The increased focus on sporting integrity in recent years has coincided with an increasing emphasis on women’s sport. This has led to consideration of how the experiences of women might be changing the approach to “integrity” issues in sport. New Zealand is vulnerable to these issues in the same way as other countries, but there is reason to be positive about developments in our sporting landscape which make our sporting environment better able to cope.
In recent years, Cycling New Zealand, Hockey New Zealand, New Zealand Rugby, NZ Football and Canoe Racing NZ have all commissioned independent reviews into what might be broadly called culture or integrity issues that appeared to arise from women’s experiences within the sporting environment. At the same time, the popularity of women’s sport has been on the rise, and more sports have been venturing into professionalising women’s teams or looking to provide parity to male and female athletes.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has recorded that women are disproportionately affected by corruption in sport worldwide, due in part to the fact that they wield less socioeconomic status than men in many societies, and in part due to their vulnerability to what the UNODC calls “sexual corruption”. Below we consider two key concerns that arise at the intersection of sport integrity and women’s experiences. The first is the apparent vulnerability of women in sport to adverse experiences. The second is the risk of anti-competitive corrupt behaviours (e.g., match-fixing) in relation to women’s sport.
Women’s experiences in the sporting environment
In 2019, Sport New Zealand released its Sport Integrity Review, which found that New Zealand NSOs are struggling to manage issues around harassment, bullying, and abuse in sport. There was, and arguably still is, a lack of capability across the sports sector to deal with integrity-related issues. Two principal recommendations emerged from the review – the first was the establishment of an independent complaints management service for sport. The second was a central online place to find guidance on sport integrity issues. Both have been established and we argue that each will have a positive impact on the issues arising for women in sport.
The Sport Integrity review found that women were more likely to find harassment, bullying and abuse to be problems within the sporting environment than men. It also found that of all the people who had used existing policies to report these issues, “[w]omen were less likely to want to use policies again.” Whereas 15% of respondents said they trusted “all” the sporting organisations they worked with, women had less trust in them than men did.
Recent reviews of NSOs have highlighted the difficulties women have endured in high performance sport. NZ Rugby’s Black Ferns Cultural and Environmental Review was born out of difficulties that Te Kura Ngata-Aerengamate endured in the Black Ferns, and the Independent Review into NZ Football was spurred by written complaints submitted by 13 female players. Similarly, women appeared to suffer more from the impacts of historic poor behaviour in the Cycling NZ high performance programme.
The focus of these reviews appears, at face value, to reinforce Sport New Zealand’s findings that women are more likely to report adverse environments and mistreatment. While the events that led to these reviews were often driven by women’s reporting, it seems that women in sport may be vulnerable to victimisation and therefore questions abound as to what is reported and what is not.
Are women in sport particularly or differently vulnerable to integrity issues? Recent trends do suggest that women in sporting environments – athletes in particular – are not always treated with respect or dignity. But does this reflect an increased vulnerability to victimisation, or are women in sport less tolerant of bullying and exploitation than men? And what of differences in reporting?
The UNODC is clear on the fact that gender-specific threats of sexual harassment and abuse of women in sport is a product of corruption. This is not sporting corruption in the sense of bribery and match-fixing, driven by commercial imperatives. This is moral corruption involving imbalances of power. The UNODC notes that the sporting environment “is particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse of authority because of the nature of relationships in the workplace environment.”
Sport New Zealand’s work on Integrity is aimed to address these issues, and it is encouraging that NSOs have been willing to investigate issues raised or related to women. While we can all agree that, in an ideal world, such great efforts would not be required, there is reason to believe that New Zealand is making an effort to respond effectively and meaningfully to the challenges that women face in the sporting sector. It is true both that much has been done and that there is work left to do.
Women and match-fixing
Although New Zealand has long been regarded as a “relative beacon of low corruption”, we ought not presume that we are immune. Sport NZ noted that the risk of match-fixing is “growing and/or already reasonably high” in New Zealand. Its Integrity Review Report considered the risk profiles of various sports. The risk profiling shows differences in the perceived level of risk relating to men’s and women’s teams. For instance, women’s international cricket and rugby were assessed as moderate risk, compared to the high risk of the male equivalent competitions.
It has been suggested that the low incomes (and lack of pay parity) of female athletes may increase the motivation to participate in match-fixing, although other evidence suggests that match-fixing and patronage networks tend to exclude women. Given that women’s sport generates less revenue than men’s, we might imagine that match-fixers will stick with men’s games in hope of the greater profits.
More work is needed to determine whether or why there might be different or greater incentives that increase the risk of match-fixing in women’s sport. While we haven’t seen the high-profile cases of match-fixing in women’s sport on the same level as men’s sport, there are examples in Zimbabwe Football, and in tennis.
The need for robust reporting
Given that effective reporting mechanisms are essential to addressing corruption, it is important that they are accessible. There is research to suggest that gender-responsive processes are needed: the UNODC says research shows that “women are more likely to report corruption if they are interacting with other women”, and that women and men are motivated to report by different considerations.
The UNODC goes on to recommend that effecting reporting mechanisms include: “confidentiality and anonymity, accessibility (including access to health and financial services), clearly identifiable reporting channels, guidance for the reporting persons on the reporting processes, protection against different forms of retaliation, inclusive language and communication, and the training of officials receiving complaints to avoid possible biases”. New Zealand has made significant progress in this area in recent years.
How are we going?
Leaving aside the incredible success that New Zealand women have on the international sporting stage, three aspects of New Zealand’s sporting environment deserve further comment.
The first is the developing and increasing presence of women in leadership positions in New Zealand sport. The presence of women in leadership positions at Sport NZ, the NZ Olympic Committee and organisations such as Women in Sport Aotearoa and the International Working Group on Women and Sport, while not a complete solution, help create an environment which gives women more confidence to engage with such organisations and their reporting systems.
The second is the work which Sport New Zealand has done with its integrity guidance portal. This enables sporting organisations to draw on an impressive array of policies and procedures. Whether it is member or child protection, diversity and inclusion, match-fixing, anti-doping or organisational culture, there are helpful policies and procedures there for all to access that should help participants in our sporting system understand and enforce their rights. The gradual uptake of those and more importantly the embedding of their requirements into the daily training environment, will help mitigate some of the risks identified. While recent trends have shifted away from having policies specifically aimed at protecting women, transgender protection policies are increasingly common, as are policies that cater to matters such as parental leave and pregnancy.
Third, and not least, is the SRCMS run by Immediation New Zealand. The service has operated since early 2021 and dealt with more than 170 cases in its short lifetime. Many complaints have involved women and many were resolved through early facilitation, mediation and/or investigation. Whilst detailed statistics are not yet publicly available, the service is being utilised by the full range of sporting organisations, athletes and sporting participants. The service is delivered by legally trained experts in sport and dispute resolution, including a range of very capable women. Thus far it has proved to be a valuable addition to the New Zealand sporting landscape.
For these reasons (and many others), there is reason to be positive about women, integrity and sport in New Zealand.
¹ The UNODC’s “Global Report on Corruption in Sport”, Chapter 5: Gender and Corruption in Sport” discusses the difference between sex and gender and uses “woman” and “female” interchangeably while recognising that the two terms “are not perfect synonyms”. We adopt that approach here.
² For instance, New Zealand Rugby announced that it would be professionalising the Black Ferns, New Zealand’s premier female rugby team.
³ For instance, NZ Football.
⁴ UNODC Global Report on Corruption in Sport Section 5 at 16.
⁵ Sport New Zealand, “Sport Integrity Review: Findings and Recommendations” (September 2019), see p 24.
⁶ Ibid.