Canadians’ understanding of consent has dropped in last three years: survey

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – In an age where the #MeToo movement has gained momentum and has been front and centre, a new survey finds Canadians appear to be confused about what consent is and they’re not sure how to practice it safely.

The Canadian Women’s Foundation talked to people nation-wide about whether they understood the difference between yes and no. The agency initially did the survey in 2015 and again this year and found there was a shift, adding 28 per cent of Canadians fully understood what it means to give consent, which is down from 33 per cent in 2015.

They also discovered half of the women they talked to have felt pressured to agree to unwanted sexual activity, and two-thirds have received unwanted attention.

“It was pretty evenly spread from province to province, we included obviously French language speakers Quebec. We really varied the sample size by education, by age, by gender, by region to make sure that we had a sample representation of the whole adult population of Canada. The ages were spread from 18 to 80,” explains Anuradha Dugal, director of community initiatives and policy at the foundation.

She adds there were no real differences surrounding the meaning of consent when it came to gender or region.

“Overall, it was pretty even the misunderstandings about consent are pretty common, and they really seem to stretch across age groups and across regions, and across all genders.”

Dugal adds the #MeToo movement has helped create a wider conversation on the issue, but more work is needed.

“I think we can agree that we’ve have made progress but where we still have to go is really making sure that our culture changes so that educating our children, educating them in school, at home. Making sure coaches talk about it, making sure our sports activities include conversations about consent as young as we want to start but then all the way up to adults.”

We know that adult understanding still isn’t clear, we can talk about it in the workplace, and we can talk about it in our leisure activities. It shouldn’t go away we shouldn’t think, ‘Oh, this is so obvious everybody should just get this conversation.’ It’s going to take effort and we’re in it together. I think that’s a really encouraging thing too — I have seen a lot of people rallying around this idea of ending sexual violence and that’s a really strong part of where we can make a change.”

Dugal says this survey means it is important to keep having conversations on the topic of consent and sexual violence, they found 44 per cent of Canadians believe that education is the next step to dealing with this issue.