a stark contrast between the participation numbers and the leadership numbers of women in the Olympic Games. As cited in the report, the 2012 Summer Olympics in London were the first in history to include a woman from each country. The Olympics in Rio are predicted to have 45 percent female participation. If that holds, that would be the highest female athlete participation to date. This year, women athletes will not only outnumber male athletes on Team USA, as they did in London, but they will also set a new Olympic record as the largest number of women participating for any nation.Diversity and inclusion are moral imperatives, but they are also now viewed as business imperatives. They become a sports business imperative in some obvious ways. When we do the Racial and Gender Report Cards, the best grades for diversity in sports have consistently come from the NBA, in which senior leadership at the league office has been diverse since we began doing report cards. The worst grades for gender have consistently come from the National Football League and Major League Baseball.When the Ray Rice story began to break, the public relations nightmare for the NFL kept getting worse. Had there been women in senior leadership positions to advise the commissioner, they might have been able to chart a different course for the league to become a leader by taking a strong stand against domestic violence. The NFL could have said something like: Domestic violence is a huge problem of men in the United States. While 54 NFL players were accused of domestic violence since 2006, when Roger Goodell became Commissioner, during that period until the Ray Rice incident, 11,700,000 women were battered. It is an American problem -- not just an NFL problem. We are going to work with organizations to stop domestic violence.The NFL did appoint several senior women, who eventually helped guide the league to take such a position, but by the time this happened, so much damage had already been done.In contrast, when the Donald Sterling tape leaked late on a Friday night, Adam Silver, the relatively new NBA commissioner, had diverse senior leadership at the NBA with whom he could consult. Five days later, he took the podium and said there is no place for racism in the NBA and Sterling would be banned from the league. I consider that the single most important statement ever made by any commissioner in a league office. Diversity and inclusion helped the NBA, and a lack thereof greatly hurt the NFL.Ackerman summed it up perfectly: This marginalization is short-sighted and at odds with the ideals of inclusiveness the sports world increasingly holds dear. Across sports, there is no shortage of areas where more womens voices (and votes) would enrich dialogue, improve decision-making and ensure that sports remain in step with the times. Hopefully, sports leaders will heed Dr. Lapchicks call and shake off their lethargy, acknowledge fast-moving social currents and initiate the reforms needed to give women the clout they deserve.Anita DeFrantz, considered by many as the most influential woman in international sport, commented, Good governance demands that women and men share the responsibility of decision-making at board levels. International Sports governance is far behind the standard as evidenced by the 2016 International Sports Report Card on Women in Leadership Roles. Thank you for this remarkable tool so we can assess the movement of international sport to good governance!Billie Jean King, who has perhaps done more than anyone to push for equality for women in sport, noted that, The Lapchick report card on the lack of women in leadership roles in international sport is an accurate picture of where we are today and reinforces that our international and national federations need to bring more women in leadership roles and bring about transformational change in the way we manage and lead in sports.Richard E. Lapchick is the Chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program in the College of Business Administration at the University of Central Florida. Lapchick also directs UCFs Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, is the author of 16 books and the annual Racial and Gender Report Card, and is the President of the National Consortium for Academics and Sport. 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