By Ashleigh Matosevic – Sports Journalist
If you were to take a look at the remainder of the sporting calendar for women’s sports, you would be spoiled for choice.
To name a few highly anticipated events, the UEFA European Women’s football Championship and the World Aquatics Championships both kick off this month.
Closer to home, fans are gearing up for the beginning of the AFLW season only a month away, while the National Basketball League 1 (NBL1) and the National Premier League Women’s (NPLW) competitions are heating up with the finals nearing.
But women’s sport has a much bigger history than you might think. 200 years worth that is. The A League of Her Own tour is aiming to change that, taking participants on a two-hour journey beginning from Melbourne’s CBD all the way to the MCG, to shed light on the hidden stories about the athletes and everyday Australians whose trailblazing should have already made them household names.
Associate Professor Fiona McLachlan from the West’s Victoria University is behind the research that helped form the basis of the tour.
“We wanted to make sure we represented all of the different decades and a whole different range of sports,” McLachlan explained.
“Not just high-profile athletes, but leaders, coaches and activists as well.”
The walking tour was created following McLachlan’s exhibition looking at Australia’s gender equity policies since 1984-85. She explains that the CEO of She Shapes History, Lisa Sargent, was in attendance and shortly after the pair were in discussions about “developing the tour from [McLachlan’s] research”.
When asked about what these stories being overlooked said about Australia’s sports culture, McLachlan said women’s sport continues to face similar challenges that were noticed during the research for the tour.
“We keep talking about the boom in women’s sport and this progress narrative. But in what this history shows us, things haven’t changed all that much in two hundred years.
“We can look up something and think ‘of course, because all of social life looks different’”. But actually the gap between men and women is still really big. There’s still a lot of work to do on bridging that by telling different stories, particularly from a historical perspective, that we can break some away to address the background.”
One suggestion McLachlan gave was for community sport clubs such as “football clubs” to look at how their past is “memoralised”.
“I work around a lot in football clubs trying to work on their gender equity and the first thing you do notice when you walk into the club is notice the things on their walls or their history, and it’s often all about men. Even though women might have played at the club, or they might have other roles at the club. We’re all there trying to reacquire our sense of race and women’s stories and contributions, and that’s actually a big problem,” she said.
The tour is also shaped by its guides which includes journalists, actors and even professional athletes. Among them is Richmond Tigers AFLW player Rebecca Miller who has earned high praise for her work as a guide.
The Associate Professor spoke highly on Miller’s involvement in the project, adding that the footballer is “an excellent” guide on the tour.
A story that stood out for McLachlan during her research was of Harriet Elphinestone-Dick, who was a champion swimmer and gymnast that had her love for sport lead her to open Australia’s first female-only gym in the 1880s.
“It’s just a really cool story and an unexpected thing. So that’s a good one for me,” McLachlan said.
While A League of Her Own concluded with the final tours last month and attention now turns to the upcoming sports competitions in July, McLachlan emphasised that it was important to recognise these women’s contributions to help challenge the gender inequality that underpins gender-based violence.
“So I actually think this is an important role for history to be taught both in the city and the tour that it looks at as well that produces the micro-stories that work in sporting communities, sporting clubs where we can tell different stories about the women, about women’s contributions and make sure that we value women as we value men”, she said.
