Coe, the chairman of London 2012, was widely praised after he helped open the 5th World Conference on Women and Sport here today and revealed that 54 per cent of the Organising Committee's total workforce of 70,000 is female. 

London 2012 has already written its own place in Olympic history by employing women as the directors of sport and communication, Debbie Jevans and Jackie Brock-Doyle respectively, for the first time. 

In five key departments, including communications and commercial, women outnumber men.

"We've done it by just being a little bit braver about it," Coe told insidethegames. 

"It's just simple things, like if a short-list [for a job] turns up without a woman on there you would throw it back.

"It's not about quotas and it's not about tokenism.

"It's about simply saying I know there are woman out there who can do this job, I want a choice here.

"I really do think that London 2012 will leave a great legacy for British sport of strong capable women able to fill key roles.

"But if you look at the landscape already, it's actually not bad.

"You have Sue Campbell running UK Sport, Liz Nicholl as the chief executive, you have Jennie Price [the chief executive] at Sport England, you've got Margaret Ford who has been driving the Olympic Park Legacy Company.

"It's not a desperately alien concept in the UK to have women in key roles in sport."

But Coe claimed he did not seek any praise for overseeing such a situation.

"It's not just a nice to have, it's actually essential," he said.

"If you are in an organisation that does not reflect the world you are living in then actually you are probably not a great organisation."

Coe credited his own background for his willingness to promote women on merit, including starting his political career when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.

"I was in a political landscape that, for 20 years, was dominated by a woman," he said.

"Women in leadership roles has never been an alien concept for me.

"I've never seen the world any other way."

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