Maria Vicente: “Being a woman in sport means opening roads and breaking barriers”

• The Higher Council of Sports (CSD) starts a series of commemorative actions for International Women’s Day on Monday.

• From Monday to Friday, the body will broadcast five interviews with athletes María Vicente and Aauri Bokesa, the B-girl Ana Ortega ‘Furia’, triathlete Eva Moral and rugby player Patricia García.

• In addition, the CSD will organise a conference on 8 March which will include a talk and colloquium and the installation of different sports stations as an expression of the fight for equality in sport.

Madrid, 3 March 2025.- The Higher Council of Sports (CSD) begins this Monday, with the dissemination of an interview with the athlete María Vicente, a series of commemorative actions of the International Women’s Day, which will extend until 8 March with the organization of an event and a sports day open to the general public at the headquarters of the agency.

As an expression of the fight for equality in sport, the CSD will give voice from this Monday to the athletes María Vicente and Aauri Bokesa, the B-girl Ana Ortega ‘Furia’, the triathlete Eva Moral and the rugby player Patricia García, who will also be the protagonists this Saturday of a colloquium at the headquarters of the organism.

During this session, all of them will reflect on gender equality and the empowerment of women and will outline the main challenges in their daily lives. These are the axes of the inspiring story with which María Vicente opened this Monday this series of interviews with which the CSD wishes to underline its commitment to equality in sport.

“Being a woman in sport means opening roads, breaking barriers and demonstrating that effort and talent have no gender. So women's leadership in sport is not just about competing. It is to show that women are protagonists of our own history,” says María Vicente.

From her personal experience, the Spanish athlete highlighted in the interview that “women and sport are closely linked” and that values such as perseverance, perseverance and empowerment are fundamental for the individual and collective growth of women. “We are promoting change, although we still need to fight and continue working,” he says.

Women currently account for 25% of licences in Spain, a percentage that is still far from full equality, although a positive dynamic has been experienced since 2018. The number of female licenses increased from 888,617 in 2018 to 1,061,489 in 2023. It is the first time, in fact, that there are over a million federated women in our country.

“In athletics, at least, women are growing a lot. In the last championship we achieved equality with men in terms of participation and the results are excellent,” says María Vicente, one of the strongest realities of Spanish sport, when asked about the positive advances that he is witnessing.

The interview with María Vicente is already available on the YouTube channel and social networks of the CSD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRATmESGNrg

The commitment to equality in sport

On the occasion of the International Women’s Day, this Saturday, March 8, the CSD will organize an institutional event that will include a colloquium between the athletes Aauri Bokesa, Ana Ortega ‘Furria’, Eva Moral, María Vicente and Patricia García and the installation of several sports stations so that girls, boys, young people and adolescents can practice sports together with their referents.

This activity, open to the general public, will close a day of claim on the role of women in sport that will begin at 11:45 hours in the sports hall located on the -2 floor of the CSD institutional building.

As an institution charged with promoting public sports policies, the CSD maintains a strong commitment to equality, either through the promotion of initiatives that promote women’s participation in sport, the visibility of women’s referents or support for specific programmes that promote real equality in the sports field.