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Sporting organisations have prided themselves on being beacons for equalling the playing field for women, yet an annual report has once again highlighted that this attitude rarely reaches their own boardrooms.
According to the annual Advancing Women in Sport report, the women who are employed at Australian sporting organisations are reportedly being hampered by a structural 13.1 per cent pay gap and lack of access to senior roles.
“Imagine if you knew in advance that you would only ever come second in a competition,” said Michelle Redfern, author of the report.
“Imagine if at the start of every game, you lost the toss and knew that you’d be running uphill to your opponent’s goal or try line for the entire match. Today’s boardroom looks more like a locker room.”
Due to these findings, Redfern has issued a challenge to men in the industry to “feel the weight of this injustice” by donning a bra that weighs 13.1 per cent of the average Australian male body weight, in a form of protest towards this reported injustice.
The kicker with Redfern’s report is that 83 per cent of men working in sport believe gender discrimination is not tolerated in their workplace. Redfern claimed that “setting goals is not the same as scoring goals”.
“When I launched this annual report six years ago, I assumed that there would be slow but steady progress towards equality. Sadly, this isn’t the case. In fact, things have started to get worse. Sports management teams need to take a leaf out of the players’ book and start scoring goals instead of just setting them.
“Pay, of course, is only one measure, and sadly, it’s probably the one that is the most flattering to progress. At senior levels in sport, men outnumber women by a staggering nine to one. If this was expressed as a slope on a rugby league pitch, women would have to climb 17 storeys to even have a chance of scoring a try,” Redfern said.
“Six years on, this isn’t a conversation about gender equality. It’s a conversation about match fixing.”
Despite the finding that 83 per cent of men working in a sport organisation believe that gender discrimination is not tolerated in their workplace, the report found that only 16 per cent of sports employers have set a target to increase the representation of women in their governing bodies, with only 13 per cent of board chairs currently being women.
“In any sport, if the clear, historic, structural underdog carried 13.1 per cent more weight during competition (and in some cases, much more), there would be public enquiries and legislation to prevent this terrible injustice,” Redfern said.
“Let’s not confuse conversation with action. The tilts on the playing field need to be corrected urgently as matters of fair play and ethics. We’ve come to refer to this issue as ‘gender equality’. Perhaps it’s time to call it what it is: ‘match fixing’.”
As workplace gender reporting continues to be a new mainstay in Australian workplaces, sporting organisations can no longer skate past their PR spins and advocacy, especially when gender disparities are taking place in their own boardrooms.
RELATED TERMS
The term "gender pay gap" refers to the customarily higher average incomes and salaries that men receive over women.
Kace O'Neill
Kace O'Neill is a Graduate Journalist for HR Leader. Kace studied Media Communications and Maori studies at the University of Otago, he has a passion for sports and storytelling.
