Despite longstanding media coverage and decades of calls for change by sport advocates, incidents of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in Canadian sport remain prevalent. Recent studies found that 28.2% of youth involved in organized sport have experienced sexual violence, including more than 300 public reports of SGBV in sport over the last decade. In recent months, one of the most high-profile sport-related trials in Canadian history—involving members of the 2018 Canadian World Junior Hockey team accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room in London, Ontario, in June 2018 after a Hockey Canada gala event—renewed national attention to issues of sexual violence, consent, the justice system, and the culture within hockey. However, this case is but one scandal facing Hockey Canada and one of many among Canadian sport governing bodies. Indeed, numerous individuals have come forward with allegations of abuse within Gymnastics Canada, Canada Soccer, Water Polo Canada, and other sport-related settings, such as team hazing at St. Michael’s College School in Toronto.

SGBV is broadly defined as violence committed against a person due to their gender or sex. It includes, but is not limited to: sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, indecent exposure, voyeurism, cyber harassment and sexual exploitation, domestic violence, emotional and psychological abuse, and financial abuse. SGBV can also include any word, action, or attempt to degrade, control, humiliate, intimidate, coerce, deprive, threaten, or harm another person based on gender or unequal power dynamics.

Efforts to meaningfully address SGBV in sport—whether through government action or the efforts of individuals and organizations—have thus remained difficult to realize. The recently released preliminary report from the Future of Sport Commission offers not just a scathing review of Canada’s ‘broken’ sport system, it astutely points to a ‘culture of silence’ in sport that discourages the reporting of SGBV, rendering it a phenomenon that is difficult, if not impossible, to fully monitor or measure. These points echo the findings raised in a June 2024 Safe Sport in Canada report which also concluded that athletes who contemplate or proceed with reporting SGBV experienced an overwhelming fear of retribution and re-traumatization.

To that end, it is critical that sport scholars and organizations alike foreground the factors that give rise to and sustain SGBV in sport. For example, there are a number of factors in competitive sport environments, and especially in the high-performance context, that contribute to conditions where SGBV can persist. These factors include: gender stereotypes and toxic masculinity, the pervasiveness of the performance imperative, a win-at-all-costs mentality, and complex arrangements of power, authority, and consent (and lack of) between and among sport participants, including athletes, coaches, parents, and spectators.

It is also critical, however, that the structural determinants of SGBV are foregrounded within sport. This includes highlighting the continued development and implementation of ineffective policy. Among population health researchers, structural determinants refer to the condition of health, including the societal, economic, and political contexts that shape education, social networks, gender, and relationships. In this vein, policy is a structural determinant of SGBV in sport.

Sport Policy & SGBV

In Canada, there have been many attempts to address SGBV in sport through policy. Through the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, all sports organizations that receive funding from the Government of Canada must comply with the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS); incorporated into this policy is the creation of a third-party reporting system (CCES). Yet, there remains an over-reliance on internal disclosure and reporting (telling a coach, teammate, organization, etc.) often resulting in a mitigation of the offence and heightened barriers for victims.

Policies like the UCCMS are not devoid of value. However, such an approach to policy intervention remains limited in reducing the prevalence of SGBV in sport because it is ineffective in addressing the root causes of SGBV in sport, such as hyper-masculinity, misogyny, and an abundance of win-at-all-cost mentalities.

As researchers who study SGBV and sport, we further highlight this point by drawing on the findings of the first author’s analysis of the SGBV-related policies of three Canadian university athletic departments. Two key themes emerged from this policy analysis: all three post-secondary education (PSE) institutions framed SGBV in sport as an issue of individual misconduct; and all three PSE institutions dealt with SGBV in sport reactively, focusing their efforts almost exclusively on legal support and mental health resources. Both themes underscore how such policy approaches fail to attend to the systemic and cultural drivers of SGBV in sport.

For example, all three PSE institutions under study had established athlete peer support and/or intervention as a form of SGBV. These efforts exist under the umbrella of bystander-intervention and rely on individuals to recognize SGBV. While most SGBV within sport is perpetrated by a person in authority (e.g., coaches, trainers, staff, etc.), it is well-documented that there is also an over-representation of male athletes as perpetrators of SGBV. Male varsity athletes are more likely to believe myths and stereotypes about misogyny and participate in the use of coercive and forceful sexual behavior. Despite this, there remains a reliance from athletic departments on bystander intervention initiatives, often overlooking athletes’ complacency to, or perpetuation of SGBV. Such efforts further risk reaffirming gendered assumptions of victimhood that are central to the reproduction of SGBV, creating a self-actualizing cycle of violence.

Next Steps & Proactive Measures

While recognizing that providing resources, training, and education are important steps forward, it remains that these tools in and of themselves do not address the deeply rooted structures and attitudes that uphold SGBV in the first place. Instead, sport must be reimagined as collaborative and consent-driven spaces that bolster the voices and leadership of those most affected. One possibility is to integrate and implement trauma and violence-informed principles into the sport system—within policy, governance, coaching, and practices.

Admittedly, this analysis is limited to three Canadian universities, warranting further research to better understand the characteristics, scope, and reach of SGBV-related policies across the broader Canadian varsity sport landscape. However, what we can extract from this analysis is the need to further challenge the structural determinants and sociocultural drivers of SGBV that PSEs and sport environments reproduce in order to prevent SGBV in sport.

Author Biographical Notes:

Marika Wildeboer, MA, is a PhD student in Kinesiology and Health Science at York University. Her research interests include sociology of sport, sexual and gender-based violence prevention, and social justice.

Parissa Safai, PhD, is Full Professor and Chair of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University. Her academic interests and expertise include: sociology of sport, health and medicine; risk and risk-taking in sport; sport and social inequality.

Lyndsay Hayhurst is a Tier 2 York Research Chair and Associate Professor at York University, where she directs the DREAMING (Digital participatory Research in Equity, Access, Mobility, Innovation aNd Gender) in Sport Collaboratory. Her feminist, participatory action research focuses on sport for development and peace, equity, mobility justice, and climate justice in sport, recreation, and physical culture. She recently produced the documentary Changing Gears, and collaborates with community and global partners to advance social justice.