What does gender equity look like in Canadian sport? That’s what E-Alliance, Canada’s research hub for gender equity in sport, set out to find out. In February, they released their inaugural scorecard on gender equity, which revealed significant gaps in representation, particularly in leadership ranks of Canadian sport.
The researchers looked at data on leadership positions and athlete participation in Canadian National Sport Organizations (NSOs), with a spotlight on Hockey Canada, and Team Canada at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.
Among other things, they found that women accounted for only 11.8 per cent of Team Canada’s coaches at the recent Olympic Games in Beijing and zero coaches in the Canadian minor league hockey in 2019-2020.
Canadian university and college level hockey was the exception to this trend, with close to equal participation rates by athletes across genders and women representing 24 per cent of the coaches.
We spoke to Professor Gretchen Kerr, dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, about the report’s findings and how Canadian sport can improve its gender equity grade. Kerr is co-director of E-Alliance, a research and knowledge sharing hub founded in 2020, comprised of scholars and partner organizations from across Canada who are dedicated to gender+ equity in sport.
How would you describe the current climate for Canadian women and girls in sport across all levels?
Although participation rates of Canadian girls and women in sport have increased recently, gender inequities persist. Fewer girls participate than boys and participation rates are even lower for girls from equity-deserving groups. For those who participate in sport, approximately one-third of girls quit sport by the time they reach adolescence compared with one of ten boys. In pre-pandemic times, 80 per cent of Canadian women did not participate regularly in sports. When considering intersectional and gender+ identities, less is known about sport participation.
Within coaching, similar inequities are observed. Only 16 per cent of national-level head coaches and 25 per cent of coaches at all levels of sport in Canada are women. At the Beijing Olympic Games, only 11.8 per cent of Team Canada coaches were women. Again, data are lacking regarding intersectional and gender+ identities in sport leadership.
What are the biggest obstacles to gender equity in leadership positions in sport?
Barriers to gender equity in leadership positions include experiences of systemic biases and discrimination and other forms of gender-based violence. Although a significant body of research has addressed education and mentoring programmes for women in coaching, these will result in limited success if positions do not exist for women. Unfortunately, we know more about the barriers to achieving gender equity than we do about what works to get women into leadership and to support them once there.
How is E-Alliance contributing to advancing the case for gender equity in sport?
The research agenda for E-Alliance includes evaluating existing programmes; to-date numerous initiatives exist to advance girls and women in sport but very few have been evaluated empirically. As a result, we have limited knowledge of what works, what does not work and why? We are also conducting longitudinal studies exploring participation in sport. In particular, we are interested in exploring the long-term impacts of the COVID-related shutdown of sports. Will we get those girls and women back to sports or have we lost a generation of participants? Finally, we are looking at ways to transform the design and delivery of sports to be safer, more accessible and inclusive, including extending beyond the binaries of gender and ability.