WOMEN IN SPORT

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:48): Raising the participation and profile of women in sport is an important challenge for governments at all levels. Only 53 per cent of 14 year old girls and 30 per cent of women over 65 participate in organised sport. Only 13 per cent of executive positions in the top 40 sporting organisations are filled by women. Those figures are of course not reflected in calisthenics, the wonderful sport for women and girls with which I have enjoyed a long association.

For a country that loves to celebrate our sporting achievements, it is fundamental that we give all Australians recognition of achievement, and sporting heroes to inspire them. Women have been sidelined and marginalised in Australian sport for far too long. This has been widely acknowledged, including via a Senate committee report on women in sport and recreation in Australia, which was delivered under the Howard government but never responded to until now under the current federal Labor government.

In conjunction with the Office for Women, the Australian Sports Commission provides funding through the 'Sports Leadership Grants for Women' program in five key areas. These are: High performance coaching and officiating; Indigenous women; Women in disability sport; Women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds; and Women in general sports leadership.

The federal government recently funded research into the content and quality of women's sport coverage, which found coverage for women in sport makes up 9 per cent of all sports coverage in Australian television and news current affairs, compared to male sport, with the staggering figure of 81 per cent. Everyone deserves the opportunity to participate in sport and to be recognised for their achievements. In May of 2010 at the Twenty20 World Cup cricket final in Barbados, the loss by the Australian men's team generated far more media coverage than the women's thrilling victory over New Zealand, and that is just one example of under-representation of women in sports reporting.

Coverage of women's sport is at least overwhelmingly positive, far more so than men's sport, though this probably attributable, in part, to the fact that, if you are a woman, you pretty much have to win to have any chance of making the news, whereas male sports will often be covered just for taking place. Men receive more negative press for questionable off-field behaviour, in part because they have a higher profile and are therefore considered public role models in greater numbers. Many commentators have drawn a link between violence against women by sportsmen and the lack of women in visible positions of sports leadership and governance.

Interestingly, just over 20 per cent of national sport organisations have no women director at all. Those organisations include rugby league, rugby union and Cricket Australia. So, as one woman wryly noted, there is also a 'grass' ceiling. At the recent Beijing Olympics women made up 45 per cent of the Australian team and won more than half the gold medals. I refer to a recent press release from the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner that says:

The achievements of sportswomen are often invisible. On the data available, the coverage of women's sport accounts for just 2 per cent of total sports broadcasting on television, 1.4 per cent on radio and 10.7 per cent of total sports reporting in newspapers...when the Associated Press named its top 10 female athletes of 2009, two were racehorses...women's participation in sport reflects the issues women face more broadly in society. When we talk about women in sport we often raise the same issues as when we talk about women in the workplace: pay equity; women in leadership positions; discrimination on the grounds of sex; the celebration of a male ideal and the marginalisation of women as the physically weaker and the caring sex.

I would like to put on the record the recent outstanding achievements of some of our state's elite sportswomen. South Australian all-rounder Shelley Nitschke has become the first cricketer to be named Australia's women's international player of the year three consecutive times, recently receiving the award in Melbourne.

It continued Shelley's domination of the award by an elite few, with only four different winners in what is now the 10-year-old history of the honour. Fellow all-rounder Lisa Sthalekar, who claimed the top prize in 2007 and 2008, was runner-up to Nitschke for a third straight year, with Karen Rolton and Cathryn Fitzpatrick the other previous winners. Nitschke also won the International Cricket Council's women's player of the year last year and helped Australia win the world Twenty20 title and reclaim the Ashes. The left-handed batter and left-arm finger spinner polled 76 votes ahead of Sthalekar with 50 and Ellyse Perry on 40. The modest Nitschke amassed 760 runs and an average of 30.4 with the bat, whilst also taking 34 wickets at 17.68, during her 26 appearances for the Southern Stars in the past 12 months.

South Australia has recently returned to Adelaide with the No. 1 track cycling state team in the nation. For the second successive year, the Rendition Homes state team was crowned numero uno, winning the Robina Joy trophy and the Southcott Cup. The team was led by senior coach Tim Decker, with the assistance of David Short and Ben Cook, and I am told the management team was the best in years. Of the 24 medals won, 12 were won by women, and of the 11 gold medals, six were won by women, which is 50 per cent of all the awards won.

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