The project Harassment in Finnish Competitive Sports investigated whether harassment is present in competitive sports, what has any harassment been like and who has been guilty of it. The study was conducted in 2020.
The project investigated whether harassment is present in Finnish competitive sports, what has any harassment been like and who has been guilty of it. The study was realised in co-operation with the Research Institute for Olympic Sports KIHU and the sports federations that took part in the survey.
Objective of the study
The purpose of the study is to increase knowledge about sexual and gender-based harassment in Finnish competitive sports:
- identifying and addressing harassment,
- backgrounding the phenomenon and identifying ways of working.
Nearly 50 sports federations participated in the study, and the target group was licensed competitive athletes who are at least 16 years of age. The study was conducted between autumn 2019 and summer 2020. A report on the study was published in autumn 2020.
The survey was sent as an electronic survey in December 2019 through sports federations to nearly 160,000 athletes. A total of 9,018 responses were received. This was an extensive study of sexual and gender-based harassment in the field of sports, the first of its kind in Finland, and the sample was unique even by international standards.
The aim was also to obtain and produce:
- the most comprehensive country-specific information on the phenomenon, which can also be used by the Ministry of Education and Culture at the EU level;
- sports-specific information for sports federations, and thus the basis and justification for the federations’ further actions;
- information to support the Ministry of Education and Culture and the National Sports Council in support of sports policy decision-making; and
- deepen existing knowledge of the phenomenon in order to develop preventive measures and policies.
