Football players proactive in battling sexism
Junior team taking part in program says it’s ‘really powerful’ to be part of solution
The Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters is hoping sports teams will follow the lead of a local junior football club that trained young male athletes to prevent violence against women, emphasizing the importance of calling out sexist remarks in the locker-room.
“These are real male leaders in our community that are looking beyond the football field to see what they can do to make the world safer for women and girls,” executive director Jan Reimer said in an interview Sunday.
More than 80 players and coaches with the Edmonton Wildcats took six hours of training over four months. Participants learned about the importance of intervening in sexist conversations and talked about the sexual harassment and abuse women deal with on a daily basis.
“If you don’t say anything, then you’re tacitly affirming,” Reimer said at the Wildcats’ clubhouse, where she released a report about the Leading Change program. “This group really bought in.”
The program, which delivers workshops to various businesses and sports teams, has received $700,000 in provincial funding annually for three years, Reimer said.
Wildcats defensive back Jayden Dalke said the workshops were eye-opening.
“We talked about what males have to do to avoid sexual harassment on a daily basis and it’s nothing, if not very minimal,” he said. “What women have had to go through just to avoid it, it’s shocking and it’s disappointing.
“It made me more active in trying to be a solution, which I thought was really powerful.”
The Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters said participants reported observing fewer sexist comments in the locker-room after training, according to a survey. More than two-thirds of respondents also said they were more likely to interrupt sexist behaviour in the locker-room.
“It really was only after, in looking at the evaluations, that we ... started to see there were significant changes in terms of locker-room culture and the kinds of things they were willing to tolerate,” said Tuval Dinner Nafshi, who conducted the training sessions from June to September last year.
“This team was already pretty far along; they already wanted that kind of locker-room.”
Economic Development and Trade Minister Deron Bilous, MLA for Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview, attended the Sunday debriefing. He said many of the players coach high school teams and have an opportunity to spread what they’ve learned.
“It’s about leadership,” he said. “It’s less about a stereotype that this exists in locker-rooms.
“This type of training is not, at the onset, designed to make players feel defensive ... It’s to create an awareness about actions and words.”
Wildcats defensive lineman Zachary Chomchuk, 20, said talking about violence against women is an uncomfortable topic.
“For a long time, it has been a closeted subject,” he said.
“If we need to be a little uncomfortable and call stuff out, say go up to those people having an argument in an alley to say, ‘Are you OK?’ ... that’s something I’m willing to sacrifice.”