| Canadian Women & Sport

Best practices for organizations

Forward Together: Sport Leaders Share Their Gender Equity Journeys

Sport organizations face complicated challenges in trying to make their sports more inclusive to women and girls. For the last year, Canadian Women & Sport has been supporting sport organizations to understand their own gender equity opportunities and develop action plans through our Gender Equity Playbook program. In February of 2021, Canadian Women & Sport […]

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Best practices for organizations

“Dwelling in the tensions:” Research in the intersections of second-generation teen girls’ sport experiences

In 2019/2020, Canadian Women & Sport partnered with graduate student Amina Haggar to explore the experiences of second-generation African Canadian teen girls in a community sport program in Ottawa, Ontario. Haggar, an MA Candidate under the supervision of Dr. Audrey Giles at the University of Ottawa, conducted interviews with eleven sport coordinators and coaches involved […]

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Best practices for organizations

Squash BC turns to female ambassadors to get more women onto the court

The Challenge Squash BC was one of the first Canadian organizations to host a Women’s Squash Week trying to encourage more girls and women to try out the sport. They developed a tool kit for the club professionals, who are predominantly men, to help them increase their numbers. But after two years, the week wasn’t […]

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Leadership development

Coach New Brunswick realizes the value of a support network for women in coaching

The Challenge Coach New Brunswick is a not for profit organization dedicated to providing professional development and learning opportunities for coaches at all levels across the province. This runs the gamut of helping develop coaches at the grass roots and community level to competition coaches who are going to the Canada Games and beyond. One […]

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Ontario Basketball showcases women leading the way for young girls

The Challenge In a male dominated sport like basketball, the senior director of basketball development for Ontario Basketball, Lindsay Walsh, says there are many reasons women drop out of the game. In the most extreme cases, the environment is sometimes actively exclusionary. Walsh says as a former athlete and more recently coach and official, she […]

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Leadership development

NWT Soccer builds role models for girls by breaking down barriers for women to become top-level coaches.

The Challenge The Northwest Territories Soccer Association struggles to get women into coaching and specifically moving up through the ranks from community level coaching into the performance stream. Lyric Sandhals, who is the executive director, says it is difficult to find coaches in general in the north, but it is particularly a problem for women in […]

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Best practices for organizations

Judo Canada holds first ever Women’s Summit to fight for gender equity

The Challenge Judo Canada says one of its biggest challenges “is the insufficient involvement of women in the sport, and a low retention of women as staff in the organization.” Judo is a male dominated sport at every level from participants, to coaches, to Board Directors, to referees. Since 2002, only 24 per cent of […]

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Diversity of girls and women

Indigenous girls reconnect to their roots through lacrosse

Storm Selects Lacrosse was awarded a WISE Fund Grant in 2018. The Challenge Storm Selects Lacrosse formed in 2017 with a goal to work with a team of Indigenous female athletes to grow the game of lacrosse in British Columbia and to develop future leaders and role models. After the completion of the North American […]

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Best practices for organizations

Gender Equity is Good Governance – Lessons from the Sport Sector

The gender makeup of sport, and sport leadership, is changing. In 2018, the Government of Canada made it clear that gender equity is a priority for all levels of sport, setting a target to achieve gender equality by 2035. In February, as part of the Red Deer Declaration, the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers responsible […]

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