Former handball player, sociologist Béatrice Barbusse is deputy vice-president of the French Handball Federation (FFH). She was one of the first women in France to lead, from 2007 to 2012, a men’s professional club, US Ivry. In 2016, she published a book, sexism in sport (Anamosa), of which a new enriched edition was released in February.
You piloted a plan to feminize the governing bodies of handball in France. Five years after the Weinstein scandal, what has the #metoo movement changed in the sports world?
The #metoo movement has triggered a process of freedom of speech, starting with that of skater Sarah Abitbol. Many cases have been reported to the level of the Ministry of Sports, many of which concern facts dating from the 1980s and 1990s. Something is changing in French sport, but we must remain vigilant: there are always women who are afraid to report the facts of which they are victims.
Have the sports federations taken the measure of the problem?
I am not satisfied with the attitude of the sports world in general towards sexual violence and sexism. There is a lot of stagnation. This is a priority project because sexual violence destroys lives, not only those of the victims and their relatives, but also those of the families of the aggressors, those around them. This is why it is necessary to sensitize the decision-makers within the federations. There is a need to clarify the processes used in handling cases of sexual violence. Too often, the disciplinary committees which must rule on the reports received do not take any sanction or are not seized.
Furthermore, sports time is not judicial time. As long as he has not been sentenced by the courts, a volunteer coach guilty of an attack on a child and who has been expelled from his federation can commit other attacks on other children in another sports federation because there is no cross-referencing of files yet. At the Handball Federation, the federal commission can take sanctions which can go as far as expulsion. Since January 2020, there have been four.
What system have you put in place at the French Handball Federation?
At the FFH, we are trying to improve our system to protect victims as cases come up. We have decided that serious cases for which there is evidence must be dealt with at the national level. This is to avoid the lack of objectivity that friendly ties within the territorial commissions can cause. reactions of the type “him, it’s not possible, I know him well” are still very common, but this is not acceptable. We must go even further by creating a completely independent disciplinary commission.
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