Sports and structured leisure as sites of victimization for children and young people in Finland: Looking at the significance of gender and ethnicity

Abstract

Availability and access have been central worries that are discussed related to children’s and young people’s sport and other structured leisure activities. In this article, we shift the focus towards children’s and young people’s experiences of violence perpetrated by coaches or leaders within such activities in Finland. We use a large-scale survey on children’s and young people’s experiences of violence in different spheres of life (Finnish Child Victim Survey 2013) as the data, and concentrate on the significance of gender and ethnicity for the experiences of violence within structured leisure. The results show that boys report significantly higher levels of emotional, physical and sexual violence perpetrated by a coach or a leader within leisure activities than girls; and immigrant background seems also to increase the risk of being victimized. With the help of logistic regression analysis, we assess the role of other background factors in experiencing violence within structured activities, but conclude that the significance of gender and ethnicity persists even when factors related to the family background are taken into consideration.

Keywords

children ethnicity gender structured leisure sport victimization young people

In public discussions on children’s and young people’s leisure, structured activities are largely considered in a positive light: adult-organized recreational pursuits are thought to provide social capital, as well as skills useful for future years (Dunn, 2006: 105). In academic literature, a similar kind of emphasis can be found, although a mass of critical approaches exist as well (e.g. Brackenridge, 2012; Brackenridge and Fasting, 2002; Cunningham et al., 2012; Kreager, 2007; Messner, 2011; Pappas et al., 2004; Singer, 2005; Stirling and Kerr, 2009). In Finland, as in many other Western European countries, sports activities form the bulk of children’s and young people’s leisure activities (e.g. Myllyniemi and Berg, 2013); and, although the positive expectations set to structured leisure in general apply to sports activities, sport is also expected to help children and young people to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

Although we do not question the ability of structured activities to offer many types of positive experiences and resources, in this article we look at the harmful incidents within structured leisure: children’s and young people’s experiences of violence perpetrated by the leaders of sports and other structured activities in Finland, as well as the interconnections of gender and ethnicity on these experiences. To this end, we use the Finnish Child Victim Survey 2013 (n=11,364), conducted among sixth and ninth graders (children and young people aged approximately 12 and 15 years) in Finnish comprehensive schools in 2013, as our dataset.

In Finland, public discussions on inequality within the leisure sphere have mostly focused on the increased costs of sports activities and consequent economic inequalities in access to them (e.g. Puronaho, 2014). Occasionally, discrimination in sport clubs and individual cases of violence (mostly sexual abuse of girls) are highlighted in the media. In the Finnish research literature, the (in)equality in opportunities to participate in different types of leisure activities has attracted increasing amounts of attention. These mostly qualitative studies have offered insights on how the widely accepted methods of organizing activities, subtle hierarchies and experiences of exclusion hinder children and young people’s participation, often in ethnicized and gendered ways (Harinen et al., 2012; Zacheus et al., 2012). However, the violent or abusive behaviour of adult organizers such as coaches has not been scrutinized in Finland.

Internationally, the relationships between leisure activities, especially sports, and peer-to-peer violence have been studied at some length (e.g. Kreager, 2007; Tanner et al., 2015). Yet, research on children’s and young people’s victimization perpetrated by the leader or coach of a leisure activity is much thinner and mostly qualitative (see, however, Brackenridge and Fasting, 2002; Hartill, 2009; Shields et al., 2005; Stirling and Kerr, 2009).

Child victim surveys and other criminological literature on children’s and young people’s victimization shows that violence occurs practically in every living sphere of young age cohorts and, although peer-to-peer violence is commonplace, violence perpetrated by adults is not uncommon either (Brackenridge and Fasting, 2002; Ellonen et al., 2008; Fagerlund et al., 2014; Finkelhor et al., 2005). Adults’ actions and possible misuse of power in structured leisure activities are important topics of interest from the viewpoint of equality of leisure and well-being of children and young people.

As a research context, Finland is characterized by the Nordic welfare model and a short history as a country of immigration. Both have shaped the ideas and practices connected with equality within leisure services. Similar to other Nordic countries, in Finland, the democratic, universalist and equalitarian political traditions have had a strong foothold, and with the help of relatively high taxation, the degree of state-provided welfare supply has remained rather high (Kautto et al., 2004). The tradition of gender equality discourses and policies is comparatively long, even valued as a part of a national identity. Although in the global context, Finland can be considered a rather gender-equal country by using measures such as political participation, education level and employment rate, it has been pointed out that when looking at informal interactions in the private spheres, gender still acts as a hierarchizing division (e.g. Julkunen, 2010).

Unlike neighbouring Nordic countries, larger-scale immigration to Finland started as late as in the beginning of the 1990s and the share of foreign-born population – 5.9% in 2014 (Official Statistics Finland (OSF), 2014) – remains comparatively low. The biggest groups of foreign nationality are Estonians, Russians, Swedes, Somalians and Chinese (OSF, 2014). Owing to the short history as a country of immigration, the politics of diversity and anti-discrimination have been implemented only rather recently in Finland. In spite of some reforms at the political-normative level of society, day-to-day practices, for instance, in youth work and civil society organizations (CSOs) seem to be built on the principle of ‘all are treated the same’ (Ahponen et al., 2014). Particularly, the intersection of gender and ethnicity is rarely taken into account at the levels of policy and practice (Honkasalo, 2013).

Structured leisure spaces under scrutiny

The spatial living spheres of children and young people can be divided into four main domains: home, school, structured leisure pursuits and unstructured (in)activities without adult supervision (Furusten, 1999; Kivijärvi, 2016). The most distinguished feature of structured activities is adult control: structured leisure spaces are ‘given’ to children and young people as a readymade form of participation, whereas unstructured ‘hang out’ spaces are more or less occupied by them (Childress, 2004). Adult-organized activities require certain types of behaviour and exclude other types; structured leisure is for specific purposes during restricted timeframes (Franck and Stevens, 2007). In other words, adults’ power over young people is emphasized during structured leisure in contrast to spaces of loitering, such as malls and parks.

Children’s and young people’s structured leisure in Finland is mostly orchestrated by CSOs and, to some extent, municipalities and parishes. The latter two are mostly responsible for offering youth work services, whereas CSOs offer mostly sporting, political and cultural activities.¹ In practice, these sector-based boundaries are somewhat porous, and CSOs are in many cases funded by the state or other public organizations. Therefore, the ideological and functional differences among various leisure providers in Finland are rather small (Ilmonen and Siisiäinen, 1998).

The activities provided by CSOs are often organized by volunteering adults. In Finland, no uniform programmes for educating coaches or leaders in children’s and young people’s activities exist, which means that the pedagogical and interpersonal skills of the coaches and leaders may vary greatly. Lately, it has been discussed whether CSOs should be obliged to check the criminal records of the volunteers – currently, under certain circumstances they have the right, but not the obligation, to do so (Ministry of Justice, 2013).

Structured leisure of children and young people is gendered in Finland: particularly, certain team sports are dominated by boys (e.g. ice-hockey, soccer and floor ball), whereas girls outnumber boys in other sports (e.g. horse-riding and dancing) and many cultural and art-based activities (Myllyniemi and Berg, 2013: 43, 67). Moreover, girls spend more time within homes, whereas boys participate more in public and semi-public recreational settings (Helve, 2009: 263–265). Different leisure surroundings may contain various gendered orders and norms. Recent research has also indicated that young people’s structured leisure settings are, to some extent, ethnically determined (Harinen et al., 2012; Kivijärvi, 2014; Zacheus et al., 2012). The relatively low participation rates of youth from immigrant backgrounds have been explained by discrimination, lack of knowledge about available options, competitiveness of Finnish sport clubs and high costs (cf. Taylor and Doherty, 2005).

Structured leisure activities are expected to provide children and young people with useful resources and safe spaces in which to spend time in ‘a reasonable way’. The presence of adult figures is generally expected to act as a protective factor, for example via reducing the occurrence of peer-to-peer violence within the activities (e.g. Tanner et al., 2015). It has also been found that, even though exclusive practices obviously do exist within structured leisure in Finland, they are experienced as relatively free from discrimination by the ethnic minority youth (Kivijärvi and Ronkainen, 2015). In the context of sports and leisure activities, (adult) coaches and leaders – whether they acknowledge it or not – are important gatekeepers, role models and moral educators for the children and young people (e.g. Stirling and Kerr, 2009). However, with the adult presence and control, the generation-based hierarchy in leisure activities is emphasized, and the existence of power relations also renders misusing power possible (Hartill, 2009).

One of the few long-term researchers on the subject of violence within sports activities of children and young people, Celia Brackenridge (2012: 54–55) refers to the definitions of UNICEF, the WHO and Convention on the Rights of the Child when defining violence encompassing physical, sexual and psychological or mental forms of maltreatment. According to the WHO, violence is ‘the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against a child (…) that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity’ (referenced in Brackenridge, 2012). Even though we are bound by the formulations of the survey questionnaire, which may ignore some forms of violence, we lean on the same definition and want to emphasize that violence should not be understood narrowly in legal and/or physical terms.

Finnish Child Victim Survey 2013 as data

In this article, we utilize the Finnish Child Victim Survey 2013, which is a nationally representative survey among 6th and 9th graders aged 12–13 and 15–16 (n=11,364). The survey has been designed to gather information on children’s and young people’s experiences of violence as broadly as possible, covering both acts defined as crimes by the law and acts with more ambiguous legal status, such as bullying, harassment, emotional abuse and corporal punishment. Fagerlund et al. (2014) have provided an overview of the data as a whole.² The general trends are in line with previous findings in Finland (Ellonen et al., 2008) and elsewhere (Finkelhor, 2011), showing that, although violence against children and young people remains common and tolerated to a greater extent than violence against adults, its prevalence has declined over the past decades.

The sample of the Finnish Child Victim Survey is school-based and stratified according to province, type of municipality and school size. The survey was conducted in schools and the final response rate was approximately 75%. The schools that opted out of the survey were fairly evenly distributed (Fagerlund et al., 2014: 27–29). Conducting the survey in schools is a good way to reach out to certain age cohorts. At the same time, it may have contributed to the partial non-response (omitting certain questions) within the data, which is, in part, largish.³

The key interest of this article lies in the survey’s questions on structured leisure activities and experiences of violence perpetrated by the leaders of such activities. Out of the data as a whole, 66% of the respondents (n=7409) reported that they attended at least one form of structured activity. In the questionnaire, it was highlighted that structured activities referred to recreation instructed by a coach, leader or other responsible (adult) figure, not to leisure among peers only. The respondents were asked to specify, whether the activity was related to sports, music, associations or ‘other’, but more detailed information on the activities was not queried. In line with previous studies (e.g. Myllyniemi and Berg, 2013), the role of sport was dominant: three out of four respondents who attended structured activities (74.6%, n=5489) reported sports as their only pursuit or the one they engaged in most frequently.⁴

Although gender distribution within the data as a whole was even, 70% of girls and 62% of boys reported engaging in structured leisure activities. Accordingly, there is a slight over-representation of girls among the respondent group that is the focus of this article (54% of the respondents were girls and 46% were boys).

The ethnic backgrounds of the respondents were determined from responses to the following questions: ‘Were you born in Finland?’ and ‘In which country your mother/father was born?’.⁵ Within the data as a whole, the share of respondents with two foreign-born parents was 2.6% (n=291), which means they are underrepresented, as their share among all 12-year-olds in Finland is 5.7% and among 15-year-olds 5.5% (OSF, 2014). For the purposes of this article, the respondents who attended structured leisure activities were grouped as follows: respondents with two Finnish-born parents (91%, n=6741), respondents with one foreign-born and one Finnish-born parent (6.1%, n=451) and respondents with two foreign-born parents (2.2%, n=165). Respondents with two foreign-born parents were thus slightly underrepresented among those engaged in structured activities.

Unavoidably, quantified variables simplify the diversity of lived realities and identities by enforcing certain categories while neglecting others. Ethnicity and gender are more porous than the seemingly taken-for-granted categories suggest and are crosscut by many other categories such as age, class and locality (Brah and Phoenix, 2004). With regard to respondents’ ethnicity, the information obtained relates to immigration backgrounds – often but not always linked with ethnicity – thus differentiating the ‘new’ minorities within the Finnish society, but not the ‘old’ ones, such as the Sami, the Roma and parts of the population with a Russian background. Moreover, people from immigrant backgrounds constitute an extremely heterogeneous group with varying cultural backgrounds, national origins and time spent in the receiving society.

The question on experiences of violence perpetrated by the leader or the coach was then formulated as follows:

Within the before-mentioned hobby, has the coach or supervisor done some of the following to you (never, sometimes or often): Mocked you or called you names/Sworn or yelled at you angrily/Threatened you with violence/Threatened you otherwise, for example, with expulsion from the group or the team/Offered alcohol, cigarettes or drugs/Grabbed you or pushed you violently/Hit you/Told jokes or stories related to sex/Touched you sexually/Tried to kiss or kissed you/Suggested intercourse or oral sex/Forced you to perform intercourse or oral sex.

The analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we look at the prevalence of reported misbehaviour of leaders or coaches within structured activities. Second, we examine the experiences of emotional abuse and physical and sexual violence perpetrated by leaders or coaches according to victims’ gender and ethnicity. Third, we use binary logistic regression to assess how other factors related to respondents’ family backgrounds may or may not influence the gendered and ethnicized experiences of violence within structured activities.

The variables included in the binary logistic regression models are chosen so that they seek to either consolidate or diversify the earlier observations on interrelationships among leisure, victimization and structural factors. Information on family structure, parents’ education and respondents’ subjective evaluation of family’s financial situation is included. The questions ‘How often you have dinner with one or both of your parents?’, ‘How often you spend time in public places such as a street or a square, café, railway station and so on?’ and ‘Do your parents usually know with whom you spend your leisure time or go out?’ are understood as measuring informal social control in the form of parental care/supervision, which may relate to ‘risky lifestyle’, which is often referred to in criminological literature and understood as a risk factor for victimization (e.g. Tanner et al., 2015).

Prevalence of violence within structured leisure

In Table 1, we present the frequencies with which the respondents in the Finnish Child Victim Survey 2013 reported different forms of misbehaviour by the leader or the coach. Of the 7275 respondents who engaged in structured leisure activities, roughly one-quarter (24.5%) had encountered at least one form of violence, aggression, harassment or illegal action included in the questionnaire. As predicted, non-physical aggression was experienced more commonly than the physical violence, with ‘swearing or yelling angrily’ being the most commonly reported (18.0%) form of maltreatment. Nine per cent of the respondents had encountered the coach or leader telling jokes or stories related to sex, and an equal percentage of respondents had been ridiculed or called names. Physical acts of violence – grabbing or pushing and hitting – were reported by less than 3% of the respondents (both 2.7%); touching or kissing were reported by less than 2%, and proposed or forced intercourse or oral sex were reported by 1%.

Table 1.

Experiences of violence perpetrated by leader or coach in structured activities (%).

Within the before-mentioned hobby, has the coach or leader done some of the following to you?	Never		Sometimes		Often
Mocked you or called you names	91.4	6726	7.7	563	0.9	68
Sworn or yelled at you angrily	82.0	6029	16.3	1202	1.7	122
Threatened you with violence	97.7	7177	1.7	124	0.6	47
Threatened you otherwise	96.3	7081	3.1	227	0.7	48
Offered you alcohol, tobacco or drugs	97.9	7200	1.5	113	0.6	41
Grabbed you or pushed you violently	97.3	7153	2.1	154	0.6	46
Hit you	97.3	7151	2.0	148	0.7	50
Told jokes or stories related to sex	91.2	6699	7.0	512	1.9	138
Touched you in a sexual way	98.4	7234	1.0	74	0.6	44
Tried to kiss or kissed you	98.1	7213	1.2	88	0.7	49
Proposed intercourse or oral sex	98.9	7268	0.5	35	0.6	46
Forced you to perform intercourse or oral sex	99.0	7254	0.4	27	0.6	43

In the context of sport activities in the United States, Shields et al. (2005: 50) found that 35% of young athletes reported their coach yelling angrily, 11% reported the coach having made fun of a team member and 4% reported the coach having hit or kicked a team member. Although the contexts differ, the figures are roughly parallel and confirm that although the majority of young people do not report such negative experiences, it is possible to encounter an adult figure within structured activities behaving in an abusive or violent way. Notably, these shares do not describe the overall levels of violence within structured activities because violence between peers takes place in this context as well. Shields et al. (2005: 56) also point out that respondents may underreport the problem behaviour of the adult leaders, which means that the figures should be regarded as estimates for the likely minimum frequencies (see also Brackenridge, 2012: 55).

To summarize the information obtained, we grouped the variables pertaining to experienced violence into three categories. Emotional abuse consists of being ridiculed, yelled at and threatened (Cronbach’s α=0.77). Physical violence covers grabbing, pushing and hitting (Cronbach’s α=0.85). Sexual harassment or violence covers being touched, kissed and proposed or forced to perform intercourse or oral sex (Cronbach’s α=0.93). At this point, we excluded ‘telling sex-related jokes’ and ‘offering alcohol or drugs’ from the groupings because they are not necessarily interpreted negatively by the respondents although the former is clearly inappropriate and the latter is illegal in Finland.

Although the domination of sports activities makes it difficult to compare the experiences of violence according to activity type (grouped as sports, music, organizational or ‘other’ in the questionnaire), it seems that various forms of emotional abuse were most common in sports, with over 30% (31.3%) of boys and nearly 15% (14.7%) of girls reporting emotional abuse. Similar patterns were not found in the experiences of physical and sexual violence, which were distributed more evenly along with the type of activity.

Gendered experiences of violence

Clear gendered patterns in the experiences of violence perpetrated by leaders or coaches within structured activities emerged from the data. When examining all the forms of violence together, boys reported experiences of violence roughly twice as often as girls did. As can be inferred from Table 2, the overrepresentation of boys was even greater when looking at physical violence alone – nearly 6% of boys reported experiences of grabbing, pushing or hitting, whereas only 2% of girls did so.

Table 2.

Experienced forms of abuse and violence (sometimes or often) perpetrated by coach or leader of structured leisure activity, according to gender (%).

	Emotional abuse
	%	N
Girls	14.8	3957
Boys	27.9	3353
Total	20.8	7310
	χ² = 189.987, df = 1, p < 0.001
	Physical violence
	%	N
Girls	1.9	3966
Boys	5.7	3356
Total	3.6	7322
	χ² = 75.351, df = 1, p < 0.001
	Sexual harassment and violence
	%	N
Girls	1.6	3953
Boys	3.3	3340
Total	2.4	7293
	χ² = 21.022, df = 1, p < 0.001

In other large-scale child victimization surveys, boys have reported a greater number of experiences of physical assaults, physical bullying and threatening, while girls were found to be sexually victimized and harassed on the internet more often than boys (Finkelhor et al., 2005; Kilpatrick et al., 2003). In the Finnish Child Victim Survey 2013, boys reported a greater number of assaults and attempted assaults by strangers and peers than girls. However, girls reported greater numbers of incidents of emotional abuse and mild-to-moderate physical violence, both at home and in peer relations (Fagerlund et al., 2014). The finding of boys facing violence within structured activities more frequently than girls cannot thus be interpreted as a sign of greater frequency of violent encounters among boys in general.

Such gendered imbalance may be read as connected with the critical masculinity studies on how (hegemonic) masculinity is reproduced within youth leisure. Research in this field concerns mostly sports. Although sports activities are publicly regarded as arenas for learning constructive lifestyles and as a means for youth violence prevention, critical research has shown that a positive link exists between sports activities and violent behaviour (e.g. Gatz et al., 2002). It has been suggested that particularly male-dominated competitive team sports enable ‘macho’ subcultures, where aggressive attitudes and toughness are accorded high recognition and learned, and are spilling out into contexts unrelated to sports (Kreager, 2007; Pappas et al., 2004). Further, social control and aggressive forms of it are interlinked with and bolstered by ‘hyper’ heterosexualized, even homophobic practices within sports activities (Hartill, 2009).

The existing literature seems to be more often concerned about young people as perpetrators of violence than as victims of it. However, offensive behaviour and victimization are often interlinked: in the context of young people’s leisure, the activities most likely to result in deviant behaviour also result in victimization, and deviant behaviour is a stronger predictor of victimization than the form of leisure activities a person in engaged in (for a short review, see Tanner et al., 2015: 202). In line with such thoughts, the overrepresentation of boys among the respondents victimized by leaders may be interpreted as a sign of adults’ attitudes, which tolerate – even encourage and set an example of – aggressive behaviour and the use of violence as a means to socializing boys into a certain type of masculinity.

The finding of boys reporting greater numbers of experiences of sexual harassment and violence within structured activities than girls can be considered counterintuitive, considering that in other contexts, girls report greater numbers of such experiences, both in the Finnish Child Victim Survey (Fagerlund et al., 2014), as well as in other surveys (Finkelhor et al., 2005; Kilpatrick et al., 2003). Hartill (2009) argues that the possibility of boys’ sexual abuse within structured (sport) activities should be better acknowledged, as the ‘discourse of control’, the adult-oriented nature of youth sports and homophobic control of sexuality both provide opportunities for such abuse of power and make disclosing the harmful experiences more difficult. This topic should attract greater critical research effort that considers the context of both victimization and asking about victimization experiences.

Looking at gender and ethnicity

Although the small share of respondents with two foreign-born parents (2.2%, n=165) sets certain limits to examining the significance of ethnicity in the data and to the generalizability of the observations, the data suggest immigrant background being another factor shaping children’s and young people’s experiences of violence in structured leisure activities. Among boys and girls alike, respondents with two foreign-born parents seem to be particularly vulnerable to victimization. Physical and sexual violence was reported roughly three times more often by the boys with two foreign-born parents compared with the boys with two Finnish-born parents. Among girls, the difference is even greater (Table 3). Among the respondents with two foreign-born parents, the shares of girls and boys with experiences of emotional abuse are roughly equal, unlike among their counterparts from Finnish backgrounds.

Table 3.

Share of respondents who have experienced violence within a structured leisure activity sometimes or often, according to gender and parents’ country of birth.

	Emotional abuse
	Girls	N	Boys	N
Parents born in Finland	14.6	3611	27.9	3041
One parent born in Finland, one outside of Finland	12.6	238	29.0	207
Parents born outside of Finland	27.2	81	29.3	82
Information missing	7.7	26	14.3	21
Total	14.7	3956	27.9	3351
	χ² = 11.859, df = 3, p = 0.008		χ² = 2.136, df = 3, p = 0.545
	Physical violence
	Girls	N	Boys	N
Parents born in Finland	1.7	3619	5.2	3043
One parent born in Finland, one outside Finland	1.7	239	7.7	207
Parents born outside Finland	8.6	81	18.1	83
Information missing	0.0	26	0.0	21
Total	1.9	3965	5.7	3354
	χ² = 21.158, df = 3, p = 0.000		χ² = 27.923, df = 3, p = 0.000
	Sexual harassment and violence
	Girls	N	Boys	N
Parents born in Finland	1.2	3606	3.0	3028
One parent born in Finland, one outside Finland	4.2	239	4.4	206
Parents born outside Finland	11.1	81	12.0	83
Information missing	3.8	26	0.0	21
Total	1.6	3952	3.3	3338
	χ² = 58.686, df = 3, p = 0.000		χ² = 22.214, df = 3, p = 0.000

The differences according to respondents’ immigration backgrounds were statistically significant in all cases, except in the case of experiences of emotional abuse among boys, which were rather evenly distributed among the respondents with different backgrounds. Experiences of emotional abuse were common among boys in general – especially ‘swearing or yelling angrily’, which was reported by a quarter of the boys (as compared with 12% of the girls). When omitting this most commonly reported form of emotional abuse and looking only at experiences of ridicule and threats, overrepresentation of the boys with foreign-born parents was found to be statistically significant (not listed on the tables). Thus, a few forms of aggression seem to be widely spread, even normalized, within boys’ structured leisure activities, whereas immigrant background may render children and young people more vulnerable for other forms of violence.

In terms of the experiences of sexual harassment and violence, the overrepresentation of respondents with immigrant backgrounds – boys or girls – also seems substantial. Compared with boys of Finnish descent, boys with two foreign-born parents report acts of sexual abuse roughly four times as often, and compared to girls with two Finnish-born parents, girls with two foreign-born parents report such acts nearly ten times as often. Among the respondents with two Finnish-born parents, the boys report such experiences over twice as often as girls, but among the respondents with one or two foreign-born parents, the gender difference almost disappears. However, we must again bear in mind that the group of respondents with two foreign-born parents was small and the experiences of sexual violence rare in the data.

The observation on over-representation of respondents with foreign backgrounds among those with experiences of violence agree well with studies on ethnicity- or race-based inequalities in young people’s leisure activities (Cunningham et al., 2012; Singer, 2005). It may be interpreted as reflecting their vulnerable positions within the ethnic and racial hierarchies – which intertwine with class and gender hierarchies in many ways - that render them ‘suitable victims’ for abuse and violence. Although racist motivations of such acts are out of reach of these data, it is possible that racial stereotypes – representing certain minority boys and young men as threatening, violent and in need of control, and framing the representatives of both genders as sexually exotic (e.g. Yeğenoğlu, 1998) – play a part in who is selected as the victim of violence.

Testing the prevalence of gender and ethnicity as explanatory factors

For further elaboration of the relationships among gender and ethnicity, and victimization, we used binary logistic regression that enables examining interconnections between the independent and dependent variables when certain other variables are controlled for, and evaluating the significance of these other variables. We built a dichotomized dependent variable of experiences of violence perpetrated by a leader within structured activities, varying between no experience and at least one victimization experience. The binary logistic regression analysis proceeded stepwise (Table 4). Model 1 includes only the dependent variable and the independent variables – gender and immigration background – and it reveals roughly the same findings as discussed above: boys on the one hand, and respondents with two foreign-born parents on the other hand have 2.5 times higher odds ratios for facing violence perpetrated by a leader than the reference groups, girls and respondents with two Finnish-born parents.

Table 4.

Binary logistic regression analysis, odds ratios for experiencing any form of violence within structured leisure activities.

		Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
Fitness of model		0.000	0.000	0.000
Nagelkerke pseudo R²		0.057	0.072	0.115
Fitness of inserted variables		0.000	0.000	0.000
Parents’ country of birth	Both parents born in Finland	1	1	1
Parents’ country of birth	Mixed background	1.119	1.089	1.029
	Both parents born outside Finland	2.514***	2.572***	2.357**
	Information missing	1.279	0.904	0.921
Gender	Girl	1	1	1
Gender	Boy	2.503***	2.592***	2.601***
Family structure	Nuclear family		1	1
	Single-parent family		0.950	0.885
	Step family		0.954	0.820
	Other		1.061	1.039
Father’s education	Basic		1	1
	Vocational		1.109	1.112
	General upper secondary school		1.199	1.210
	University		1.119	1.111
Mother’s education	Basic		1	1
	Vocational		1.147	1.126
	General upper secondary school		1.145	1.161
	University		1.296	1.294
Family’s financial situation	Very good		1	1
Family’s financial situation	Rather good		1.347***	1.194
	Some financial problems		1.832***	1.456*
	A lot of financial problems		6.403***	4.862***
	Cannot say		1.004	0.921
How often you have dinner with one or both of your parents?	Everyday			1
	Several times a week			1.353***
	Once a week			2.217***
	Once a month			2.142**
	More seldom			1.401
How often you hang out in public places (on a street, in a café, at a railway station, and so on)	Never			1
	Once a week or more seldom			1.209
	2–3 days a week			1.464**
	4–6 days a week			1.402*
	Every day, including weekends			1.835**
Do your parents usually know with whom you spend your leisure time or go out?	Always			1
	Sometimes			1.794***
	Seldom or never			1.608
	I don’t go out with friends			1.813

In Model 2, this interconnection was controlled for variables concerning the respondents’ families: family composition, parents’ education and the respondents’ subjective evaluation of family’s financial situation. Both family composition and parental education proved insignificant, but subjective evaluation of family’s financial situation was related to experiences of violence: the respondents who experienced financial problems were more likely to report violence. Such a finding adds layers to discussions on economic inequality and the importance of creating equal access to secure structured leisure activities for children and young people.

In Model 3, we added variables conceptualized loosely as measuring familial social control and possibly related to ‘risky lifestyle’: whether the respondents frequently dined with their parents, whether they hung out in public places and whether their parents knew about their whereabouts. These proved to have an association with experiences of violence in structured activities. Compared with the respondents who dined with their parents every day, all the other groups had higher odds ratios for facing violence. Compared with the respondents who reported that their parents always knew who they went out with, those whose parents knew it only ‘sometimes’ had a higher odds ratio for facing violence. In line with the criminological ideas of ‘risky leisure’ (e.g. Tanner et al., 2015), the respondents who reported spending time at public places frequently also had higher odds ratios for facing violence in structured leisure settings compared with those who never spent time in public places.

The logistic regression analysis gives information about several factors related to children’s and young people’s experiences of violence perpetrated by leaders in leisure activities. However, crucially, the associations between ethnicity and gender, and experiences of violence that we set out to elaborate upon, remained. Only slight changes were observed. With regard to ethnicity, the differences between the groups narrowed slightly, but in the final model, the respondents with two foreign-born parents were 2.3 times more likely to face violence in structured leisure activities than the reference group, the respondents with two Finnish-born parents. With regard to gender, the difference grew slightly, with boys being 2.6 more likely to face violence than girls in the final model. Thus, the observed gender- and ethnicity-based differences in experiences of violence in structured leisure activities could not be explained by other factors but seemed to have independent effects.

Discussion

Although structured leisure activities are found to have many beneficial effects on children and young people, our empirical analysis suggests that we should not be lulled into believing such a beneficiary role is automatically achieved or available equally to everybody. Our analysis indicates that structured leisure is a sphere of violence for some children and young people, even when the examination is solely focused on the adult perpetrators. Moreover, the risk of facing such violence varies across different social groups: male gender exposes young age cohorts to emotional, physical and, quite strikingly, even sexual violence perpetrated by the coaches and leaders. Children and young people with two foreign-born parents seem to be particularly vulnerable in terms of victimization within structured leisure. Although the immediate context of the study was Finland, the results have a broader bearing for discussions on children’s and young people’s leisure, victimization and gender- and ethnicity-based inequalities (Brackenridge et al., 2012; Hartill, 2009).

The existence of violence in the structured leisure – especially violence perpetrated by coaches and instructors – is a finding that raises concerns on children’s and young people’s safety and modes of socialization in the leisure sphere. Further, given that such harmful experiences are not divided equally among the children and young people, it may also be conceptualized as an issue of equality. Equality as a concept related to both gender and ethnicity is an outspoken value in legislation and policy documents concerning children’s and young people’s leisure in Finland and elsewhere. However, as the studies concerning gender equality in Finland show (e.g. Honkasalo, 2013; Julkunen, 2010), acknowledging equality at the formal and legislative level does not guarantee its realization in the everyday life.

The results raise important points for further discussion and research. First, it is essential to pay greater attention to boys’ victimization and challenge the popular discourses on boys and masculinity. In the Nordic countries, the public concern for boys often means worrying about how they cope in a ‘girl-friendly’ school environment, which requires quietness and concentration from (allegedly) restless boys (e.g. Arnesen et al., 2007). This line of thinking and ideas of hegemonic masculinities inherent in it leave little room to account for boys’ vulnerability and taking their possible experiences of abuse and violence seriously. According to our results, it seems that particularly in sports, dominant manifestations of masculinity such as rough verbalism are endorsed as opposed to being challenged (see Kreager, 2007; Messner, 2011; Pappas et al., 2004).

Second, our results may also be considered in the context of public concern about teenagers dropping out from sports and other structured leisure activities (Blomqvist et al., 2015). It is probable that the often-suggested factors such as competitiveness in sports and increased attractiveness of unstructured leisure do not fully explain the phenomenon. For today’s young generation, the traditional language of discipline (e.g. yelling and bashing) in sports might have become a less attractive form of masculinity. A positive interpretation could be that present-day children and young people are perceptive in recognising injustice and abusive behaviour, and are less willing to accept it. The existence of coaching practices and other forms of interaction that are recognized as violence by children and young people should be better acknowledged at the levels of both academic and professional discourses, as well as various actors organizing the structured activities concretely, in order to start taking steps in securing children’s and young people’s right for safe leisure and bodily integrity.

Third, the organizers of structured leisure need to take seriously the possibility of racializing and racist thoughts and practices within their service provision. For immigrant children and young people, leisure is often seen as a primary field for integration into mainstream society by helping with language acquisition, offering possibilities for peer sociability and building trust toward adult figures in society. It is obvious that facing any form of abuse and violence perpetrated by adult educators severely damages the expected progress. It is also important to remember that racialized abuse and violence concern numerous children and young people not in need of integrative measures.

Although the findings regarding ethnicity are rather suggestive than strongly proven in statistical terms, they are consistent with a vast literature of ethnic and racial inequalities in different spheres of children’s and young people’s lives. Owing to the smallish number of respondents with immigration backgrounds in the survey, we have been forced to examine broad categories, which hide the inner heterogeneity of these groups. Therefore, it would be important that in future research, attention is paid on representativeness of quantitative samples in this regards and extra steps are taken in securing it. Further qualitative research is also needed in order to get more nuanced knowledge on the interrelations of minority ethnicity and experiences of violence at leisure spheres.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Academy of Finland project Generational Negotiations, Social Control and Gendered Sexualities (decision number 261187).

Notes

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