You Can Play Toolkit

UniSport Australia’s (UniSport’s) vision of Active Students: Lifelong Success encompasses a commitment to provide a safe, fair, and inclusive environment for all student-athletes, regardless of ethnicity, location, religious or political beliefs, cultural background, sexuality or gender.

Underpinning all that we do, our inclusion and diversity strategies reflect our status as an inclusive organisation and our commitment to the sector. We recognise that sport is a powerful tool to promote inclusion and acceptance of a diverse university sport community.

As such, we celebrate diversity of sex, gender, identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, intersex status, ability, skill, cultural background, ethnicity, location, religious or political beliefs and welcome all to gain a positive experience through the platform of sport.

UniSport has zero tolerance to any form of bullying, harassment, and vilification towards any person. This includes homophobia, biphobia and/or transphobia.

The LGBTIQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer) community is a broad grouping of people who exist within the minority of three personal attributes: sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status.

This toolkit provides the opportunity for your club to:

Assess how inclusive it currently is to members of the LGBTIQ+ community

Access information, templates and resources to become more inclusive and be able to competently say to members of the LGBTIQ+ community, “You Can Play”!

In Australia, discrimination still exists against members of the LGBTIQ+ community and a disproportionate number experience poorer mental health outcomes than their peers.

Sport is a driver of social change and as such, needs to take proactive steps to ensure an inclusive culture for LGBTIQ+ identifying people.

Any changes, however small, to make your club more inclusive for athletes, coaches, and spectators, can go a long way to contribute to lowering these statistics.

Doing so will help ensure that LGBTIQ+ people can prosper equally from the physical, mental, and social health benefits afforded by sport.

The statistics in the graphic on the right are from Out on the Fields (2015) and OutSport (2019), the first and second international research on homophobia and transphobia in sport.​

Infographic courtesy: Out on the Fields