English Chess Forum

Why do we appear not to have any Female ECF Council/Board members? In a modern business almost every firm/business has at least one female board member.I have looked on the ECF web site and can find none it appears to be all men.

Peter D Williams wrote:Why do we appear not to have any Female ECF Council/Board members? In a modern business almost every firm/business has at least one female board member.I have looked on the ECF web site and can find none it appears to be all men.

Thankyou for your observation. What, if anything, do you propose should be done about this?

Lara Barnes and Julie Denning attended the last Council meeting as representatives of several ECF members.

Sabrina Chevannes stood for election as Junior Director last October, but lost to Phil Ehr.

Peter D Williams wrote:Why do we appear not to have any Female ECF Council/Board members? In a modern business almost every firm/business has at least one female board member.I have looked on the ECF web site and can find none it appears to be all men.

Peter

I asked Krishna to stand, and I thought Sabrina was very impressive at last year's AGM

There was a female Council member at the AGM, so part of your assumption is incorrect

Clare Summerscale was on the ECF Board

Alex Holowczak wrote:

Peter D Williams wrote:Why do we appear not to have any Female ECF Council/Board members? In a modern business almost every firm/business has at least one female board member.I have looked on the ECF web site and can find none it appears to be all men.

Thankyou for your observation. What, if anything, do you propose should be done about this?

Lara Barnes and Julie Denning attended the last Council meeting as representatives of several ECF members.

Sabrina Chevannes stood for election as Junior Director last October, but lost to Phil Ehr.

Maybe making a female member a ECF council/Board member would be a start? its just puzzling to me to see no females on the board.I do not have all the answers but some way of making a female council board member should be found. Most sensible people can see in our every day life the postive contribution women make to our society so in my view it would benefit the ECF.
Im sure we get the usual lot on here telling us why we cant have a female board member.

Is there some confusion here? Despite ending in 'a' Krishna is man's name isn't it. Apologies if I am wrong.

I was an BCF Director for years. These days the director of Womens' chess is no more, it is an officer. If I had enough support I could be persuaded to stand again for one of the other posts but the reason I stepped down in the first place was that I preferred organising events to arguing with people 6 weekends+ a year. My local congress always clashed with the AGM too.
There are many sensible and well organised women out there but most have far too much on to give up the amount of time needed to make a really good job of a directorship. I was intending to stand again when I retire from teaching (About 13 years time?).

John, Krishna is a woman's name and if it was KrishnaN, then that is usually the male version. Mick is referring to Krishna Shiatis, who is the mother of two of our extremely talented juniors, Rohan and Kiran (as well as Vishal if she would still play!).

I did indeed run and wanted to be on the board and thought that being so young and female would make it more diverse and help voice different opinions. However, I may understand why females don't want to run.

In my experience since I have had a role within the ECF, I have been made to feel that I am worthless and sometimes even less than that. In my role of Manager of Women's Chess, along with Jovanka Houska, our ideas to improve women's chess often get shot down and disregarded as not worthwhile and unimportant. Money doesn't seem to want to be spent on women's chess as they do not seem to be important.

I do not blame those women who are very talented and enthusiastic and would be great assets to the board for not applying, because in the last few months, I have been utterly demoralised with how I have been treated by some board members and made to feel like @*!&.
I don't feel there is any real support to women's chess, apart from a couple of individuals, but this is irrelevant as they are not "in power".

No doubt that when I post this message, I will berated for about 10 pages as that seems to be the trend whenever I post anything in support of women's chess.

And you wonder why more females don't speak up Peter...

Peter D Williams wrote:Maybe making a female member a ECF council/Board member would be a start? its just puzzling to me to see no females on the board.I do not have all the answers but some way of making a female council board member should be found. Most sensible people can see in our every day life the postive contribution women make to our society so in my view it would benefit the ECF.
Im sure we get the usual lot on here telling us why we cant have a female board member.

You don't seem to understand the difference between Board and Council, so allow me to do so.

The Board is a group of 10 Directors, who do the work the ECF needs to do. For example, one part of the International Director's job is to sort out the English Olympiad teams. One part of the Home Director's job is to sort out the British Championship.

Council is a group of representatives from each of the ECF's members. They vote for the Board, and vote on various other things, such as membership fee/Game Fee rates. Examples of the ECF's members include Unions (e.g. SCCU, MCCU), Counties (e.g. Worcestershire, Yorkshire), Leagues (e.g. 4NCL, Birmingham, London), Congresses (e.g. e2e4, Scarborough, Golders Green), the Board, and a few other posts I won't go into.

Something like the Birmingham League could quite happily vote for a female to become its ECF Delegate - if indeed one stood for election. Lara and Julie became delegates in the same way. This would put females on Council.

Council would have to vote to put a female on the Board, as it had the chance to do so with Sabrina last year.

My attitude towards this isn't just to vote for a female to be on the Board just because there aren't any at the moment. I'd rather vote for the best candidate for the particular post being volunteered for. If this means having to vote for a male candidate ahead of a female candidate, so be it.

I don't know if I count as "the usual lot", but I'm not going to tell you that you can't have a female Board member!

Sabrina Chevannes wrote:John, Krishna is a woman's name and if it was KrishnaN, then that is usually the male version. Mick is referring to Krishna Shiatis, who is the mother of two of our extremely talented juniors, Rohan and Kiran (as well as Vishal if she would still play!).

I did indeed run and wanted to be on the board and thought that being so young and female would make it more diverse and help voice different opinions. However, I may understand why females don't want to run.

In my experience since I have had a role within the ECF, I have been made to feel that I am worthless and sometimes even less than that. In my role of Manager of Women's Chess, along with Jovanka Houska, our ideas to improve women's chess often get shot down and disregarded as not worthwhile and unimportant. Money doesn't seem to want to be spent on women's chess as they do not seem to be important.

I do not blame those women who are very talented and enthusiastic and would be great assets to the board for not applying, because in the last few months, I have been utterly demoralised with how I have been treated by some board members and made to feel like @*!&.
I don't feel there is any real support to women's chess, apart from a couple of individuals, but this is irrelevant as they are not "in power".

No doubt that when I post this message, I will berated for about 10 pages as that seems to be the trend whenever I post anything in support of women's chess.

And you wonder why more females don't speak up Peter...

None of the above you wrote surprises me Sabrina and im sorry to hear of your experience of how some board members have made you feel.

Im sure your right your get the 10 pages of stuff from the usual lot on here saying why it can not be done and all the rest of the nonsense there write.

I like to see a permanent female board member such as yourself or Krishna or Laura appointed by the council/board to give the council a female viewpoint. I am convinced this would be a postive step forward for the ECF.Not only would it help female chess it would also help the council/board.Women make a postive contribtion to our society in many ways and the ECF Board Council shoudd take full advantage of this resource.

Keep up the good work you do with the female players and do speak up take no notice of some people who appear stuck in a time warp.

Are you not entertained?

Is this not why you are here?

Alex Holowczak says
I don't know if I count as "the usual lot", but I'm not going to tell you that you can't have a female Board member![/quote]


Why do we not have a female director who job is to promote women chess lets appoint one as a director? seems simple to me and take advantage of this resource!.

Peter D Williams wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:
I don't know if I count as "the usual lot", but I'm not going to tell you that you can't have a female Board member!

Why do we not have a female director who job is to promote women chess lets appoint one as a director? seems simple to me and take advantage of this resource!.

We have a Manager for Women's Chess. In fact, we have two. This used to be a Directorship until the Board was halved in size at some point in the last 15 years. The Manager(s) for Women's Chess are appointed by the Board, and both incumbents are female.

So the post you want to exist already exists. Does it matter whether it's a Directorship, Manager, or any other class of Officer?

I think it matters Alex. This distinction between manager and director is sometimes what people use to put Jovanka and I "in our place".

It seems directors get respect and managers are "merely managers"

Alex Holowczak wrote:

Peter D Williams wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:
I don't know if I count as "the usual lot", but I'm not going to tell you that you can't have a female Board member!

Why do we not have a female director who job is to promote women chess lets appoint one as a director? seems simple to me and take advantage of this resource!.

We have a Manager for Women's Chess. In fact, we have two. This used to be a Directorate until the Board was halved in size at some point in the last 15 years. The Manager(s) for Women's Chess are appointed by the Board, and both incumbents are female.

So the post you want to exist already exists. Does it matter whether it's a Directorate, Manager, or any other class of Officer?

I think it does matter that its not a directorate postion it would be a very clear statement by the ECF of how highly it regards womens chess and there views if it was a directorate. lets appont one i say.

Lets take advantage of this resource women make a postive contribution to our society.

As i said im sure we get all the usual lot telling us why it can not be done and all the rest of the nonsense there write.

i will not be posting again on the subject. I have got the debate going lets see what reason people come up with for why it can not be done should be fun to read!

Alex Holowczak wrote:

Peter D Williams wrote:

Alex Holowczak wrote:
I don't know if I count as "the usual lot", but I'm not going to tell you that you can't have a female Board member!

Why do we not have a female director who job is to promote women chess lets appoint one as a director? seems simple to me and take advantage of this resource!.

We have a Manager for Women's Chess. In fact, we have two. This used to be a Directorship until the Board was halved in size at some point in the last 15 years. The Manager(s) for Women's Chess are appointed by the Board, and both incumbents are female.

So the post you want to exist already exists. Does it matter whether it's a Directorship, Manager, or any other class of Officer?

Directors have control of their budget, managers don't.