Hockey Canada has unveiled a paper titled "building the future of women's and girls' hockey" that will help guide the next steps to addressing barriers faced by women and girls in hockey.

Hockey Canada today unveiled a new discussion paper titled "Building the future of women's and girls' hockey." The paper, created by a 14 member steering committee guided by Hockey Canada board member Gillian Apps. 

The committee also included several notable members of the women's hockey world such as Jayna Hefford, Angela James, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, Therese Brisson, Katherine Henderson, Mary-Kay Messier, and Kim St-Pierre.

In 2023-2024 there were 108,313 women and girls registered to play hockey in Canada, representing an all-time high of 19.9% of all registrants in Canada.

Still, there are barriers to entry, and issues resulting in shorter participation for women and girls, who on average stay in hockey 2.4 years less than boys.

The paper identified six main barriers including equity in resource allocation, policy and governance, education and training, data, visibility and celebration, the structure of women's and girls' hockey.

In examining those issues, the report states that, "At the local levels, volunteers are the ones often primarily responsible for advocating for increased resources, which can include battling with teams and other associations who may not have a vested interest in women’s and girls’ hockey."

"There remain stereotypes that women’s and girls’ hockey is not as competitive as the game is for men and boys. This is furthered by a lack of guidance from Hockey Canada and its Members on how associations should be managing women’s and girls’ hockey, which has reinforced local attitudes in some areas of the country that the sport does not need to be resourced as appropriately as men’s and boys’ hockey."

One item the paper identified is the absence of an ice equity access policy in Canada. Similarly, the lack of funding, specific training, and injury prevention for girls were identified as problematic. 

“While it’s clear that we have made strides in women’s and girls’ hockey, there are still several deep-rooted challenges that are preventing the sport from realizing its full potential," said Kim St-Pierre, regional manager at Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities and Team Canada alumni.

"We need to address these barriers in order to create a thriving and vibrant system that will drive more opportunities for players, coaches, officials and executives in hockey.”

These issues extend beyond the ice where girls and women coaches experienced a retention rate 12.8% lower than boys and men.

In the coming months, Hockey Canada has secured the services of IMI International to launch a research process to seek data, and begin a process to further identify needs and address the systemic gaps, as well as to guide future recommendations. 

Hockey Canada says the findings of this research will be made public in the Spring of 2025.