SUNRAYSIA’S sporting clubs have a chance to improve gender equality, after a Mildura program to prevent violence against women received a two-year funding boost.
The program will now extend to all 15 football netball clubs, along with soccer and cricket, and comes as Mildura continues to record high family crime figures.
The Minister for Community Sport Ros Spence and the Minister for Preventing Community Violence Gabrielle Williams announced more than $1.8 million to fund 12 initiatives to prevent violence against women.
The ‘Gendering in a New Era in Mildura Regional Sports’ program, run by Mildura Rural City Council, received more than $140,000 to fund a gender equality officer to work four days over the next two years.
The program, which aims to achieve gender equality for women and people who do not conform to dominant gender roles and stereotypes, was rolled out in its initial stages with two football-netball clubs.
MRCC acting manager for leisure and culture Thomas Stevenson said the program would work collaboratively with clubs.
“The idea is to go in, work together to identify if things are working well, if things aren’t working well, and then put some strategies and policies in place,” Mr Stevenson said.
While women have played sport for a long time, there have been a surge in players in sports such as football, cricket and soccer in recent years.
But participation rates remain lower than men and studies suggest that they are influenced by the design and function of traditional sporting clubs.
“If you look at a football club, for example, for 85 per cent of their existence, they’ve been a male-dominated environment,” Mr Stevenson said.
“Everything from the way the facilities were built to the way these clubs are run has been … focused on male participation.”
While the program did not prescribe set outcomes, Mr Stevenson said it would discuss with clubs a range of practices, such as communication on social media and the representation of women at club and committee level.
“(It’s about) how many women are in positions of power to make decisions, (how clubs) invest financially into equipment, the way they schedule timing for (them) to use fields.”
Mildura recorded a significant rise in family crime in 2021, with the 1888 incidents reported the highest in three years.
According to Our Watch, most acts of reported violence are perpetrated by men and studies have found violence is more likely when there is no gender equality.
Domestic violence survivor and “It’s NEVER OK” campaigner Kim O’Reilly visited Parliament House in 2021 to lobby for sporting clubs to stand against men’s violence and recently rode 500km to bring change to the way people thought about domestic violence within sporting communities.
Mr Stevenson said a committee of SFNL, and Gender Equity Action Sunraysia representatives would guide the project and more information on how to participate in the coming months.
