Women's and LGBT people's sport in Poland remains highly exposed to unequal treatment, despite EU and national regulations that formally guarantee equality before the law and prohibit discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity. This presentation aims to showcase a two-year research-and-intervention project (2024–2025) that examines both formal anti-discrimination regulations in Polish sport and the everyday experiences of exclusion, symbolic violence, and harassment in academic and federation settings.

The diagnostic phase combined secondary data analysis (GUS statistics on women's and men's participation in sport, FIFA data, and European indicators of women's leadership in sport), a review of scholarly literature on gender discrimination and homo‑, bi‑, and transphobia, and systematic monitoring of documents and websites of three sport universities and seventy national sport federations. In parallel, two original questionnaire studies were conducted: among students at sports universities and among club athletes, both preceded by pilot studies and followed by an intervention stage consisting of anti-discrimination workshops and an expert seminar.

The findings reveal a chronic lack of comprehensive, easily accessible anti‑discrimination procedures, a dominant focus on protecting minors only, and an almost complete omission of LGBT people's needs and situations in official regulations. The analysis also shows persistently low representation of women on governing boards and key decision‑making bodies, which severely limits their influence on equality policies in sport. Survey data confirm frequent experiences of sexism, stereotyping, mobbing, and unwanted sexual behaviour in both academic and club environments, as well as a widespread “culture of silence” that discourages reporting and sustains the status quo of male and heteronormative dominance in Polish sport.