Brainstorming ways to increase diversity/opportunity in skating

[Harriet]

I've been thinking about this for a while and coming to the conclusion that whatever the ISU is doing to expand access and increase the diversity of both skaters and officials...doesn't, shall we say, appear to be having a ton of impact as yet. What are some additional strategies that you think might help given the situation as it stands right now?

One thing I thought of was applying quotas, particularly for officials. Quotas are a strategy known to work in improving diversity of participation and representation in many areas, including business and politics. What if the ISU implemented a quota requirement that at least 50% of tech panel members and judges at all major events (basically, Grand Prix events on up) must be drawn from non-traditional skating countries, or must be under the age of 40, or must be of colour? How would that impact the patterns we tend to see of bias, unofficial bloc judging and reputation-based calling/judging? This could be backed up with financial support to national federations that actively work at recruiting and retaining skaters from low SES backgrounds, skaters and officials of colour, new officials from outside the sport, etc..

Another thing was opening mainstream competitions to same-sex dance and pairs teams, and developing new element options of equivalent value to allow for variations based on partners' upper/lower body strength combinations etc. This would enable more partnerships from more countries to form and open up additional possibilities in terms of elements and choreography. Imagine a dance program where the lead and the follow had the option of switching roles between elements in the way same-sex dancesport couples sometimes do, or a pairs program in which each partner could be both a thrower/lifter and a throwee/liftee at different points, and where lead/follow/thrower/lifter/throwee/liftee roles were explicitly delinked from the gender of the skaters...

Another was creating, and financially supporting, a category of 'skaters/officials without federations' to enable people from countries where it's not financially or environmentally sustainable to build an Olympic-sized rink that's available all year round to compete under their preferred flag if they want to. This would open a route for people from much smaller countries, people with unclear citizenship such as the children of refugees, and people from ethnicities not stereotypically associated with skating to access resources and training, and potentially even advance to Olympic level following the model of the Refugee Olympic Team for stateless athletes.

Any other ideas spring to your mind?

 

[mrrice]

You know, I still believe the lack of diversity in skating has to do with the expense. At least in the states. I have seen a few Black Hockey Players and Skaters but, skating is still out of the price range for many people. I think it will involve scholarships and even some free lessons to get more skaters to at least try skating. I sure would love to see more diversity in skating.

 

[el henry]

I agree with @mrrice and of course would defer to his experience as a Black American. But in the US, we can encourage participation all we want but unless the cost is lowered, many figure skaters won't even get far enough to encounter bias.

It's all about

 

[ladyjane]

I never was a protagonist of quotas - I always felt it would make you feel as 'I didn't get the job on merit but only because I happen to be a woman (in the case of quotas for women), not because I'm the best candidate' which seemed to be a horrible feeling to have - but I have been changing my mind on this in business. Why? Because now, at least in The Netherlands, we do see more women in Boards, as CEO's and so forth while this development was stagnating before introducing quotas. There was the 'old boys network' in which women just couldn't rise, and now they can. So, yes, @Harriet I'm in favour of your proposal. It would need some working out of course, but that's okay.

I would love to see same-sex partnerships in mainstream competitions too. Or pairs where the woman is the lifter and thrower...because there happen to be smaller, lighter, men and bigger, heavier, women. Why ever not? I guess both these ideas will be wishful thinking for a long, long time because there are so many countries still where this is unacceptable.

I had never even heard of the Refugee Olympic Team before (my bad, but this post made me read up on it) but this also looks like to be a good idea.

Lastly I agree with @el henry and @mrrice that funds, or rather the lack of those, are a major underlying cause of the lack of diversity. Figure Skating is expensive and even in a rich country like my own, that's a problem. In my country there are all kinds of programmes in place to make sports more accessible to children from lower income homes. Including making it cheaper for the children to take part. But....figure skating is not on top of the list of sports, and there is no such programme for this specific sport. So the price remains pretty high. The cost can be pretty inhibiting to even the more wealthy citizens.

 

[mrrice]

I never was a protagonist of quotas - I always felt it would make you feel as 'I didn't get the job on merit but only because I happen to be a woman (in the case of quotas for women), not because I'm the best candidate' which seemed to be a horrible feeling to have - but I have been changing my mind on this in business. Why? Because now, at least in The Netherlands, we do see more women in Boards, as CEO's and so forth while this development was stagnating before introducing quotas. There was the 'old boys network' in which women just couldn't rise, and now they can. So, yes, @Harriet I'm in favour of your proposal. It would need some working out of course, but that's okay.

I would love to see same-sex partnerships in mainstream competitions too. Or pairs where the woman is the lifter and thrower...because there happen to be smaller, lighter, men and bigger, heavier, women. Why ever not? I guess both these ideas will be wishful thinking for a long, long time because there are so many countries still where this is unacceptable.

I had never even heard of the Refugee Olympic Team before (my bad, but this post made me read up on it) but this also looks like to be a good idea.

Lastly I agree with @el henry and @mrrice that funds, or rather the lack of those, are a major underlying cause of the lack of diversity. Figure Skating is expensive and even in a rich country like my own, that's a problem. In my country there are all kinds of programmes in place to make sports more accessible to children from lower income homes. Including making it cheaper for the children to take part. But....figure skating is not on top of the list of sports, and there is no such programme for this specific sport. So the price remains pretty high. The cost can be pretty inhibiting to even the more wealthy citizens.

I often use the story of Venus and Serena Williams. They were able to play Tennis with their Father for free on the Courts in their Apartment Courtyard. Baseball, Soccer, and American Football are cheap to learn because there are football fields at every school in our district. Clovis High has 5 Football Fields on Campus and players are free to use them at will. Ice Time is not free and I remember going to "All Skates" on Saturdays and jumping in the center of the rink while the public skated around. Not the best environment but, it was the best you could do.

 

[Supernovaimplosion]

I never was a protagonist of quotas - I always felt it would make you feel as 'I didn't get the job on merit but only because I happen to be a woman (in the case of quotas for women), not because I'm the best candidate' which seemed to be a horrible feeling to have - but I have been changing my mind on this in business. Why? Because now, at least in The Netherlands, we do see more women in Boards, as CEO's and so forth while this development was stagnating before introducing quotas. There was the 'old boys network' in which women just couldn't rise, and now they can. So, yes, @Harriet I'm in favour of your proposal. It would need some working out of course, but that's okay.

I would love to see same-sex partnerships in mainstream competitions too. Or pairs where the woman is the lifter and thrower...because there happen to be smaller, lighter, men and bigger, heavier, women. Why ever not? I guess both these ideas will be wishful thinking for a long, long time because there are so many countries still where this is unacceptable.

I had never even heard of the Refugee Olympic Team before (my bad, but this post made me read up on it) but this also looks like to be a good idea.

Lastly I agree with @el henry and @mrrice that funds, or rather the lack of those, are a major underlying cause of the lack of diversity. Figure Skating is expensive and even in a rich country like my own, that's a problem. In my country there are all kinds of programmes in place to make sports more accessible to children from lower income homes. Including making it cheaper for the children to take part. But....figure skating is not on top of the list of sports, and there is no such programme for this specific sport. So the price remains pretty high. The cost can be pretty inhibiting to even the more wealthy citizens.

Wouldn't quotas be different in this situation though, because isn't judging a volunteer position, not a paid one? I'm not sure what I would quota, per say, but I do think having a variety of perspectives is useful, especially in figure skating where so many things are subjective.

 

[Harriet]

I never was a protagonist of quotas - I always felt it would make you feel as 'I didn't get the job on merit but only because I happen to be a woman (in the case of quotas for women), not because I'm the best candidate' which seemed to be a horrible feeling to have - but I have been changing my mind on this in business.

I can certainly understand individuals feeling that way! But the evidence from introduction of gender quotas in business and affirmative action policies in academia seems to point to quotas meaning that women, or Aboriginal or Asian or Black people, or people with disability who get jobs while a quota system is in place don't get those jobs because their identity overrides their qualifications, but because the quota clears away the plethora of middling candidates who'd otherwise get those jobs anyway because they look like the majority of people on the hiring panel (i.e. white, usually straight, abled men) and allows outstanding people from other groups to compete for the jobs on level ground. Bringing in quotas for technical and judging panels might allow excellent judges and tech panellists who we don't know about yet, because the usual people from the usual places keep getting the big gigs and they haven't had the opportunity to show their work yet, to really make an impact on the sport.

mrrice, I agree absolutely that cost is a huge barrier to entry to skating for almost everyone, everywhere, and even more so for many skaters of colour around the world (also skaters with disability, from low SES backgrounds, etc). What I would love most of all would be for federations to be required, as a condition of being recognised by the ISU, to dedicate a portion of funding to actively creating ongoing access to skating for skaters from historically low-access groups, and for the ISU to contribute additional funding to federations that fulfil those obligations too, with bonuses for cohort retention. I doubt it will happen, though, because unfortunately, I'm coming to the conclusion that the ISU is a toxic system with the primary interest of not rocking its own boat and changing a system that suits it very well indeed, and that system includes who wins medals, what backgrounds they come from and what the majority of them look like. But I'd like it to.

I'd also love to see, say, a Samoan skater out there at the Olympics under their own preferred flag one day soon, not forced to compete for Australia or New Zealand or Canada or wherever because that's where they happened to spend their childhood and/or the nearest rinks to them are. Or a skater from Sierra Leone, or Paraguay, or Nepal, or any number of other places...and that will take a lot of dedicated funding and investment for a period of years.

Opening pairs and dance to same-sex teams would be a low-cost change that would take a relatively limited time to accomplish by contrast, and yet, see above re toxic system for the ridiculous degree of resistance to the notion - most of which boils down to homophobia and lack of imagination.

 

[ice coverage]

Just want to mention that the U.S. Figure Skating committee that recruits officials recently made diversity the centerpiece of one of its Zoom chats (open to anyone with a possible interest in becoming an official).
Eight or nine BIPOC and LGBTQ officials answered questions (from the moderator and from the audience) about their experiences in the sport and as officials.
As a BIPOC non-skater, I found it very touching that more than one official spoke of being a former competitor in the sport and never seeing anyone who looked like them on the tech/judging panels -- and then added that it was important/meaningful to them to now be a face on panels with whom current BIPOC competitors can identify.

(Harriet, I know your thread is supposed to be about ISU efforts, but thought this USFS session was worth mentioning.)

 

[dlbnyc]

Hi all! Long-term lurker here - I remember watching these forums update with score reports from the 2007 Four Continents and can still feel the excitement at Kimmie Meissner coming back for the win!

I am also a social justice educator at an ivy+ university, Latinx queer man and clinical social worker (therapist), and loved seeing this topic come up! I wanted to share my first thoughts, after reading the above.

Access. Who can afford figure skating? Who can afford getting a ride to the rink, and how far do you live from that rink (aka how many rinks are in your neighborhood)? Who can afford a coach, or a dress? With the correlations between income and race, ethnicity and gender, of course white folks can afford these things more than black or brown folks. To remedy: Amplify the work being done that is being done well, like the scholarship funds supporting Starr Andrews and the Harlem/Detroit skating programs. Why start something new when we can build from what we are learning? I would also argue they can support skating clubs in communities of color that may be under financial stress, and even encourage prominent coaches to move there. Imagine if a coach was encouraged and supported enough to choose an underwhelming training facility and build a community of color around that facility!

Modeling. As mentioned, young people believe they can achieve something when they see someone who looks like them doing it. This is why we need to amplify the stories that we can, as loud as we can, and share those stories within communities specifically. To remedy: Get creative, maybe USFS can send folks to black and brown public schools and share stories like that of Mabel Fairbanks, Debbie Thomas and Surya Bonaly. They can pay professional community organizers to do this kind of work, and fundraise for it, if they wanted to. Another idea: Fund a figure skating cartoon with characters of color on channels like Nickelodeon or Netflix. I love me some Yuri, but that's a little mature, haha.

Protection. Figure skating has a reputation for bad things, like abuse and eating disorders. Why would a black or brown parent want to send their child to a community thats often mostly white, which brings risks like experiences of systemic racism; put them in the hands of an older white person who may abuse their child and can't really turn to the police to fix it; and if their child makes it out alive, they likely can't even get a college scholarship like in gymnastics. Where is the long-term protection in that situation?

I think these methods would be much easier to pass the necessary organizations' bodies than same-sex partnerships, personally. It comes down to USFS putting money into it.

ETA: I noticed my post is pretty US-focused. I think the approaches to diversifying must be nationally specific; race in each country is so different and unique, and not every country needs the same resources, etc, to have an impact.

 

[el henry]

Hi all! Long-term lurker here - I remember watching these forums update with score reports from the 2007 Four Continents and can still feel the excitement at Kimmie Meissner coming back for the win!

I am also a social justice educator at an ivy+ university, Latinx queer man and clinical social worker (therapist), and loved seeing this topic come up! I wanted to share my first thoughts, after reading the above.

Access. Who can afford figure skating? Who can afford getting a ride to the rink, and how far do you live from that rink (aka how many rinks are in your neighborhood)? Who can afford a coach, or a dress? With the correlations between income and race, ethnicity and gender, of course white folks can afford these things more than black or brown folks. To remedy: Amplify the work being done that is being done well, like the scholarship funds supporting Starr Andrews and the Harlem/Detroit skating programs. Why start something new when we can build from what we are learning? I would also argue they can support skating clubs in communities of color that may be under financial stress, and even encourage prominent coaches to move there. Imagine if a coach was encouraged and supported enough to choose an underwhelming training facility and build a community of color around that facility!

Modeling. As mentioned, young people believe they can achieve something when they see someone who looks like them doing it. This is why we need to amplify the stories that we can, as loud as we can, and share those stories within communities specifically. To remedy: Get creative, maybe USFS can send folks to black and brown public schools and share stories like that of Mabel Fairbanks, Debbie Thomas and Surya Bonaly. They can pay professional community organizers to do this kind of work, and fundraise for it, if they wanted to. Another idea: Fund a figure skating cartoon with characters of color on channels like Nickelodeon or Netflix. I love me some Yuri, but that's a little mature, haha.

Protection. Figure skating has a reputation for bad things, like abuse and eating disorders. Why would a black or brown parent want to send their child to a community thats often mostly white, which brings risks like experiences of systemic racism; put them in the hands of an older white person who may abuse their child and can't really turn to the police to fix it; and if their child makes it out alive, they likely can't even get a college scholarship like in gymnastics. Where is the long-term protection in that situation?

I think these methods would be much easier to pass the necessary organizations' bodies than same-sex partnerships, personally. It comes down to USFS putting money into it.

ETA: I noticed my post is pretty US-focused. I think the approaches to diversifying must be nationally specific; race in each country is so different and unique, and not every country needs the same resources, etc, to have an impact.

Welcome to posting on Goldenskate @dlbnyc and thank you for sharing your thoughts! I would hope USFS could implement at least some of those ideas.

very minor related to those, and I posted in another thread (celebrating Black excellence) earlier this month, but I know for example Rohene Ward has said that once it is safe to do so, he would like to go into communities of color to encourage figure skaters. He now coaches in the Chicago suburbs, so I imagine he is thinking of that area.

 

[Harriet]

Hi all! Long-term lurker here - I remember watching these forums update with score reports from the 2007 Four Continents and can still feel the excitement at Kimmie Meissner coming back for the win!

I am also a social justice educator at an ivy+ university, Latinx queer man and clinical social worker (therapist), and loved seeing this topic come up! I wanted to share my first thoughts, after reading the above.

Access. Who can afford figure skating? Who can afford getting a ride to the rink, and how far do you live from that rink (aka how many rinks are in your neighborhood)? Who can afford a coach, or a dress? With the correlations between income and race, ethnicity and gender, of course white folks can afford these things more than black or brown folks. To remedy: Amplify the work being done that is being done well, like the scholarship funds supporting Starr Andrews and the Harlem/Detroit skating programs. Why start something new when we can build from what we are learning? I would also argue they can support skating clubs in communities of color that may be under financial stress, and even encourage prominent coaches to move there. Imagine if a coach was encouraged and supported enough to choose an underwhelming training facility and build a community of color around that facility!

Modeling. As mentioned, young people believe they can achieve something when they see someone who looks like them doing it. This is why we need to amplify the stories that we can, as loud as we can, and share those stories within communities specifically. To remedy: Get creative, maybe USFS can send folks to black and brown public schools and share stories like that of Mabel Fairbanks, Debbie Thomas and Surya Bonaly. They can pay professional community organizers to do this kind of work, and fundraise for it, if they wanted to. Another idea: Fund a figure skating cartoon with characters of color on channels like Nickelodeon or Netflix. I love me some Yuri, but that's a little mature, haha.

Protection. Figure skating has a reputation for bad things, like abuse and eating disorders. Why would a black or brown parent want to send their child to a community thats often mostly white, which brings risks like experiences of systemic racism; put them in the hands of an older white person who may abuse their child and can't really turn to the police to fix it; and if their child makes it out alive, they likely can't even get a college scholarship like in gymnastics. Where is the long-term protection in that situation?

I think these methods would be much easier to pass the necessary organizations' bodies than same-sex partnerships, personally. It comes down to USFS putting money into it.

ETA: I noticed my post is pretty US-focused. I think the approaches to diversifying must be nationally specific; race in each country is so different and unique, and not every country needs the same resources, etc, to have an impact.

Welcome dblnyc, and thank you for your post! It's really helpful hearing details of what's happening in the US from someone who knows that context really well. (I'll admit I did have a bit of a blink at the thought of there being more than one rink in a neighbourhood, or even within reach of several: my state has exactly one rink in it, and it's half again the size of Texas...which speaks right to what you said about every context needing its own local solutions.)

I love the work bodies like Diversify Ice in the US are doing to encourage access and provide scholarships. And I love that they're reaching out to international skaters as well to make the point that skaters of colour are everywhere and need to be seen and supported everywhere too! If they or another group could do something similar for officials, judges, tech callers etc it would be a huge help with modelling (like you said, ice coverage, it's so important that young skaters of colour get to see people who look like them on the judging panels too - it helps in so many ways, including providing a sense of safety for those skaters, and the same goes for skaters from low SES backgrounds etc). The one difficulty I see with scholarships is that they're often isolated, and dependent on their funding source remaining consistent, which makes it hard for them to do the kind of large-scale systemic work that can shift the culture of organisations to be more open and diverse. I'd like to see them have some backup that's built into the system.

Financial and resource encouragement for coaches to relocate into underserved communities and build skating groups there would be absolutely brilliant. Don't they say, if you build it they will come? It's worked for Figure Skating in Harlem!

The issue with the dangerous culture of elite skating as a whole...that's going to take a lot of work on everyone's part to root out and rebuild into something safe.

 

[florin]

A simple question - why do this? Even the existing quota system harms the sport and destabilizes it. A simple consideration - at the last WC, we all almost found ourselves in an absurd situation, when the United States could have two quotas, as well as from Austria. Personally, I am absolutely not interested in the second number of Austria. And in America, there are many skaters that I would not mind seeing - in addition to those who participated in the championship, this is Mariah Bell, Amber Glen and Alysa Liu.

I am deeply convinced that the quota system is not only archaic and hinders the development of sports (to a large extent, it is precisely because of the reluctance of skaters to pass the bloodbath of the Russian championship every year that they quickly end their careers), but it also provokes biased, political judging at important competitions. The judges start thinking in the style of " let's put this guy in 6th place - for his country X it still doesn't matter, and then the guy from country Y will be fifth and country Y will get three quotas"

Only sports and achievements are important. Do you want to have a diversity? Then create a real foundation for it - build numerous ice rings, conduct systematic promotion of this sport, and financially help athletes at the state level. But any bureaucratic, ideological crutches are always a way to nowhere.

 

[DSQ]

I can only talk from my personal experience being black woman from the UK. For me what put me off skating until I was in my 20s was fear of standing out. It turned out to be an unfounded fear but when you see no skaters like you in competitions it does make you think “this is no for the likes for me”. Especially in a sport where appearance does matter.

Another big part was that I found out there were some black skater around back when I was young but the ISU didn’t promote how diverse it’s sport could be. The ISU needs to engage with the skating community and show every type of skater.

The funny thing is that the best rink in London, where I am now, is actually in Streatham which has a very big black community and afaik it does do outreach. So things are changing!

 

[christiana2]

or must be of colour?

This looks like a very Western-centric way too look at things, while figure skating is after all an international sport. Who would determine what being "of colour" means exactly? Do the Japanese count as people of colour, because that's how they'd be seen in western new world countries? Even though Japan is about 98% Japanese and at home they have all the status that comes with being a supermajority. Or is of colour just code for black?

 

[Supernovaimplosion]

A simple question - why do this? Even the existing quota system harms the sport and destabilizes it. A simple consideration - at the last WC, we all almost found ourselves in an absurd situation, when the United States could have two quotas, as well as from Austria. Personally, I am absolutely not interested in the second number of Austria. And in America, there are many skaters that I would not mind seeing - in addition to those who participated in the championship, this is Mariah Bell, Amber Glen and Alysa Liu.

I am deeply convinced that the quota system is not only archaic and hinders the development of sports (to a large extent, it is precisely because of the reluctance of skaters to pass the bloodbath of the Russian championship every year that they quickly end their careers), but it also provokes biased, political judging at important competitions. The judges start thinking in the style of " let's put this guy in 6th place - for his country X it still doesn't matter, and then the guy from country Y will be fifth and country Y will get three quotas"

Only sports and achievements are important. Do you want to have a diversity? Then create a real foundation for it - build numerous ice rings, conduct systematic promotion of this sport, and financially help athletes at the state level. But any bureaucratic, ideological crutches are always a way to nowhere.

A reason why sports governing bodies have quotas is so they can boast about how popular their sport is worldwide. And of course for the Olympics, it important to be popular enough in enough countries. There's definitely been paralympic sports removed due to not enough worldwide appeal (I'm not sure about olympic) so governing bodies love bragging about how popular their sport is around the world. All olympic sports, as far as I know, have quotas to limit countries. I mean it also helps to DEVELOP the sport worldwide and tap into new audiences, which every sport wants.

 

[anonymoose_au]

Personally, I am absolutely not interested in the second number of Austria

The thing is the reason you're not interested is because Austria doesn't have a heap of a high level skaters'. Why is that the case? Because skating is not as accessible to the people in that country. Russia has a state sponsored skating program, if they suddenly decided for some reason to stop that program, the number of elite Russian skaters would steadily drop as parents couldn't afford to pay all the costs and all the government funded skating schools scrambled to find private sponsors to keep going (many of them wouldn't and would shut down).

Russia's a big country of course and would probably still have a lot of high level skaters' but it'd be nothing like it is today. Especially since the average Russian family is much poorer than the average US family.

Do you want to have a diversity?

Studies show that quotas are a good way to kick start diversity, for whatever reason those in power are often unlikely to see an issue or have a unconcious bias against those not like them.

Then create a real foundation for it - build numerous ice rings, conduct systematic promotion of this sport, and financially help athletes at the state level.

These are all great ideas, but the powers that currently be don't seem to care all that much. A quota system that would bring more people from different backgrounds in would help kick start these programs.

 

[florin]

A reason why sports governing bodies have quotas is so they can boast about how popular their sport is worldwide. And of course for the Olympics, it important to be popular enough in enough countries. There's definitely been paralympic sports removed due to not enough worldwide appeal (I'm not sure about olympic) so governing bodies love bragging about how popular their sport is around the world. All olympic sports, as far as I know, have quotas to limit countries. I mean it also helps to DEVELOP the sport worldwide and tap into new audiences, which every sport wants.

I'm talking about the fact that in figure skating, the quota system has a completely disproportionate form that does not meet the realities. For example, in cross-country skiing, the maximum quota is six people, and this is not counting personal quotas. A simple consideration - let the skaters who got on the podium, are outside the quota system and have a personal place at the future WС/EC/4СС. The system of personal quotas is extremely common in sports, logical and natural. But even this small thing ISU does not want to do. Modern realities correspond to the system in which the maximum number of quotas of the federation is increased to 4-5 and there are personal quotas.

 

[flanker]

The thing is the reason you're not interested is because Austria doesn't have a heap of a high level skaters'. Why is that the case? Because skating is not as accessible to the people in that country. Russia has a state sponsored skating program, if they suddenly decided for some reason to stop that program, the number of elite Russian skaters would steadily drop as parents couldn't afford to pay all the costs and all the government funded skating schools scrambled to find private sponsors to keep going (many of them wouldn't and would shut down).

Russia's a big country of course and would probably still have a lot of high level skaters' but it'd be nothing like it is today. Especially since the average Russian family is much poorer than the average US family.

Studies show that quotas are a good way to kick start diversity, for whatever reason those in power are often unlikely to see an issue or have a unconcious bias against those not like them.

These are all great ideas, but the powers that currently be don't seem to care all that much. A quota system that would bring more people from different backgrounds in would help kick start these programs.

I know that I go to the thin ice, but I say in sport diversity is not the value. Good sport and high quality performance is the value, no matter the colour, origin or whatever. One thing is to not create useless obstacles or motivate people, I mean kids for starting a sport they like, the other thing is creating the barrier for more talented because they do not fit "diversity quotas".

If Austria, Samoa or any country people here have in mind, wants to be as succesful as Russia mentined for a comparison, than it can't go the way of quotas, but the way they have to build effective system of training and preparation of the athletes.

That should be applied not only to states, but also any group. If you think that money are the problem for many potential skaters to advance in the sport, than the idea should be:
"let's create a system of support for kids and young people, again, no matter of the origin, background or whatever they cannot affect".

Quotas are logical fallacy to the real equality. For all I care there can be 90 % of "people of colour" (if I can use this term, that, and I fully agree with @christiana2 , is completely western-centric) among the athletes if they just will be better, because that's the equality, being chosen because of the qualities. And we see that in many sports, it would be completely ridiculous to call for the quotas lets say among the sprinters.

The other thing is about the judges, technical panel etc. Well, first you have to provide that smaller countries even have people fulfilling the criteria for being an international judge/tech panel member. I am from a small country and our judges and tech specialists are often represented in the panel of judges, why, because there is a tradition of quality preparation of them here. In fact people from my country helped to build foundations for the judging in several other countries (in Denmark for instance), because they simply didn't have enough people and experience to build that on their own. So that should be the way for the countries interested.

 

[Amei]

The thing is the reason you're not interested is because Austria doesn't have a heap of a high level skaters'. Why is that the case? Because skating is not as accessible to the people in that country. Russia has a state sponsored skating program, if they suddenly decided for some reason to stop that program, the number of elite Russian skaters would steadily drop as parents couldn't afford to pay all the costs and all the government funded skating schools scrambled to find private sponsors to keep going (many of them wouldn't and would shut down).

Russia's a big country of course and would probably still have a lot of high level skaters' but it'd be nothing like it is today. Especially since the average Russian family is much poorer than the average US family.

I would rather the entire sport shutdown than taxpayer dollars go into an expensive sport. Do kids need to be encouraged to play sports and be active - absolutely, but taxpayer funded money shouldn't be used for expensive sports equipment and figure skating has a ton of expensive equipment and upkeep.

 

[el henry]

Of course it's Western centric, all of us who have posted regarding the US of A have said that we are discussing the US.

Those of us in the US know the barriers that impeded Black skaters in particular (and those in the Latinx community) and would like to see those barriers fall. If your country has significant populations of color (as in the US, numbers range from 25 to 40% in the last census, depending on how they are read) and those barriers do not exist in your country, good for you. I'm glad you have programs to address your significant populations of color, or that you have such significant populations that participate fully

I'm glad we are acknowledging the issue here in the US (first step to addressing it) and hopefully good ideas can come forward to address it.