In Australia, there are around 13.3 million women and girls- 4.6 million of which are said to participate in a sport-related activity at least once a week.
An area that has a rich history down under, women’s sport in the country dates back to the some of the first women-only sports clubs in the early 1900’s. From the foundation of the Australian Women’s Hockey Association in 1910, to the Australian Women’s Rowing Council in 1920, there has been plenty of organised sport over the years.
This extends to today, where world-renowned Australian athletes such as Emma McKeown, Jessica Fox and Sam Kerr have gone down as some of the greatest of all time.
Recently, GIS held a Women in Sport webinar as part of our Insight Series, where hosts Lynsey Hooper and Mark Clemmit speak with industry leaders from the world of sport.
During the Women in Sport panel, Lynsey spoke to Gen Dohrmann, CEO of Table Tennis Victoria and former president of Women Sport Australia, who spoke firstly about her former role.
An organisation that GIS has launched a female-focused scholarship with, Gen labelled Women Sport Australia as, “An advocacy body that looks out for the opportunities for women and girls to make sure that they're as equitable as possible with the opportunities that men and boys have.
It's a volunteer-run organisation of 11 directors that work on different initiatives that are going to help shift the dial and see more opportunities for women and girls.”
Gen then spoke about the state of women’s sport in the country now, saying, “I think it's definitely in a much better position than we were in 10 years ago. Certainly we've seen the rise of a lot of domestic leagues and competitions for women.”
An example of this is the AFL Women’s competition, set up in 2016. “Australian rules football had a women's competition come in, and that's really been a big beacon of how we're going in developing female sport competitions.”
That said, Gen sees plenty of room for improvement when it comes to professionalism- elite Australian female athletes earn less than their male counterparts, preventing even higher levels of performance as athletes often don’t have the money to fund their sporting careers.
“While the general public expects the women to be as strong as the men's competition, they're still working part-time jobs in the background to get by and don't have access to the same sort of resources that the male athletes have access to”, Gen said.
“My lens is also very much around sports administration, and we've still got a long way to go in seeing more females in those chief executive roles and in high performance coaching as well.”
Gen then added that there needs to be more done in terms of making women’s sport more prominent in the public eye. “I think there's still a way to go, especially in media coverage and investment.”
Media coverage has been a really tough one and continues to be, but we are getting better and our Australian broadcasting (ABC) have really made a commitment to try to get equal coverage of men's and women's sport, which is amazing, but you've still got a lot of the commercial networks where every story is about men's football and women may get one mention.”
Part of this coverage came during the 2023 Women’s World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand, where the group stages alone broke records. These games drew an average attendance of 25,476- a 29% increase from attendances at France 2019.
Gen saw this tournament as a huge boost to women’s sport in the country, emphasising the impact it had. “The Women's World Cup last year absolutely shifted the dial in terms of where it's now at in Australia, and really seeing the Matildas, Australian competition, and interest in football really, really spiking here. Everyone here is able to identify and name Matildas players.”
Misha Sher, Essence Mediacom’s Global Head of Sport, Entertainment and Culture, was also on the panel, and felt the same: “I was at the World Cup last year in Australia. It was unbelievable to see full stadiums turning up to watch teams that weren’t even necessarily the Matildas- all the games had that sort of interest.
“I think what it demonstrates is that when you put on an event, when you put on a show and when the product is good, people will come. People are interested in women's sport. I think that's beyond a doubt now. Every metric that we're seeing, whether that's media investments, sponsorship investment, attendances, the appetite from institutional investors- all of that is pointing in the right direction.”
Looking forward, Gen sees a positive future for the next generation of athletes in the country. “My daughter is growing up in a world where you see females at the elite competition of Australian football, of rugby, of cricket, of soccer.
“It's incredible that what she will grow up knowing is so different to what I saw as a young female- the opportunities have now opened up so much.”
To attend any of our upcoming Insight Series, click here, and to learn more about GIS in Australia, try this article.
Article by Zak Anani
