Woman Abuse in Hockey-Related Contexts: The Current State of Social Scientific Knowledge

A new international cadre of social scientists is revisiting male-to-female violence in sport-related contexts (SRC), a social problem that received much scholarly attention in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the bulk of the current empirical and theoretical work on woman abuse in SRC today focuses on the gendered harms caused by U.S. football and basketball players. Recently, though, due in large part to the significant international media attention given to the Spring 2025 sexual assault trial involving five former members of Canada's 2018 World Junior hockey team, some academics are generating new data strongly suggesting that elite male hockey players are just as, if not more, abusive than men who play in elite basketball and football leagues. The main objective of this article is to review the current state of social scientific knowledge about hockey players' violence against women. Recommendations for further research and theoretical development are also provided.