La Trobe University and Sports Focus have launched a campaign to prevent gender-based violence in regional sport across the Loddon Campaspe region.
The Supporting the Readiness of Regional Sports to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence campaign aims to identify, raise awareness, tackle and prevent gender-based violence in sport.
The campaign was developed following a two-year research project that examined gender-based violence in regional sport and worked with the community to develop an initiative to support locals and prevent such violence.
Women in rural and regional areas are at a higher risk of experiencing gender-based violence than women in other areas and such violence is prevalent in regional community sport.
Research lead La Trobe Associate Professor Kirsty Forsdike said women often faced disrespect, abuse and violence in sports settings.
This could range from inequalities and sexist remarks to sexual assault, but she said it was often normalised and ignored.
Of the women surveyed for the campaign, five per cent had experienced sexual harassment in their local sport in the past 12 months.
“This is a particularly insidious problem in rural and regional areas where sports participants are so connected across their sport, family, social and work lives,” Associate Professor Forsdike said.
“People feel that speaking up could lead to being judged and socially isolated by their friends, neighbours and workmates, but our campaign aims to support people to speak up when they see gender-based violence in sport and to support our sports organisation to respond.”
The awareness campaign’s slogan is ‘We see something. We say something. We do something’ and it outlines common scenarios in a range of videos and posters that local sporting clubs are encouraged to share and display.
The campaign material depicts a range of examples of gendered violence, including a coach inappropriately touching a player and sexist remarks made during a mixed-gender soccer game.
Associate Professor Forsdike said these scenarios were all too common in regional and rural sport and involved everyone from coaches and committee members to volunteers and spectators.
“We spoke to sports leaders and participants across the Loddon Campaspe region and found men and women had witnessed online misconduct, sexist remarks or jokes, verbal abuse, sexual harassment and even sexual assault in the past 12 months,” Associate Professor Forsdike said.
“Of the women we spoke with, five per cent had experienced sexual harassment in their local sport in the past 12 months.
“We also gathered information from sporting organisations about their awareness of violence against women. While some had examples of such violence and had polices in place to address it, others were unaware such policies existed.”
As part of the project, Sports Focus, the Regional Sports Assembly for the Loddon Campaspe region, will be speaking to clubs about how to support them as they work to prevent gender-based violence.
Sports Focus club development and special projects lead Lauren Fawcett said sporting clubs could play a powerful role in creating safe, respectful and welcoming environments that worked towards preventing gender-based violence, but they needed to be able to recognise inappropriate behaviour and know what to do.
“These resources aim to build the capacity of our local sporting club members to know how to respond and where to get support when they need it,” Ms Fawcett said.
Local sports clubs are encouraged to reach out and utilise these services to begin changing the culture and dialogue around issues of gendered violence in the community.
The resources are available on the Sports Focus website: sportsfocus.com.au/issue-gender-disrespect-violence/