STATE OF PLAY
Sports journalist Jessica Halloran has witnessed the victories for female athletes on and off the field in recent years.
For long, the notion of women in sport was met with scorn, condescension and blatant sexism, but times have changed. Here, award-winning sports journalist Jessica Halloran, who has witnessed the victories for female athletes on and off the field in recent years, champions the trailblazing women behind the movement and explores what’s still needed to achieve gender equality.
I FIRST FELT the sting of being an ‘outsider’ in my profession as a sports journalist during my first National Rugby League finals series. Beneath Sydney’s Olympic stadium, my colleague Jacquelin Magnay and I were barred from the Warriors locker room for being women.
It was 2002, and as a stream of male reporters breezed into the changing rooms without any problems, our attempts to convince the doormen we were more than entitled to go in were unsuccessful.
While it was new for me, for my mentor Magnay, it was a battle she had fought many times, with one incident even resulting in legal action. In 1993, Magnay had taken the Balmain club to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission for discrimination based on sex when she was denied access to the changing room for the traditional post-match interview. Not only did Balmain have to pay her $3,500 for refusing admittance to its dressing-room, it had to apologise on the back page of The Sydney Morning Herald.
Other women have shared similar stories. One colleague told me: “At my first State of Origin match a very famous footballer opened his towel, flashed me, and all the guys in the background laughed.” Another female sports journalist I know once walked off with a player to interview him only to have his teammate yell: “Why don’t you take her out to the back of your car and fuck her.” A third woman endured ritual humiliation at her news meetings when a male sports journalist would walk out whenever she started pitching stories, while there was suggestion another colleague only got her job because of the “size of her boobs”.
At the beginning of my career there was such a lack of women in the media box at some footy games that several times I was mistaken for a waitress and asked on more than one occasion: “Are there any more pies coming?” And when I was poached for my current job at Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph, a fellow sports journalist at my previous job remarked: “They just needed a [token] woman sports journalist.”
I also recall a sports editor I worked with in the early 2000s posing the question: “Why isn’t anyone interested in women’s sport?” But the question should have been: “Why aren’t women in sport afforded the same opportunity as men?” Because when women are given respect and opportunity, there is an enormous appetite.
This year, 785,000 viewers tuned in to watch women play their second-ever State of Origin game; more than 53,000 spectators turned up to watch the AFLW grand final back in March, and 409,000 tuned in on TV. There is also a good chance 100,000 people could fill the MCG to watch the women’s T20 final on March 8 next year, which will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on International Women’s Day.
Alongside the popularity of the teams, individual female athletes are also being celebrated more than ever. The achievements of French Open winner Ash Barty (who claimed world number one), Matildas captain Sam Kerr (who scored a four-goal haul in a World Cup game) and Southern Stars’ Ellyse Perry (the first cricketer, male or female, to rack up 1000 runs and 100 wickets in Twenty20 Internationals) were recognised as some of our biggest sporting moments this year.
This year, 785,000 viewers tuned in to watch women play their second-ever State of Origin game and more than 53,000 spectators turned up to watch the AFLW grand final
Women are also claiming headlines off the field. In March, AFLW star Tayla Harris called out the misogynistic trolls who criticised a photograph of her kicking for a goal, and cleverly pointed out this can all be connected to domestic violence. Six months later a statue was erected for her activism in Melbourne’s Federation Square. In August, Liz Cambage, one of the best basketballers in the world, spoke inspiringly and from the heart about her mental health issues.
There’s also been an increase in coverage. Rather than begging for media attention, female athletes are now sought out. Vogue Australia featured sports stars like Harris, swimmer Cate Campbell and Paralympic athlete Madison de Rozario in this year’s July issue, while previous stories have also profiled, among others, seven-time world surfing champion Stephanie Gilmore and the Olympic champion women’s rugby Sevens team. Administrators and powerhouses who have changed the face of sport – like Harvey Norman CEO Katie Page – have been recognised on the magazine’s pages.
Young girls need role models like these, women who embody confidence, leadership and success, and thankfully exposure is expanding. Turn on the TV and there are more female sports broadcasters than ever before: Fox League broadcaster Yvonne Sampson is lauded as an astute analyst of the game; the talented Kelli Underwood hosts sports programs for the ABC and Fox Sports; while former cricketers-turned-analysts Mel Jones and Lisa Sthaleka are prolific commentators on both men’s and women’s cricket broadcasts.
Other influencers include Peggy O’Neal, the president of Richmond AFL club, which has a board made up of 40 per cent women. (This year the club’s Tigers team won their second premiership in just three years.) Meanwhile, Sport Australia CEO Kate Palmer helped negotiate $150 million in the Federal budget this year to ensure there are women’s changing rooms facilities at sporting grounds so some no longer have to get dressed “behind towels in their cars”. And lawyer and Australian Rugby League commissioner Megan Davis was at the heart of convincing her fellow rugby league board members to finally stand down players accused of serious criminal charges after a disgusting “train wreck” of an off-season. Cricket Australia also showed its support for change when in October this year it announced the most progressive parental leave policy of any sport.
It’s seems that finally there’s respect, change, an appetite, an audience and a keenness for women playing sport – but it’s taken a long time. Not so long ago TV broadcast bosses didn’t think anyone wanted to watch women playing footy or cricket and they certainly didn’t want to hear female voices being an authority on those codes. Those sexist thoughts have proven to be absolute fallacies.
According to the first female AFL commissioner, Sam Mostyn, who was behind the creation of the women’s AFL competition, this moment has been well over a decade in the making. She says the TV ratings (including the first women’s match between Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs in 2016, which peaked at 1.05 million) have rubbished sports patriarchy and TV broadcasters’ belief that there wasn’t true appetite for women’s sport. “When given the opportunity the public has been able to put to bed this false notion. The numbers were there and they were much bigger than expected. The crowds were [also] bigger than expected,” she says.
Even so, progress remains to be made on other fronts. Cricketer Ellyse Perry, whose performances recently led to an Ashes victory, looks forward to a day when there are dedicated sports journalists for her team – just as there are for the men’s. Perry wants match reports to be more critical of player’s performances. “We’ve always expected a lot of Australian athletes, especially female athletes off the field, we’ve always had a great reputation, but now it is about expecting far more from them on the field as well,” she says. “At the moment, it is still a bit fluffy at the top-of-the-line coverage of it. Once you get experts involved, it really should be critical. The expectation is a lot higher.”
Perry has just released her book Perspective (HarperCollins), and rather than it being an emotional recount on her journey so far, it’s a look at her meticulous preparation. “I didn’t want it to be a storytelling exercise,” Perry says. “I wanted it to be about what it is I do, the key things I think are important and work for me.”
Women beyond the playing field have also enabled the cultural shift. I first saw businesswoman Katie Page in action at an event in 2005. It was her first year on the National Rugby League board and I was then a young sports journalist. I remember sitting in the audience at that first-ever Women In League lunch (her idea) and marvelling at the fact there was a woman giving a football code a serve about some recent player misbehaviour. “That game needed to be pulled up,” Page says today, recalling her time on the board. “There were elements of the game that were bringing the whole game down.”
Page is undeniably the most powerful woman in sport in Australia today. She’s an activist with a chequebook who has quietly changed the landscape. When negotiating deals with TV broadcasters, it is Page who demanded more women on sports coverage. Her backing saw Channel Nine give Sampson a go and soon enough, Sampson was hosting its most prestigious product, the State of Origin, before her move to Fox Sports in 2016. Similarly, it is Page who has demanded broadcasters put women’s sport on primary channels and not shove them to the side on a secondary digital channel. She even helped fund Ride Like a Girl, a film based on Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne’s life, which has been named this year’s highest-grossing Australian film. She also provides numerous sporting scholarships for women and the company she leads, Harvey Norman, is the major partner of the Greater Western Sydney Giants women’s AFL team. Recently, she supported the first female racing duo since 1998, which includes talented race-car driver Simona de Silvestro.
“It’s about making sure you have females in lots of places – and that took 12 years,” Page says. “This last 12 months is not because it just happened; there have been lots of people investing in a lot of parts of women’s sport.” Page’s work isn’t about pulling at the heartstrings, it’s about fairness and making a good business decisions. “People say it’s a ‘lay down misère’, but then why are more companies not investing?”
“The public has been able to put to bed this false notion that there was no appetite. The numbers were there and they were much bigger than expected”
In a newly created role, former News Corp executive Liz Deegan has become the chief corporate affairs officer at the NRL. Deegan is a trailblazer in many senses. At News, she was the first female newspaper editor in Queensland and she’s now the first woman on the senior NRL executive. Many years ago, she was also one of the first women to cover rugby league’s then night of nights, the Rothmans Medal. Back then no-one (especially sports reporters) covered player misbehaviour, but when Deegan witnessed a fight at the after-party at the Hilton, it became a news story. “The night ended with a punch-up on the dance floor involving a couple of players and as an ambitious young reporter I thought it was newsworthy,” Deegan recalls. “Ironically, it upset a few male sports journalists who told me I had broken the code.”
Today she is a key NRL hire, set to lead its reputation and communications strategy and help repair the damage inflicted by the horror off-season in 2019. “There is so much more to this sport than off-field misdemeanours,” Deegan says. “This is a sport which unites and connects communities, inspires kids, ignites tribal passions and makes an extraordinary social contribution to Australia.”
The women’s rugby league game is a positive beacon among the scandal – with more than 1.5 million tuning into watch the women’s State Of Origin, women now refereeing men’s NRL games, and the second season of the NRLW all signalling a bright future.
For me, after a handful of sexist incidents at the start of my career, footballers, coaches and administrators have been nothing but respectful, bar a few natural blow-ups on thorny subjects or stories.
Looking towards the future, everything is better from the ground up. Not perfect, but better. Even stadiums are becoming more accommodating of women. Kerrie Mather, the first female chief executive of the SCG Trust, is overseeing the new stadium development at Sydney’s Moore Park, which attracts more than 1.5 million visitors a year. “A lack of changing rooms at the old stadium meant that women’s events were relocated,” she says. “There will also be seven times the number of bathrooms for women. Previously they were designed just for males.”
Progress aside, what’s still needed are pathways for female coaches and for women who want to be part of a football club executive committee. There also needs to be more care for female athletes in retirement. That shortfall is what inspired Christine McLoughlin and Sam Mostyn to create the Minerva network in 2018. “Retired sportsmen are welcomed into a fold of people who care about their post-sport life – but women athletes, it’s like they don’t exist anymore,” Mostyn says. “We had to form Minerva after talking to some of the greatest women elite athletes, whom no-one had spoken to about their post-sport life. We are there to help them navigate this time.” So there’s definitely hope.
On the business front, Page remains focussed. “We’ve had a great year, it’s now about how do you go from here, but you don’t take your foot off the pedal,” she says. “The generation coming through will see both men and women get an equal opportunity at the top of sport.” Jessica Halloran is a Sunday Telegraph sports columnist and author.