Australia’s history is rich in sport and women have contributed significantly to that history. But the many champion women of Australian sport have largely triumphed over a system that worked strenuously against them.
Australia was founded on pioneering spirit that encouraged a flourishing masculine culture while social etiquette supposedly restricted women to parlour games. The reality however, was that the physical demands of pioneering life meant colonial women became proficient shooters, rowers, archers, swimmers and equestrians.
Around the time of Australia’s Federation at start of the 20th century, sport became a means for an emerging nation to place itself on the world scene. This early lust for international success outweighed sexual prejudice and even today men – and women –who succeed on the international sports field, become national icons. Men who succeed domestically are also lionised by media and the public. This acceptance and adulation, however, does not extend to women.
Metropolitan newspapers analysed during the Atlanta Olympics showed that up to 41 per cent of their sports coverage was devoted to women’s sport. This was largely due to the outstanding performances of Australian women. The same two weeks in the following non-Olympic year showed women’s sport received less than 10 per cent of sports coverage. Women’s sport coverage on television fares even worse with less than two per cent of total sportscasting time.
This seems at odds with statistics that show more than 3.5 million of the country’s 9 million women and girls participate in sport and physical activity. From this pool have come world or Olympic champions in a range of sports. Sportswomen like Dawn Fraser (swimming), Karrie Webb and Jan Stephenson (golf) and Michelle Timms (basketball) are globally recognised. Others like Kay Cottee (solo sailing), Louise Sauvage (wheelchair athletics) and Zali Steggall (slalom skiing) have pushed both their personal boundaries as well as barriers to women’s participation generally.
The largely unsung efforts of Australian sportswomen have a strong and long history.
Many of the early sports established in Australia were popular in England. Cricket, croquet, tennis and cycling were among them. What is believed to be the world’s first bike race for women was held over two miles at Ashfield, New South Wales in 1888. The first Australian championship in golf (male or female) was the Australian Ladies’ Championship played Geelong, Victoria in August 1894, yet it would be more than three decades before a women’s amateur golf controlling body would be formed. Even then women could only become ‘associate members’, having access to the course only on special days, mainly during the week. This practice persisted until the 1970s when it required equal opportunity legislation to correct it.
The development of a formal education system for girls in the 1870s had a huge impact on the growth of sport and recreation. Private schools promoted a culture of strenuous physical activity. From these schools sprang a group the press labelled ‘the new women’ who would eventually return to the school system after university to perpetuate sporting traditions. Government schools were somewhat slower to adopt a physical culture. Swimming was one of the few sports government schools promoted, largely because of the safety factor involved in learn-to-swim and lifesaving classes.
Although the number of women wanting to take swimming lessons swelled as a result, access to municipal swimming pools was restricted to ‘ladies hour’. This hampered the growth of competitive swimming for women. In addition to this, women were still bound by the fashion of the day, which stipulated neck-to-knee woollen costumes. Swimming champion Annette Kellerman (1888-1975) had a huge impact on the evolution of bathing costumes after being arrested on a Boston beach in 1907 for wearing a one-piece skirtless bathing suit. Swimming for women had another boost in 1912 when Sydney’s Sarah (Fanny) Durack (1889-1956) and Mina (Wilhelmina) Wylie (1891-1984) took out the 100m freestyle gold and silver medals at the Stockholm Olympics, the first swimming event open to women at the Games.
Women enjoyed a growing range of sports in the first two decades of the new century. Swimming’s popularity saw the formation of female surf clubs, although the all-male Surf Life Saving Association banned women from gaining the bronze medallion to qualify them as lifesavers. Traditional male sports like rugby league and Australian Rules football had also opened up to women but the grounds were only available on Sundays and women drew the ire of clergy across the country for playing on ‘God’s day’. Around this time a sports academy in Adelaide, South Australia, found netball had become so popular that it had to offer extended playing hours between 6 until 11pm. The idea of women playing ‘after hours’ was a real social change.
In the 1930s women and sport lobby groups began to spring up around the country. High on their agenda was the need for more women’s sports grounds. Fanned by a new wave of confident and empowered women fresh from universities where they had enjoyed the spoils of the suffrage movement, women’s sports began a new era, played, administered and promoted by women for women. Sportswomen began writing for the press and writers like Ruth Preddy and Lois Quarrell did much to lead the way. In Melbourne, Victoria in the mid-1930s a separate monthly newspaper devoted entirely to women’s sport, The Sportswoman, was published. World War II signalled the end of many of these dedicated publications and columns. Women did not truly re-enter sports journalism in any numbers until the 1980s ushered in anti-discrimination legislation.
The Second World War largely brought international and national competition to a halt, but local competitions thrived. Factories organised inter-factory competitions, sports clubs continued and in many cases grew, feeding on support for morale-building activities. After the war the popular press turned women’s attention to more domestic matters. Athletes who succeeded during the next decade received media attention that often focused on their personal lives. Shirley Strickland (track and field) was often described as a housewife and mother despite the fact that she had a PhD in nuclear physics and later went on to become a key administrator and coach.
Strickland’s is among many women’s names associated with the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Australia’s 44 women athletes won seven golds, two silvers and three bronze medals while the 243-strong men’s team won six golds, six silvers and 11 bronze medals. In total, women have comprised 23% of Australian Olympic teams from 1948 —1996 but have won 38% of the medals.
The major growth sports for women between 1950 and 1970 were tennis, golf and squash, seen to be most ‘ladylike’. This was the era that saw the rise of innovative administrators like Nell Hopman (tennis) and Gertrude Mcleod (golf) and sports champions like squash player Heather McKay (nee´ Blundell) (1941 -) and tennis players Margaret Court (nee Smith) (1942 - ) and Evonne Cawley (nee Goolagong) (1951 -). Cawley, an indigenous Australian was removed from her home and grew up in a white family, gaining access to facilities and opportunities her indigenous cousins did not have. Her formative years saw the passing of legislation that freed indigenous Australians from social restrictions, allowing them to join sporting clubs. Only a handful of indigenous women have made their mark representing Australia. One of the most recognised is 400m world champion Cathy Freeman (track and field). Today, many aboriginal women play in their own community competitions as well as entering teams in mainstream sporting competitions.
In the two decades between 1970 and 1990, women took up a broader range of sports and popularity in team sports rose. The 1976 Olympic Games proved a low point for Australian sport. Affected by retirements and disqualification, the 35 Australian women in Montreal returned with no medals. Efforts to bolster Australia’s across-the-board sporting failure did little to concentrate on the historical source of medal victory – the women. The athletic union nominated no women athletes for Olympic track and field scholarships in 1977. Women had to wait until the Australian Institute of Sport opened in 1981 before receiving financial support and encouragement. Financial support for women in professional sports was virtually non-existent. Women began lobbying for more prize money as stories filtered through of gross inequities. In 1984 a triathlon held in Geelong, Victoria offered prizes to both women and male competitors. The first woman home received a bicycle and first male to finish received two return air tickets to Hawaii.
In the late 1980s Government moves helped open the door for more women to participate. In 1984 the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act was passed followed by several state equal opportunity acts. It made it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of sex, marital status or pregnancy. Sporting clubs were forced to open an option of full membership to women.
Throughout the mid-1980s a series of surveys revealed schoolgirls were disadvantaged, had few role models in sport and those who did not play sport were low achievers. In 1984 the Australian Government launched a program to increase girls’ self-esteem through physical education, the Girls in Physical Education Project.
A major initiative came the following year with the establishment of the federal government working group on women in sport whose report in 1985 titled Women, Sport and the Media, proposed the establishment of the Women’s Sport Unit attached to the Australian Sports Commission. The unit became to being in 1988 and developed the national Active Girls campaign which promoted sport to girls. By being attached to the Australian Sports Commission, the women and sport unit gained direct input into policy development. Today, it works with national non-government groups to address issues as diverse as harassment in sport, sports groups’ amalgamations, poor media coverage, mentoring, improving access to facilities and resources and low numbers of women in leadership positions.
The women and sport program also coordinates women’s policy development and contributes to women’s involvement in a new national physical activity push, Active Australia.
Author: Sharon Phillips
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