“They just wanted to play together,” said Karine Bellemare, shaking her head. The mother got involved, including in court, after a soccer club refused to allow her 4- and 5-year-old girls to be on the same team as their two boy friends. On Wednesday, this case of alleged discrimination based on sex was argued in the Court of Appeal. Mme Bellemare hopes that mixed teams will be possible in the future for toddlers.
The mother of four just can’t believe it. She says she is baffled to have spent the morning in the Court of Appeal so that girls are treated the same way as boys in Quebec in the 21st century.e century.
Shortly after the audition, she explained what parents do to raise their children regardless of gender: “We try to tell them that there is no difference between boys and girls” and that everything is possible for them.
“It’s as if they were destroying all the work we did upstream,” she confided in an interview with the To have to.
Children’s games
It all started when parents from the Montreal neighborhood of Ahuntsic were looking for a sporting activity so that their children of the same age could continue to play together. Their choice fell on the Les Braves soccer club, which, among other things, has teams for 4 to 8 year olds in the recreational league of the “Mini-Champions Academy”.
When registering for the summer of 2016, Juliette, 5, and Raphaëlle, 4, were refused to be on the same team as their friends Ulysse and Ryan. However, the previous winter, the toddlers had kicked the ball all together in this same club. At trial, the organization argued that there were generally not enough registrations to have separate teams during the winter season. For the summer of 2016, on the other hand, there were no mixed teams, they were told.
Mme Bellemare asks for an explanation. She maintains that the club’s technical director, Elmehdi Taha, replied “that little girls are taught differently” and that they “are more fragile”. And that if the boys play with the girls, they will be “penalized”, she reports.
“I didn’t want to believe it. I was shocked. They are only five and six years old and soccer is just a game for them, says the mother. However, the differentiation begins: “It’s sad, as we try to deconstruct stereotypes. ” Moreover, ” [nous les parents]we watch them play and we do not see the difference.
A question of principle
After taking steps with the soccer club and a mediation session, she says she reported the situation to the Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse, which brought the case “in the public interest and in favor of Mme Bellemare” before the Human Rights Tribunal. The mother of the family claims to have gone ahead so that her daughters know that her comments on gender equality are not just “lip service”.
In June 2021, the court ruled that the soccer club did not discriminate by refusing to include the two girls in a boys’ team. This decision is not based on stereotypes, he adds.
The fields and the girls’ program are of the same quality as those of the boys, retained Judge Luc Huppé, of the Court of Quebec. The girls have not been excluded from the activity or the club, and they are not disadvantaged: the training they receive is no less good, he writes. He agrees that separating toddlers by gender is a “distinction”, but adds that “not all distinctions are discriminatory”.
The soccer club asked the Court of Appeal to confirm this judgment. He believes that there is no discrimination, because he offers an “equivalent” service to the girls. The structure of competitive sport has both women’s and men’s teams. Despite the very young age of the children in the target group, this structure aims to prepare them “for their eventual integration into a competitive team”.
“Eventually, the young people will be separated”, pleaded Wednesday Me Andrée-Anne McInnes, “and the separation of teams is not something that shocks, that revolts society”.
Judge Marie-Josée Hogue, of the Court of Appeal, asked him how many children playing soccer recreationally within the club then go on to the competitive side. Me McInnes admitted not having this figure in hand. However, she wanted to point out that the Les Braves club does not, and has never endorsed the words of the technical director.
Integration and inclusion
As for the Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunesse, it wants the club to offer its services to the public without discrimination, as provided for in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
His lawyer, Mr.e Liz Lacharpagne, clarified that she does not ask for the end of the separation between men and women in all sports, regardless of level. She reminded that we are talking here about children from 4 to 8 years old playing recreational soccer. “We are not at the level of FIFA, the International Football Federation”, she underlined.
Moreover, we should not look at whether there is a “comparable” team for the girls, she pleaded, but rather assess whether there is a “justification for this separation”. And here, the club offered none. In other cases, it had been argued that after puberty, physiological differences are noted between the two sexes, but the four friends were only toddlers, she recalls.
To illustrate his arguments, Mr.e Lacharpagne gave the example of a bar in which there would be a room for women and another for men: it could hardly be argued that this separation is not discriminatory even if the service offered was equivalent. “If I want to have a drink with my spouse, to have the same service, it doesn’t work. »
“In our society, what matters is integration, inclusion,” concluded the lawyer.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal is expected within a few months. And for M.me Bellemare, its impact will go beyond the world of soccer.