By Anuradha Dugal, Executive Director of Women’s Shelters Canada
The Canadian men’s soccer team made history during this World Cup, but for women experiencing domestic violence, things have only gotten worse.
Despite well-known examples like the Hockey Canada trial and the gymnastics sex abuse scandal in the USA, a surprising number of people have no idea that violence is connected to sports. Major sports events regularly correlate with up to 33% increases in domestic violence around the world. In Canada, a University of Calgary study has found spikes in domestic violence during the Calgary Stampede and high-stakes football games.
And we’re seeing that again now. In the first two weeks of the World Cup, over 5,000 people visited www.ShelterSafe.ca, a Women’s Shelters Canada website that connects people to their closest women’s shelter and its 24/7 crisis line. That’s more than double for the same period over the last three years.
In Vancouver, Battered Women’s Support Services saw a 20% increase in calls after they extended their crisis line hours for the World Cup.
This is not to say that sports or the World Cup are inherently bad. We also regularly see increases in violence during major holidays, for example. It’s not the game itself that is causing this uptick in violence; rather, it’s abusers who, generally speaking, are already violent and can’t handle the additional factors that come with major games. Factors like nationalist sentiments, high emotions, increased crowds, and free-flowing alcohol. Win, lose, or draw, women often bear the brunt.
Hosting the World Cup has very real costs for cities and communities. In the lead-up to the current tournament, there were 145 human rights concerns raised during the Club World Cup in the United States, including 40-50 recorded hate incidents, more than during the entire FIFA 2022 games in Qatar.
Across all three host countries, intimate partner violence remains one of the most common forms of violence against women, with hundreds of thousands of incidents reported annually and many more going unreported. Frontline services across Canada, including crisis lines, shelters, and sexual assault centres, were already operating at or beyond capacity before the World Cup even started.
While businesses and corporations can make massive private profits during these games, the social and personal costs for vulnerable communities are immeasurable. We must recognize these costs and address them. Along with adequately resourcing frontline services, we need affordable housing, prevention programs, and other supports for survivors so they don’t have to return to abusive situations. And we need to recognize that domestic violence affects each and every one of us; it’s not a “women’s issue.” It’s a critical societal issue and it needs to be recognized as the epidemic it is.
Canada, unfortunately, was knocked out of the World Cup by Morocco last weekend. But as the quarter-finals start today, fans across the country will continue to cheer on their favourite team of the remaining eight.
Let’s change the trajectory of this historic World Cup for women experiencing violence. Help is out there. Support them in making a game plan. Let’s make the beautiful game more beautiful for everyone.