Gender equity in sport in Australia – how far have we come?

Professor Kate Henne’s ARC-funded project Innovating Governance for Gender Inclusion: Levelling the Field in Australian Sport is investigating if the rise in popularity of women’s sports has translated to gender equity in governance in elite and community sports, and the contribution of sport policies to achieving gender equity.  An outreach event of the project, the ’40 years of the Women, Sport and the Media Report’ pop-up exhibition asked 70 invited guests from sports organisations, media and government agencies to ponder the question: how far has gender equity for women in Australian sport come in the last 40 years? Held on 22 May at the State Library in Melbourne the exhibition was hosted by Victoria University, a partner in the ARC project.

Shortly after the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 passed in Australia, Prime Minister Bob Hawke established a Working Group on Women in Sport, which produced the Women, Sport and Media Report tabled in parliament in 1985. Starting with this report, Associate Professor Fiona McLachlan and Kirby Fenwick from Victoria University mapped gender inclusion interventions and policies at state and national levels in Australia.  

After a welcome and introduction, guests moved in groups among six stations to discuss progress of gender equity in sport over the years, addressing sport and politics, backlash to proposed progress, campaigning for change and looking at the plethora of policies and plans developed by state and national governments over the past 40 years. Finally, guests were asked to estimate how far the dial had moved for women in sport in four decades and discussed whether this progress passes the ‘pub test’ in the sports bar.  While most guests agreed that real progress for women in sport has been achieved, discussions also focussed on work still to be done.

The symposium included archival documents, press material and video footage, including a television commercial produced by the Women in Sport Promotion Unit in the 1980s, original policy documents and even some Olympic team blazers to try on for size.