Patrizia Mercuri proudly watched her girls play Aussie Rules for the first time recently. But the partner with Lander & Rogers admits she was at first surprised when they said they wanted to participate.
As a feminist, I believe that women should be able to do whatever they set their minds to. Women and girls should not be limited by their gender, be it in the choice of their work, sporting, creative activities or any other aspect of life.
In our household which has three very active children (a boy and two girls) involved in a wide variety of sports, we have had a number of conversations about how and why women are not more represented in some sports, and why the visibility of those sports in which women do have higher participation rates is lower than that of males.
My sport obsessed 15 year old son will often question why women do or do not participate in certain sports.
Michelle Payne winning the Melbourne Cup was the subject of some discussion and celebration in our home, particularly because she was not at the pinnacle of a female version of a male sport, but rather at the pinnacle of her sport – full stop. A sport in which male and, increasingly, female jockeys all compete on the same basis.
But in horse racing the jockey is one part of the equation. A great jockey also needs to be given the opportunity of riding a horse which has a real chance of winning, if she has any prospect of winning the race. So if there were more female jockeys not only participating in the sport but also offered the opportunity to ride horses with a real prospect of winning, would soon stop noticing whether the winning jockey was a male or a female but just acknowledge that they were fine jockeys?
The other day while watching a television series which included a female character who was involved in car racing, my son asked why there are so few female racing drivers given there’s no physical reason why a woman couldn’t drive a racing car?’
The fact that he asked that question gives me hope for the future.
So imagine how surprised and excited I was when my 12 year old twin girls said they wanted to play football. The AFL has done a great job of promoting the female competition and in our community it has clearly made its way down to the grass roots level. If truth be told neither of my daughters is particularly obsessed by the game of footy, and their desire to play the game at this stage is born more out of the desire to engage in an activity with their friends. This in itself is not unusual. What has struck me, however, is the natural way that they have added Aussie Rules (until very recently, seen very much as a male game) to the list of possibilities for their sporting experimentation.
While some clubs did accommodate girls who were very keen or who did it because their brothers, fathers, uncles etc were into the game, ultimately they were the exception rather than the rule.
Establishing a women’s league at an elite level has opened up the sport. Not only for those who might ultimately see a career at an elite level of the game, but for all girls who are looking for a sport to get involved in at the grass roots level.
What surprised me was my own reaction to my daughters’ request. Not only because it meant another activity that we had to try and fit in to an already crowded schedule, but rather my reaction (and that of my partner) to the fact that it was footy. Footy is a contact sport – it’s a bit rough, is it really a sport you want to do? Is it really a sport girls should be doing? Girls who are about to hit puberty?
As I write all of this down I am amazed at myself. These were all thoughts which went through my mind, no matter how fleetingly. Yes it is a contact sport and yes it is rough but then so is basketball, a sport which they have both played since they were 6 years old.
So why this reaction? And why to this sport?
At some level I think my reaction was the result of the adage that ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. When we look at footy we see big burly, often bearded, men. How does this picture sit with the idea of girls playing this sport?
How different is this immediate reaction to the comments made about women who wanted to practice as lawyers in Australia. Although Ada Evans had been granted permission to enrol at the University of Sydney in the Sydney Law School in 1899, the Dean, who had not been present when her application to enrol was granted, declared that Evans ‘did not have the physique for law and would find medicine more suitable’.
How different is this to the attitude faced by the suffragettes who fought for equal voting rights?
If a self-proclaimed feminist has this reaction, what does this say about the challenges that we still face in our fight for gender equality and diversity in all aspects of public life?
And what insight does the experiment that is being led by the AFL offer in terms of how to ensure that equality and diversity is achieved in a meaningful and lasting way.
I think this is a conversation worth having. Some ideas that immediately occur to me are:
- Good intentions are not enough. We all carry around our own internal stories and biases and we need to be open to identifying them if we have any hope of addressing and moving beyond them.
- What is measured is valued. The AFL didn’t just wait for the numbers of girls interested in playing footy to filter through to establish an elite female football competition – rather it adopted the same approach it took when it decided to nationalize the code – it took the lead and established a female competition with the effect of increasing interest at the grass roots which in turn will feed into a sustainable female competition.
- To achieve sustainable change, critical mass is important. It is not enough to have one or two outstanding individuals – they will always be able to be dismissed as aberrations – the existence of a league is a beacon to the numbers needed to create a viable and sustainable pathway for women in this sport in the long term.
- The change so far has been achieved through vision, commitment and leadership and not from a compliance driven approach.
As I watched all of my children play Aussie Rules on Sunday, I saw the enjoyment that comes from participation. This would not have been available to my girls if it was not for that vision, commitment and leadership.
I look forward to continuing this conversation.