Abstract

The few activities to raise awareness in the Catalan and Spanish context about the existence of sexual harassment in sport have taken place over the last decade, but sexual harassment is still a research topic on which little work has been done to date. However, research in countries such as Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the United States, Norway and the United Kingdom show that sexual harassment is by no means absent from the world of sports. In 2007 the IOC called on national Olympic committees to start working on and preventing sexual harassment in this area. The main purpose of this study, funded by the Catalan Institute for Women, is to determine whether sexual harassment in sport is also present in Catalan sports. Consequently it is also intended to contribute towards raising awareness in relevant sports organisations so that they bear in mind that the sexual harassment which takes place in sports contexts is a problem to be dealt with by sports policies in our country. The data presented in this study are drawn from the experiences of sexual harassment of a sample of 214 student-athletes at three Catalan universities where physical activity and sport science (CAFE) programmes are taught. The data in this study show very different levels of experience and perception depending on the kind of behaviour analysed. Behaviours perceived as most harassing are the ones least experienced by women CAFE students in Catalonia. However, the paper also confirms that there are some cases of sexual harassment in Catalan sport. The harassment found reaches incidence figures of up to 6% for some behaviours