SOME GENDER ISSUES AROUND SPORTS OFFICIALS IN THE CONTEMPORARY BULGARIAN SOCIETY

ABSTRACT Sport is a mirror of the culture in which it develops, therefore analyzing the problems and trends in sport we have the opportunity to see a simplified model of society itself. The subject of our study is to understand how much our society is a subject of a gender stereotypes and to which extent contemporary women and men are free to express themselves in any public sphere of their choice. The case with sports officials sheds light on this problem. In the period May 2021 - January 2022, we conducted a study, within the international project Raising the growth and participation of female sports officials in Europe (WINS Project), supported by the Erasmus + Sport program, on the state and attitudes of Bulgarian sports officials, in all sports. We noticed several facts, typical for the modern Bulgarian society: Bulgarian women do not suffer from strong gender stereotypes regarding what is a “male” or a “female” occupation. However, we notice a low level of involvement of women as officials in “men’s sports”, such as football, boxing and taekwondo and very high in “women’s sports”: almost 99% in rhythmic gymnastics. Yet there is a positive trend in terms of women’s involvement in “men’s” sports. There has been an increase in recent years of women officials in sports such as taekwondo, boxing, football, weightlifting, but we are still very far from the desired equality. Bulgarian women occupy a large part of the low-level sport officials’ positions in athletics, but there are few women occupying higher positions and women also have lower salaries. In sports refereeing there are no legal differences that give privileges to one or the other sex, but this “equality” in some cases harms women who, due to motherhood or various ailments, have specific needs and requirements for working hours and work environment.