Women's World Hockey Championships Cancelled
A recent statement from Jill Saulnier, a member of the Canadian Women's National Hockey Team, is making its way across the sporting community. It came after the announcement was made that the IIHF Women's World Hockey Championship is being cancelled for the 2nd year in a row, and she addressed her concerns of unequal treatment of women's hockey. Her feelings of disappointment spoke to us all, and raised quite a few alarms in our minds here at WPS.
To recap, Saulnier mentioned that the largest priority in the decision was to protect the host province of the tournament, Nova Scotia. We agree that during these difficult times, the safety of our communities is more important than sport. The concern with this ruling comes with the inequality of decision making from the governing bodies of sport.
Extensive measures were put in place to have the teams in the tournament produce 5 negative COVID test results before being allowed to enter the province. They would then proceed to an 8 day "bubble" at a hotel where they would have no contact with other teammates or staff, no practices, and no workouts. Tests would continue to be carried out throughout these 8 days to ensure that teams could safely compete against each other when the tournament began. The list of protocols was immense; it followed the same protocol template as the men's World Junior Championships hosted in Edmonton, Alberta earlier this year. And yet, the Premier of Nova Scotia, Iain Rankin, announced on Thursday that the tournament would be cancelled.
We would like to point your attention now to 3 main governing bodies that oversaw the organization of this tournament:
1) The Provincial Government of Nova Scotia
There has been a full season of hockey in the QMJHL that has spanned over the last 8 months, and is currently hosting their playoffs in Quebec (with attendance allowed we must add). However, some of these teams were based in the province of Nova Scotia and they were able to finish their regular season as scheduled, conveniently playing their last game just before the province would announce the cancellation of hockey - so it begs the question:
Why was this men's junior hockey league able to travel freely throughout the province to play games, yet an isolated tournament for women's national teams is cancelled?
As a matter of fact, the only CHL league not to play this year was the OHL -- all other men's teams were allowed to compete. So perhaps the reasoning behind disallowing hockey in Nova Scotia isn't "for the safety of the province," but rather, it is another decision that emphasizes the government's priority of men's sports over women's sports.
2) Hockey Canada
As a whole, Hockey Canada has done many great things to help support and grow the game of women's hockey. That being said, it's difficult to imagine that this National Sport Organization (NSO) wouldn't have enough political power to convince the province to continue the tournament. They seemed to have no problem getting the Government of Alberta to do so for the men's national team in the midst of the 2nd wave of COVID. Our take, they knew their bottom lines were hurting from not having competitions as usual this year, and the women's tournament was more expendable than the men's. Also, here is an image of the Board of Directors from before November, 2020. Late last year, Hockey Canada finally appointed 3 female members to their Board to help diversify their staff...
3) The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF)
Their involvement on an international level may not have had much sway in the Nova Scotian Premier's decision, but there seems to be less effort put into pushing for the Women's World Hockey Championships to continue then the men's, which is on track to play in Latvia later in May. There were no contingency plans set in place should the tournament have been cancelled by the host region; these types of considerations have consistently been made for the men's international tournaments throughout the pandemic. Again, here is an image of the IIHF Council Members...
Our Take
For starters, there seems to be a trend of male-dominant leadership staff in hockey that are making decisions which inherently impede equal opportunity for women in the sport. Hockey Canada has announced that it plans to host the tournament later this year. So, for all of us looking forward to watching the best in the world compete, hopefully it's not much longer of a wait. Unfortunately, the message this decision has sent is irreversible. It's difficult to point fingers during a time where the safety of citizens is of the utmost importance; however, this can't be an excuse when making unequal decisions regarding the treatment of gender in sport.
~WPS