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Australia is known as a ‘sporting nation’ and sport is central to its cultural identity. Children’s participation in leisure activities, including sport, is considered to be of such importance that it is enshrined as an international human right. There is a growing awareness, however, that children’s experience of sport is not always positive and that abuse and harm may occur in organised sport. This paper reports on a study designed to explore children’s experiences of organised sport, as recounted by young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 years. A mixed methods study design was implemented, which resulted in 107 survey responses and 10 follow-up interviews with young adults. Overwhelmingly, young people reported the lasting developmental benefits of participation in organised sport as children. More than 50% also reported negative experiences, including emotional and physical harm and sexual harassment. The reasons for these apparently contradictory findings are explored. The role of coaches, peers, parents and the wider sporting association ethos are investigated and suggestions made for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a high-profile case of child sexual abuse in sport in 1996, the Netherlands Olympic Committee and the Netherlands Sports Confederation (NOC*NSF) established a telephone ‘helpline’ service on sexual harassment and abuse (SHA). In order to expand their understanding of this problem, NOC*NSF maintained written records of incidents reported to the helpline. These records revealed 323 separate incidents for the period 2001 to 2010. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of this data and discusses the findings. We conclude that whilst there are major limitations to working with information gathered in this way, a sustainable telephone ‘helpline’ can provide a valuable service for the sports community. Whilst official sources of data are known to under represent the scale of sexual abuse, through collaboration with researchers, such services can also generate important information for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key foundational scholar on gender and sport, Kari Fasting, assesses sociological inquiry about sexual harassment in sport and its relation to the development of policy. The trajectory of this research on gender, sexual harassment and abuse (GSHA) in sport lies in feminist politics and advocacy. While sexual harassment and abuse in sport is widespread across sports, comparability in studies has been difficult due to issues of measurement and underreporting. Key challenges to doing research in this areas include difficulties in obtaining grant funding, access to and cooperation from athletes and perpetrators, and moral and ethical dilemmas in data gathering and reporting. Future work can build on recommendations by major organizations such as the IOC and UNICEF about organizational policies to curb sexual harassment and abuse; future research needs to advance systematic knowledge about the impact of policies and actions about sexual harassment and abuse in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Coaches can easily dominate athletes and this unbalanced power distribution may be strengthened by authoritarian behavior; i.e. negative feedback, directive communication, coach-led decision making, task-centered role orientation, and goal orientation on performance. An unwanted risk emerges when the power is abused, which can lead to the occurrence of sexual harassment. This article examines whether authoritarian coaching behaviors may have any implications for female athletes' experiences of sexual harassment from male and female coaches. The participants in this survey were 399 female sport & PE students from Czech Republic, Greece and Norway. The study revealed that both the prevalence of authoritarian behaviors and of sexual harassment were significantly higher from male coaches. There was a higher prevalence of sexual harassment experiences from both male and female coaches among those participants who had experienced authoritarian behaviors compared to those who did not. This indicates that authoritarian behaviors are a stronger predictor of experiences of sexual harassment than the gender of the coach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents data from a cross-cultural study titled ‘Gender Relations in Sport — The Experiences of Czech, Greek, and Norwegian Female Sport Students’. The main research question asked is: what are the amounts and the forms of male and female sexual harassment experienced in a sport setting by female sport students in Czech Republic, Greece, and Norway? Women (N = 616) who were studying in sport departments of academic institutions in the three countries participated in the study. The results show that 34 percent of the students had experienced sexually harassing behavior from a man and 12 percent from a woman. Experiences of sexually harassing behaviors from both men and women were reported more often in the Czech Republic and Greece than in Norway.The form of sexual harassment the participants reported experiencing the most was ‘repeated unwanted sexual glances, etc.’ (22%). The difference between female and male harassment is discussed in relation to patriarchal power. The overall differences between countries are discussed in relation to the three countries’ gender orders, gender equality laws as well as the anti-sexual harassment laws inside and outside sport organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is often assumed that the prevalence of sexual harassment is different in different sports, the assumption has not been empirically tested. This study considers whether the experience of sexual harassment varies by sport. The female elite athletes (N = 553) in the study participated in 56 different sport disciplines. These were grouped as: 1) team or individual sports; 2) extent to which clothing required for competition is revealing; 3) gender structure (male- or female- dominated membership statistics); and 4) gender culture (masculine, gender-neutral or feminine). The data show that sexual harassment occurs in every sport group. Female elite athletes who participated in `masculine' sports appear to experience more harassment than women in the other groups. We conclude that, when it comes to female athletes' experiences of sexual harassment, sport type matters far less than sport participation per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definitions of sexual harassment in sport are more problematic than in other social settings, as sport naturally requires more physical contact, and traditionally legitimizes male domination. This study examines perceptions of what is considered sexual harassment of female athletes by male coaches, treating them as cultural phenomena related to gender and to the society in which it is examined. The purposes of this study were: (1) to examine which coach behaviors are perceived as sexual harassment by student-athletes in Israel; (2) to examine whether these perceptions are similar to, or different from, perceptions of Israeli coaches on the one hand, and American student-athletes on the other hand; (3) to assess the harassment incidence in the lives of Israeli student-athletes. The survey sample included 301 female students and 75 coaches from the College of Physical Education and Sport Sciences and from the Coaching School at the Wingate Institute, Israel. Participants answered a 27-item questionnaire (adapted from Volkwein et al., 1997), describing various coach behaviors, marking to what degree they perceive each behavior as potential harassment. In addition, student-athletes were asked to mark how often they experienced such behaviors, and to report whether or not they were personally harassed. A factor analysis of the 27 items identified four factors: verbal or physical advances, non-instructional/potentially threatening behavior, sexist behavior, and instruction-related behavior. Statistically significant differences were found between coaches and female student-athletes in the degree of severity in which they relate to the behaviors in the first factor. Israeli student-athletes have stricter standards compared to American students in their perceptions of sexual harassment in sport. Harassment experiences related to sport were reported by 14 percent of the respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexual harassment at institutions of higher learning is not a new phenomenon, but discussions of this problem in the sporting arena and in related research are still scarce. Most studies have focused on student-instructor relationships, while few analyses have analysed coach-athlete relationships. This study examines American female college athletes' experiences with, and emotional responses to, sexual harassment in sport by coaches. The findings clearly demonstrate that the athletic world does not differ with regard to occunences of sexual harassment compared to other social domains. Thus, in order to guarantee a safe learning environment in athletics for all participants, it is necessary to formulate clear guidelines, set up educational workshops and implement intervention programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]