 Welcome to the Sports Playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today we have Lila Draft-Johnson, a gender-based violence researcher. Today we're going to discuss gender-based violence in sport, sports league policy, and education. Let's get to it. Welcome Lila, thank you for joining us today on the Sports Playbook. Thanks so much for having me, Angela. I'm really glad to learn about your topic of research and learn a little bit more about gender-based violence in sports. So let's start off with some definitions. What is gender-based violence and is this the same? Is it different than domestic violence? Give us a little context here of what we're going to be talking about today. Definitely. There's a lot of different words that folks choose to use when they're talking about different gendered forms of violence. I personally use gender-based violence because I think it is a nice umbrella term that refers to a wide range of different forms of violence that occur on the basis of gender. I use the term specifically to talk about mostly domestic violence, sexual violence, and sexual harassment as it occurs in sports. But it's really a term that was coined to sort of focus more of the attention on the structural causes of violence and that connection between gender, power, and violence. So it can refer to a wide range of things. But for today's conversation, we're sort of using it as a catch-all for domestic and sexual violence. And there has been some notorious cases that have arisen in sports, which is why we're talking about this issue and the connection to the two sports today. One of the most famous examples that our audience may be familiar with is the Ray Rice example. Can you tell us a little bit about the Ray Rice situation and what sort of prompted sports organizations to look a little more closely at gender-based violence amongst their athletes? Yeah. So in 2014, some folks might remember that there was a viral video of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice striking his then-fiancé, Janae Palmer, in Atlantic City Casino Elevator. And what I always say is that Ray Rice wasn't the first professional athlete to commit an act of violence against his partner, but he was the first who really went viral for it. So this video circulated widely and the NFL responded with a two-game suspension, I believe a $50,000 fine, and that ended up eliciting really immense public outcry. People wanted to see the NFL come down harder for what they had seen. TMZ actually ended up releasing an sort of even more violent video with more information of the incident in September of 2014, and that led a congressional committee to call the four major men's sports leagues in the United States. So the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB to a hearing in December of 2014 to talk about what were they doing to address domestic violence and professional sports. And it was after all of that congressional scrutiny, so sort of in 2015 and beyond that we've seen these different professional sports leagues formulate gender-based violence policies. Again, I'm using gender-based violence, these policies typically relate to domestic sexual violence and child abuse as well. And that's just a little bit of a primer to get us started. Yeah, okay, interesting. So with the Ray Rice incident, it was sort of a catalyst calling professional sports teams to the carpet to have them be a little more diligent about their governance over their players. And so it's really interesting, you said there was kind of the four major professional sports leagues that were called to the carpet. And I know you have some experience with Major League Baseball. Tell us a little bit about your time working with Major League Baseball and your role that you served working on this issue with gender-based violence. Sure, yeah, so as I mentioned, a number of these sports leagues ended up forming policies. One of those leagues was Major League Baseball. They have actually three players, Major League players, one covers Minor League players, and the last one covers non-playing personnel, so anyone that's working on a team or in the league. And the policy there basically has four components. There is education, so anyone across the league, whether you are a player, pitcher on the mound, or selling peanuts in the ballpark, you're required to go through at least one sort of educational awareness training on topics like domestic and sexual violence. And it was that part of the policy that I was hired to help out with in June of 2019. I spent two years in the league office. I left in 2021 to start graduate school. And so I mostly worked on those educational workshops, so designing the curriculum, facilitating it with mostly Minor League players and league and team staff. The Major League policy is collectively bargained with the union, and so they would always bring in sort of outside specialists because of sort of the conflict of interest there. But that's a little bit of an intro to sort of my job there. That's really interesting that Major League Baseball is doing a lot of education, so they have some policies in place, education as well. And these policies sound a little stronger than most businesses because they extend to their personal lives, right, what they do, maybe even outside of the job. So as compared to other sports organizations, was Major League Baseball, at least at the time, were they a little more progressive in their stance and their response to the meeting in front of Congress? Yeah, you know, I think when all of the teams, you know, initially arrived at Congress, all of them had their work cut out for them and really needed to improve in this area. Based on my understanding of MLB's policy and the other policies at the league, the thing that I do think really makes MLB's policy unique is its emphasis on education and prevention. Their policy is also one of the only ones that has a provision for supporting community organizations, so that's written into their policy. And obviously, all of these leagues, you know, have corporate social responsibility departments, they're donating to various organizations, but MLB's has it written in their policy, which sort of makes it so that it has to happen. Well, in 2015, this sort of came to light, and the pressure was put on these major professional sports organizations to do something. But, you know, just recently, Charles Barkley has kind of called the NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, to the carpet about plans to be more stringent in addressing domestic violence after some disturbing incidents have come to light with NBA players. So what do you think? What do you see? What do you say in response to that sort of call to action that has been pitched to the NBA? Yeah, yeah, I actually, I can picture that clip you're talking about right now. And one of the things that was really interesting to me about Adam Silver's response is that he immediately credited the players union, the NBA's player, player union. And something that I do think is notable about both MLB and the NBA's policy and the WNBA as well, is that policies are jointly bargained with their players' associations. And essentially what that means is that both the union and the league has a say in what that disciplinary process and investigations process is going to look like. And something that was interesting for me when I looked, my current research right now looks at that congressional hearing back in 2014. And something that was really interesting to me was this positioning of labor rights as oppositional to gender-based violence accountability efforts. And something that we've seen in the years since these policies have been enacted is that when you have situations where discipline is handed down unilaterally from, for example, the Commissioner at the NFL, which is the way the NFL's policy works, it's mandated unilaterally. In neutral arbitration, the discipline ends up changing a lot, which ends up being oftentimes really harmful for the survivors involved. You think that the perpetrator is going to receive ex-punishment, the punishment changes, it's confusing, it forces you in the spotlight for another time as a lot of news outlets will pick it out. And so even though I think a lot of folks are really critical of and are concerned that player unions are going to be advocating for players who have done really harmful things, something I found in my research is that when teams do jointly bargain their policies, the policies end up being more effective, more consistent. And there's sort of additional research that shows that when perpetrators feel that they're being treated fairly in the process, they're more likely to comply with things like court orders and blanking on the name. But when you're in no contact orders, things like that. So I think I've taken us a little bit far away from your initial question. So if there's parts of it you want me to pick back up, I'm happy to. The question was about the NBA and Charles Barclay's call to the Commissioner to do something to stop domestic violence or at least hold players accountable for their actions. But you were mentioning some challenges with that process and things that can make it difficult. And I believe what you were saying is that if it's jointly negotiated between the players in the team or the players in the league, then the players are more likely to follow the process and it's more likely to be effective and consistent results. Is that correct? Is that what you were saying? Yeah, exactly. You would almost think there'd be some kind of conflict with them negotiating or them helping to establish policies of how they might be punished in the event that this would happen to them. But that's not been the case in your research that you found in your research. Yeah, that's interesting. Tell us more about your research and what you've learned and what you've discovered along the way. Yeah, definitely. So like I mentioned, I was largely analyzing the congressional hearing text from the addressing domestic violence and professional sports in 2014. And what I was really interested in was understanding how the senators involved as well as the league executives and union representatives understood the issue of gender-based violence in sport and how they were interested in trying to solve it. And one of the findings I really saw is that a lot of the times when we talk about how these conversations around domestic and sexual violence, especially when it happens in the case of a celebrity or a popular player, we really do zero in on that individual. And I think that's important because we need to hold people accountable. But I also think about the way that by focusing so much on individuals, we really kind of obscure the whole machine that really kind of produces and produces this kind of violence and allows it, condones it. And so that was really present in the hearing was the specific mentions of individual players who had committed violence, but not as many conversations about the actual structure of professional sports, which itself is a system that is really rife with power imbalances, which is a really key part to how domestic and sexual violence happen. It's a space where a very specific kind of masculinity is sort of expected to be performed. And even though we often think of professional athletes as the folks that made it, the folks that are getting paid millions of dollars to play a sport, I think it's really important to think about not just those players we see in the limelight, but sort of the cauldron of players that it takes to produce that one Steph Curry or whoever it is. And a lot of those folks have to work their way up through a pretty difficult minor league or player development system. They've spent their entire lives really zeroed in on their sport and themselves are really subject to a lot of surveillance and control in their line of work and violence themselves sometimes on the field. And so largely sort of a lot of what I'm advocating for is I think about, okay, I've done this research, what do I want to change about these policies? It's really for this focus to shift from individual perpetrators to thinking about, okay, what is the system like? And what are ways that we can tinker with this system to make it a little bit more of a humane space for people? And what impact will that have on the kinds of violence or hopefully it will stop violence that's happening off the field? And let's dive in a little bit. And I know your research is focusing a lot on the professional leagues, but grassroots level, like you mentioned, there's the violence probably isn't starting at the professional level, right? Like it's starting before that you mentioned, even on the field, it becomes a culture and acceptance and their sort of training addition, or maybe in their hometowns growing up because they're an excellent athlete, maybe they're forgiven for behavior that would be inexcusable in other environments. So what can you say, tell us about the grassroots programs that are kind of funneling these athletes into the professional setting? That's a really great question. And I think it's interesting to think about kind of the crisis that's happening right now with youth sports in the United States. I know the Aspen Institute is sort of the, those are the researchers I look to for information on this, but youth sport has, you know, throughout the last couple of decades really started to change from being about play and movement and team building to prepping kids to get ready to make the D1 roster, preparing them for their lives as Olympians or professional athletes. And so I think it is really important to think about, okay, what kind of culture is getting promoted at these youth leagues? And what are the ways that we're teaching athletes to relate to their own bodies and relate to the bodies of the other players they're interacting with. And also thinking about, you know, what is a coach modeling in the way that they choose to discipline players, talk to players, things like that. So I feel like I'm sort of foreshadowing some possible answers to your question. But I think that that education and, you know, you're really thinking about how is what's happening in professional sports trickling down to that youth level, how that might be impacting this as well. Yeah, absolutely. And then of course, the professional athletes are role models for the future players and the future generation. And so role models at the local level for their coaches as well as those professional athletes. And we've kind of hinted a lot on male sports, but gender-based violence is not isolated to men as perpetrators. They can also be victims that either can even be violence against the same sex. Tell us a little bit more about how broad this goes as far as across the across men's and women's leagues. Yes, I will say that most of because most of my research is focused on men's sports, I'm mostly able to speak to that. But I will say that the the WNBA does have a domestic and sexual violence policy. I believe it's more or less equivalent to what the NDA has. And I think I guess I kind of have this impulse to sort of like turn your question a little bit to speak about just the prevalence of gender-based violence in society and the fact that so many people are impacted by this, whether it's witnessing violence in their home growing up or experiencing it themselves in some way. And obviously it is it is mostly women and gender nonconforming folks that are disproportionately suffering from it. But I think there is, you know, huge silent epidemic for men and boys as well. And and so if you'll allow me, I think one of the ways that I'll sort of shift shift a little bit with this question is to talk about I guess what are the other sort of policy recommendations that I really have for these this kind of new idea of instituting gender-based violence policies in corporations. And that is to really I think kind of bring it back to the basics of basic workplace and labor conditions and really start to think about those as protective factors for your employees. So 99 percent of domestic violence cases involve financial abuse. So a player, not a player, excuse me, a person controlling your finances or sabotaging your ability to get to work, credit scores, things like that. And so there's a lot of things that workplaces can do to really make it easier for survivors to leave unsafe situations. And it's it's things like raising, raising the minimum wage so that it's a livable wage. And it's having flexibility on things like sick leave and, you know, policies that really provide people with the flexibility they need to to relocate and generally just have that economic self-sufficiency to to to leave unsafe situations. And so I think a lot of times we think about these policies as educational workshops or holding people accountable, disciplined, but I think we also need to think about what are ways that we can just ensure that folks have access to the kind of basic things that they need so that when when something does occur they're able to to get out of it. You're sort of hinting a little bit about the power and control wheel, right? And then I know another one that's sort of I don't know if newer is the correct term, but it's maybe something that's less understood is the the technology piece and technological control. Can you in the light of the digital age, can you illuminate us as to what that means and in the span of of this gender-based violence or domestic violence? Yeah, so yeah, technology and technological control has definitely gotten a lot more prevalent as we keep refining our technologies and it also is unfortunately refining the capacity of people that use harm in relationships to surveil their partners, you know, track their whereabouts and request things like, you know, photo evidence to prove where you are, things like that. And I think also there's definitely a lot of incidents, especially in the sports world, with you know, inappropriate messages being sent through technology and, you know, I think across the board, not even just in sports, we're really trying to figure out how do we how do we legislate and create policies that protect against things like that. But that's a little bit about technological. And even like taking away someone's phone, right, access to access to that resource or to take away their computer or something like that. Going back into the education piece in your time with Major League Baseball, you mentioned there's there's a training that happens on a regular basis. And we've also talked about not all and not all people are going to be perpetrators of violence and but some of them are going to be impacted by it. They may be witnesses to it or they may be, you know, in that kind of in a relationship or in a sphere of a sphere of influence where violence is exhibited. And so as part of that, that education and training, I could you tell us a little bit about the the piece that may be where someone might be a witness or might be, you know, otherwise victimized or exposed to a victim. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, definitely. There's a couple things that come to mind. I think the first one to touch on, you know, people that are impacted by violence. When I worked at MLB, we always made sure to include in our presentations the resources that the League has available for players and partners and families. There's a number of different hotlines, some counseling services. And a piece of our presentation sort of depending on the audience was sometimes talking about, you know, how do you have a conversation to support survivors or someone that discloses to you? And as well as things like bystander intervention, what are some easy, safe ways to intervene when you see inappropriate comments or even actions occurring. But one thing I will highlight is that I'm not sure about other leagues, but at least per MLB's policy, pretty much everyone is not a mandated reporter, but essentially is required to report any known instances of domestic sexual violence or child abuse to the League if they do become aware of it. And so that way, you know, folks who are not reporting things like that, you know, do become complicit. But I think that does allow for the League to become aware of more things than they otherwise might not. That's some kind of reporting structure as well. And the educational piece, how did players or other employees respond to the training? Yeah, I mean, it's always kind of varies depending on the time of day we're doing these trainings and what they've been up to before and after it. But I do think that, you know, this is an issue that everyone does largely agree on and believes, you know, we need to make the culture of sport better. So I definitely, I didn't always receive the most active participation from athletes, but they heard the message. And, you know, hopefully, through time, that message continues to sink in more and impact the sport. Absolutely, absolutely. Any final things you'd like to tell us about this topic and or your research? Yeah, I think for right now, that's about it. I am I will just put in a quick plug for I'm currently located at the University of Maryland and wrapping up a master's degree here in the physical cultural studies research group and looking forward to trying to get my research out there and to what's next. So thank you so much for the opportunity and really enjoyed talking with you today. Thank you, Lila. I appreciate your time and thank you for investigating this really important topic and do some research and hopefully you'll continue to have an impact in the sports world. So thank you for your time there. Thank you to our viewers today for joining us. That was Lila draft Johnson who spoke on gender based violence and sport sports league policy and education. So thank you for joining us today. Our next episode will be our guest, Jillian Franklin, who will discuss sports officiating. We'll see you then.