If we’re serious about ending Violence Against Women and Girls, we need to head upstream

Preventing violence against women and girls (VAWG) requires more than responding after harm has occurred. While crisis-driven policies and reactive statements have a role, they are not enough to create safer, more equitable spaces for women and girls. A meaningful shift towards prevention calls for upstream action, focused on the environments, attitudes, and everyday social norms that shape how power, respect, and harm are understood and expressed.

Sport is one such environment. It is a space where boys learn what it means to be men, where peer norms are forged, and where silence can be mistaken for consent. This is why bystander interventions matter. The culture of sport – its hierarchies, its locker room banter, its hero worship – does not merely reflect the inequalities of wider society. It helps produce them.

Recognising this, the “Are you onside?” programme, funded by Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership, was developed to equip colleagues working in community sport and physical activity settings with the skills, confidence, and social permission to challenge sexism, misogyny, and abuse before they escalate.

Delivered across Merseyside between 2022 and 2025, the programme supported coaches, volunteers, and safeguarding leads to recognise and respond to harmful behaviours. Evaluation data showed statistically significant improvements across all key domains, particularly in confidence to intervene and perceived peer approval – two critical enablers of early action.

One of the clearest examples of cultural impact emerged at the ground-breaking charity Everton in the Community, where staff began using the phrase “You’re offside” to call out inappropriate language and behaviour. This simple, sport-specific cue became a practical tool for intervention: non-confrontational, understood by all, and embedded in the organisation’s everyday culture.

But the evaluation also underscored the limits of one-off interventions. Many participants left the training more confident and aware, but without senior leadership support, aligned policies, or visible accountability, culture change risks stalling. Coaches and volunteers can carry this work only so far. It must be embedded into whole-organisation strategies for safeguarding, equity, and staff development, led from the top, not left to chance.

The evidence from Are You Onside? shows that sport is not peripheral to the prevention of VAWG. It is central. It is where behaviours are learned, where silence has too long been the norm, and where cultural change is both possible and necessary. The question is no longer whether sport should play a role, but how its role is supported, resourced, and sustained.

That means aligning this work with local and national strategies, investing in people and systems, and treating prevention not as a one-off event, but as a long-term commitment to equity, safety, and organisational responsibility. This work continues in clubs, in classrooms, in coaching pathways. The only question now is: are you onside?