As we watched the sporting triumphs of the Olympic Games, it’s easy to assume that it’s a level playing field for all the competitors. And I’m not talking about the drug controversies.
I’m talking about gender. Have you ever wondered why you have not seen a women’s 1500 metres freestyle race? The men’s 1500 metres is the blue ribbon event, concluding the swimming competition.
Where were the women? Apparently they can’t swim further than 800 metres, which is the longest event for females. Really? All things being equal, that would be the logical answer. But it’s clearly not true because women swim far longer distances in training.
A British academic, Dr Laura Hills, a senior lecturer in the sociology of sport at Brunel University, London, made some interesting observations on this issue in The Conversation earlier this month.
Dr Hills wrote that the discrepancies between males and females in sport “are better explained by sociology than physiology”. “We have evidence that women are capable of race-walking 50 kilometres, canoeing 100, 200 and 5,000 metres, and swimming 1,500 metres. But when women compete in the same events as men, it begins to blur the boundaries between men’s and women’s capabilities – and some people don’t like that,” she added.
“Women have been second-class citizens in sport for so long that one small step can feel like a giant leap forward. But the time has come to stop being patient; to stop accepting incremental changes; and to start sprinting towards equality at the Olympic Games.”
The same argument can be applied to the position of women in the Australian workforce and in business.
While we have made some progress, there is a long way to go.
The average full-time weekly wage of women is 18.2 per cent less than a man’s for comparable work, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Remarkably, given the fact that gender equity has supposedly been embraced and implemented for years, that ‘pay gap’ has hardly changed in two decades.
The average superannuation payouts for women are just over half that of their male counterparts. To an extent that discrepancy can be linked to women being much more likely to spend time out of the workforce caring for children than the fathers of those children. However, the pay gap certainly plays a part.
Business models and financial outcomes are based on an inherent logic. There is nothing logical about gender inequality in our workplaces and businesses.
As work practices become increasingly flexible in a digital world, including working from home, we will run out of excuses for not treating women the same as men. Misogyny may be the only explanation that’s left.
Business SA became a signatory to the United Nations’ Women’s Empowerment Principles in 2014, one of the first South Australian organisations to do so.