Research from Associate Professor Kirsty Forsdike, Principal Research Fellow in the La Trobe Rural Health School, is uncovering the reality of gender-based violence in sport.
“Between 26 and 74 per cent of women in sport have experienced some form of violence. Our research aimed to explore these experiences across age, type of violence and all the ways in which women participate in sport.”
As part of the research, Associate Professor Forsdike has established a new concept – sport family violence.
“This reflects the role of sporting groups as a surrogate family, and the view of the coach as an omniscient father figure who is feared and respected, idolised and powerful,” she explains.
“Power imbalances are also at the heart of gender-based violence in sport. Often, abusive behaviours have been normalised, and sometimes they are even expected by those in power as part of the pursuit of sporting victory,” she says.
“Unfortunately, experiencing such behaviour is perceived as a normal part of a woman's sporting life. An individual woman can rarely stand up to abusive behaviour alone and so a collective front is needed to challenge both a perpetrator of violence and the facilitating systems and structures around them.”
Associate Professor Forsdike says the family violence sector could offer new ways of understanding and addressing gender-based violence in sport.
“The concept of sport family violence opens up a new avenue for those looking to understand and address gender-based violence in sport through the field of family violence.”
“Essentially, initiatives to address this issue must be across violence experienced in all its forms and the different ways in which it plays out in the diverse sports context.”
This research is part of a broader piece of work that Associate Professor Forsdike is doing to examine gender-based violence in sport, in collaboration with Australian and international colleagues.
“Our next step is to undertake in-depth case studies across rural and urban Australia and to ascertain the prevalence rate of gender-based violence in Australian sport," she says.
“There is much work to be done in this space.”
