Formerly Australia’s first brigadier in the Army Reserve, Reynolds told Fairfax Media that sporting codes should follow the lead of the army in promoting women more rigorously.
“Like in the military, sport requires many different qualities in an individual player but also in the team,” she said.
“We no longer segregate women solely on their gender. Women now have the opportunity to compete on merit in the military, maybe its time to rethink the segregation of women in sport simply based on their gender and not on the talent.”
Last year, 195,000 people attended the AFL’s debut women’s league games, with a further 6 million tuning in on television. The AFLW is growing rapidly with nearly half a million women nation-wide now playing.
Other codes have followed suit. In 2015 for instance, there were approximately 150 all-girls community cricket teams across Australia. Last year, that number had grown to over 700. Cricket Australia, the state associations and territories continue to invest efforts and resources into female participation, identifying it as the sport’s fastest-growing market.
As a result of the rising popularity of women’s sports in Australia previously dominated by men, Reynolds said a new opportunity now existed.
“People go and watch women in soccer and AFL,” she said. “All these people who think it’s about physical strength… it is an important characteristic but it is not the only characteristic,” she said.
“Women excel in sport and in the military because they also have the other qualities required: leadership, resilience and strength.
“There are outstanding female athletes, why shouldn’t they have an opportunity? Of course we want things to be judged on merit, but what is merit?” She said.
While women and men clearly have different aptitudes within contact sports, there are many codes where mixed-gender teams could easily be considered.
It’s not the first time Senator Reynolds has been outspoken in Parliament over women’s issues. Earlier this month she reproved independent Senator, Cory Bernardi for suggesting it was not in the national interest to have women serving in combat roles.
“The senator may have been somewhat flippant in his comments but he could not have chosen a topic more insulting or demeaning not only to all of our women who now serve in uniform but to all those young women who want to put their hand up,” she said at the time.
“They have a look at the women who’ve now graduated as fighter pilots. They look at the women who are putting themselves forward to serve in combat roles. Senator Bernardi, I’d say this to you: yes, men and women are different, but hallelujah for that!
“Throughout all of my career I’ve had to fight to show—as, I’m sure, has every woman in this place—that difference is not less; to demonstrate the fact that as women we can do things just as well as any man. We do things just as well because we’re women, Senator Bernardi, not in spite of the fact that we are women.”