Women missing in honours

More needs to be done to break the bias against recognising the outstanding achievements of local sports women, according to Women in Gippsland advocate Kerry Wilson.

On International Women's Day last week, Ms Wilson described the four women inducted into Baw Baw Shire's sporting walk of fame as "superstars."

But, she used the event to draw attention to the continued lack of recognition for many sports women.

Last week's celebration to induct four additional sports women into the walk of fame made it seven women in total - less than one third of the 24 inductees.

“Women in Gippsland is working to fix this anomaly. We spent months researching stories and achievements of the inductees.

“We also carefully researched the stories of nine other women athletes.

“Due to rigid selection criteria that is biased towards male athletes, the council was not able to approve those nominations.

“To address this bias, we need to understand that female athletes have been treated, portrayed and looked upon differently from their male counterparts.

“Sport is not and never has been an equal playing field," she said.

Ms Wilson called on council to change the rules to make it fairer for women and girls to be recognised.

“We know there are at least nine nominations waiting for a chance to be assessed under fairer criteria. It's time for women's stories of achievement to be acknowledged, shared and visible in our public places," she said.

Ms Wilson said sport was supposed to be built on the ethos of fair play, but it wasn't for women.

She said the barriers and bias could be even more significant for women of colour, first nations women, disabled, women from multicultural backgrounds or those who identified as LGBTIQ or gender diverse.

Ms Wilson said seeing stories of women and their achievements promoted that female athletes were just as important as male athletes.

“First we must see it. Then we change it," she said.