Gender Relations,Gender Equity,and Community Sports Spaces

Research Context

The data presented in this article are part of a larger project examining how diversity is managed and understood in community sport (Spaaij et al., 2018; Jeanes et al., 2019). In this article, we focus on a single case study of a community sport club located in Melbourne (i.e., the Steelers Football and Netball Club [a pseudonym]), which offers Australian football and netball. This club is typical of many in the Australian state of Victoria—that is, it combines what are considered to be men’s (football) and women’s (netball) sports under the umbrella of one club. The club’s football and netball teams train and play competitive matches at the same facility that houses several football ovals, netball courts, and a large clubhouse with social areas, changing rooms, a bar, and catering facilities. The football section hosts a number of senior men’s teams, including a veterans’ team (over 35s), two women’s teams, an All Abilities team (individuals of mixed gender with mild-to-moderate intellectual disabilities), a junior girls’ team, and a range of junior boys’ teams. The netball club supports four women’s teams and three junior teams. At the time of this study, there were no mixed netball teams and although boys were able to play in the junior sections there were none playing. The club is governed by a committee comprising representatives from both the football and netball sections, and several subcommittees that manage the logistics of each sport. Although the club has been an amalgamation of football and netball teams for more than two decades, its public image is that of a men’s club. Over the past 5 years, the club president (male) has sought to address this image by restructuring the committee to ensure greater representation of females in the club structures, supporting the development of women’s football (which has grown to two squads and a junior girls’ section over this time) and engaging more extensively with the netball section through club events and social activities. The committee, traditionally comprised of only men involved with the football club, now comprises five men and four women, with two of these women representing the netball section.

Method and Sampling Procedures

We utilized a case study design to provide a detailed and rich interrogation of a particular phenomenon: gender relations at the club. The Steelers Football and Netball Club is typical of many such clubs in Australia, containing men’s, women’s, and junior sports under the same banner (Frost et al., 2013). Clubs within the broader study (nine in total) were purposefully sampled (i.e., identified by stakeholders, such as the sport governing body) due to their perceived commitment to supporting and promoting diversity. The case study was identified as a positive example of a club that had purposely transformed its male-dominated culture. As such, the club provided a rich base for examining how this commitment manifested in practice. The club president was approached to be part of the study and, after discussions with the club committee and team managers, the club agreed to be involved. The club was located in a suburb of a major city that would historically have been considered semirural but has since expanded in size, population, and density as result of urban sprawl from the city. The suburb is classified as low socioeconomic, with a predominantly White population. The men’s football team has a century-old history within the area and the club continues to be an important part of the fabric of the suburb. The club has approximately 300 members across junior and senior teams, with slightly more female members than males (53% vs. 47%). The majority of members are White.

Data were collected from the club using a mixed-methods approach that combined interviews and observations. Twelve formal interviews were conducted with key stakeholders at the club. Interviewees represented the broad spectrum of individuals involved with the club, as committee members, coaches, players, or parents of players (the roles and gender of the respondents are summarized in Table 1). All committee members and coaches at the club were invited to participate in an interview, as were representatives from the highest grade squads across the football and netball teams, and junior players aged 15 years and above. Those interviewed responded to the initial invitation from the research team. The majority of interviews were conducted at the club, at the university, or in a local café. The average duration of the interviews was 1 hr. Topics addressed during the interviews included the club’s and individuals’ commitments and attitudes to diversity, awareness and application of diversity policies, the strategies (if any) they employed to promote diversity at the club, and the perceived benefits and challenges associated with diversity and diversity work at the club.

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Table 1.

List of Interviewees.

Interviewee	Gender identified as
Club president	Male
Junior football coach	Male
Committee member and netball player	Female
Committee member	Male
Football club volunteer and parent	Female
Netball club volunteer	Female
Junior netball player	Female
Parent junior football player	Female
Junior football player	Male
Football coach	Male
Football player	Female
Football coach	Female

The research team undertook detailed observations at the club for the duration of one (6-month) football and netball season. Observation permission was gained from all teams at the club. During this time, the researchers visited the club weekly to observe training sessions, social activities, committee meetings, and match days. Visits were for 2 or 3 hr for training sessions and 8 hr on game days. Observations were undertaken by several members of the research team but were predominantly conducted by McGrath and Magee who are White male and female research assistants. The research team recognized that the presence of the researcher could result in participants modifying their behavior. Within this study, the frequency and regularity of visits by the research team assisted in establishing a familiarity and general rapport with club members although we acknowledge that there was potential for behaviors to continue to be modified due to our presence.

A detailed observation protocol was developed to guide the observations. The emphasis of the observations was on capturing details of the everyday activity and interactions at the club, with a focus on practices related to diversity and inclusion. The research team initially conducted a mapping exercise of the club area and spoke with the club president about how space was divided and utilized by teams and members. A bird’s eye view of the club area is contained in Figure 1. During this familiarization stage, the researchers also visited key sites of the club, took photographs, and made notes in relation to artifacts and the organization of these spaces. This included spaces such as the changing facilities, the club room, and social area. The research team then undertook visits for specific activities. For each of these, researchers noted the type of activity they were observing, the space being used, any key features of the space while it was being used, who was in the spaces, their interactions, and how they used the spaces. As well as noting down what was observed, the researchers also captured any casual comments relevant to understanding how diversity played out in the club context. Observations were recorded using detailed written field notes.

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Figure 1.

Steelers Football and Netball Club.

Analysis

For the purpose of this article, the fieldwork notes, diagrams, and interview transcripts were analyzed collectively to build an interpretation of the three aspects of Lefebvre’s framework. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and alongside field notes were entered into NVivo software. The notes and interviews were then coded using Lefebvre’s three modes of space as an overarching framework alongside Baur et al.’s (2014) guidelines for spatial analysis. The latter aligned with Lefebvre’s thinking regarding the social construction of space and encouraged us to examine the data to understand how space was thought about and imagined, how it was created and appropriated, the experiences of those within it as well as the interactions and distributions within certain spaces, and the relations that existed within them. This provided a framework for organizing and interpreting the data, which we synthesized to examine space and interactions within space across these dimensions.

The research team engaged in a process of comparison across data sets to cross-reference and identify homologies, inconsistencies, or contradictions across each layer of spatial construction. For example, in interviews where women complained that they had limited access to pitches, we would review this with observational field notes and our initial mapping working documenting how space was distributed and who accessed spaces across particular times. As part of this process, we further analyzed these data and the various constructions of space using a gendered analysis, highlighting aspects that the research team viewed were important in understanding gendered relations and the production of space within the club. The research team also acknowledged in their analysis that the gender of the researcher may influence the way in which the research setting was observed, with spatial literature acknowledging that men and women see and experience the same spaces very differently (Valentine, 2007). We were mindful of this in our analyses and highlighted any inconsistencies noted in observations that were made by different members of the research team.

Human ethics approval was obtained from the authors’ university human research ethics committee.

Representations of Club Spaces

Representations of space get to the heart of the history and ideologies that exist within a space (van Ingen, 2003). Historically, team sports in Australia are divided by gender. Australian football clubs are a setting where masculinity is constructed and legitimized, and predominantly a “men’s space,” where men perform behavior associated with a dominant version of masculinity centered on violence, competition, athleticism, heavy drinking, and abuse of women (Hart, 2016). At a community level, senior men’s football is revered and generally well supported. Netball, conversely, is strongly aligned with notions of acceptable athletic femininity (McLachlan, 2016; Tagg, 2014). As Marfell (2019) explained, netball is “widely known as ‘a game for girls’” (p. 577) and acts as a vehicle for producing heteronormative versions of femininity. Traditionally, men’s and women’s sports have existed as separate entities within their own spaces, but economic imperatives forced many football and netball clubs in Australia to combine in the 1970s to share the cost of facilities and general club expenditure (Frost et al., 2013). However, this merging has done little to disrupt the status of men’s football as the premier activity within combined clubs (Frost et al., 2013).

Initially, our interviews with male committee members suggested that these historical ideologies had been destabilized, and that whereas the club had “traditionally been very much a boys’ club, it was all about the men [and now] that’s changed—it is a club for everyone.” The club president echoed this perception. Similarly, he noted that the club had previously been “very much a boys’ club: it was a men’s only space and all about the lads playing football and drinking.” Now, however, he saw the club as “much more family-friendly and inclusive, not about the men anymore; it’s about all the teams and we all want success for each other.” In contrast, most women believed that the club was still a male-dominated space that celebrated and revered the dominant performance of masculinity and relegated the importance of women and other nondominant identities. One young netball player exemplified this perspective by suggesting that “men’s footy probably comes first because it’s the most important thing in the entire league, not just the club.” This viewpoint was shared by several other interviewees. A women’s football coach described how “the men’s team is the biggest priority and then we all come after that.”

While the makeup and organization of the club was changing, discourses produced through the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990) continued to permeate how the club was perceived by its members, influencing the hierarchy of who they imagined to be important within the space (Spaaij et al., 2020). Although many more women were present in the club space, the histories and ideologies tied to football and netball clubs as a man’s space were difficult to disrupt and, as the following section will discuss, influenced how space was used and the perpetuation of certain gendered power relations. Similar to Messner’s (2002) analysis, the prioritizing of the senior men’s team was accepted by many unproblematically. Even when it was considered unfair by some players usually associated with the women’s sections, it was not challenged in any concerted way. There was a view that the club was not valid or viable, either ideologically or financially, without the men’s football team. As a male coach explained, “it’s the senior men who bring in the crowds and the sponsorship. They have to be our priority because without their success we will struggle.” The lack of value placed on the contributions of other identities, including women, junior teams, and disability players, assisted in maintaining the gender hierarchy and the power and influence men held in the club. The president counteracted the assumption that the men’s team were essential for financial stability, indicating that the netball and junior members were of far greater importance for the club’s financial stability. However, this reality did little to destabilize the mythical and imagined status of the men’s senior team within the club. The gendered ideologies discussed in this section underpinned the spatial practices that we now turn to.

Spatial Practices: Organization of Community Sport Clubs

Lefebvre (1991) suggests that spatial practices involve the production and use of material space. The case study club is located at a large complex, at the center of which is the clubhouse and the administrative and social building for all football and netball teams. On either side of the club house are two ovals. The main oval is easily accessible using patio doors from the social rooms. Behind the clubhouse, approximately 100 m away, is what the president termed “the back oval.” There was no natural exit to the back oval from the clubhouse, requiring players and spectators to walk around the front of the clubhouse to the back to access the facility. Alongside this oval are the netball courts that are separated from the clubhouse and main oval by a large patch of grass and several paths. The positioning of the netball courts, the furthest of any facility from the central clubhouse, literally placed the netball teams on the club’s periphery. As Tyler and Cohen (2010) suggest, “space can be understood as the materialization of gender performativity, that is, a site on which gender is played out” (p. 181). The physical architecture becomes a spatial and visual reinforcement of the imagined perception that women and girls are devalued and relatively invisible within the club. Carmona and Ezzamel (2016) refer to “‘spacings’ as a way that space is portioned according to certain priorities” (p. 4) and as a demarcation of who holds position and power within a space. Despite the large numbers of women and girls who are part of the netball section, these members are typically on the periphery and not central to the club’s operations. They exist “out there,” or spatially othered (Smitheram, 2011) from the club’s “main business.”

Following Lefebvre’s (1991) understanding of spatial practices, it is important to consider the everyday practices and routines that occur within the physical spaces. In our observations, we witnessed numerous practices that illustrate how the club used the physical environment to prioritize and reinforce the superiority and importance of the senior men’s team. During training and matches, the senior men’s teams had priority use of the main oval. The oval’s playing surface was well maintained, it was easily accessible from the clubhouse and changing rooms, and it had spectating areas. Finally, it had floodlights that lit the entire playing space and surrounds. In giving men exclusive use of this oval, the club allowed them to control the best playing space (Kidder, 2013), positioning them as privileged inhabitants (Stoddart, 2011). Even when the senior men’s teams were not using the pitch, the juniors, women, and All Abilities teams were unable to gain access, a decision justified as necessary to preserve the quality of the playing surface. The only members of the club legitimately able to cause damage to the grass were the senior men’s teams.

The Under-19s (U19) boys and the women trained concurrently on the back oval, officially allocated half an oval each. Furthermore, the U19 and women’s teams would generally play their competitive matches there. The All Abilities team also trained on the back oval alongside several junior teams, with each allocated approximately a quarter of the oval space. These practices meant that women, juniors, and All Abilities team were required to play on lower quality surfaces and less convenient playing areas and were frequently squeezed into smaller spaces. As van Ingen (2003) suggests, those with less power in society tend to be relegated to less desirable environments. These everyday practices send subtle and not-so-subtle messages regarding who held power and where the club’s priorities lay.

Women’s football training started at 7:00 p.m., whereas the U19 boys trained from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. For the first hour, the U19s used the full oval. During observations, we noted that when women arrived early and started kicking a ball at the side of the oval, U19 players became frustrated and were overheard saying, “Why can’t the girls get off the fucking pitch?” and others agreeing. When the women’s training commenced at 7:00 p.m., while officially allocated half of the space, the U19’s team would frequently encroach on their section, resulting in the women only having access to approximately a quarter of the oval space. Despite several protests from the women and their coaches, this type of incident continued. The president discussed how he had spoken to the U19’s coach on several occasions about encroaching on the women’s playing area, but the coach repeatedly ignored requests to contain his drills to half the playing area, suggesting that it was necessary, and that the “girls are getting in our way.” The club committee did little to enforce the intended spatial division.

The observations illustrated the ways in which the women footballers’ space was constrained and invaded. Coen et al. (2018) describe such practices as a “series of micro aggressions by men that literally crowd or rush out the women” (p. 34). These spatial practices give power to dominant forms of masculinity. The limited resistance by women to these practices suggests that they remain within what Butler (1993) describes as the bounds of acceptability. Through their physical presence, the female footballers disrupted dominant gender binaries and hierarchies, and their presence was tolerated within the club. However, their performances were carefully policed and spatially bounded by the men who sought to literally push them out of the space and assert their dominance. Previous research shows that women often feel grateful to have any access to masculine spaces (Coen et al., 2018; Pavlidis, 2020), resulting in acceptance of inequitable gender practices and a reluctance to challenge or make themselves further visible (Gregson & Rose, 2000). This tendency is noted in Pavlidis’ recent examination of women’s involvement in contact sports in Australia (Pavlidis, 2020). Although women in our study protested somewhat, they did not resort to formal complaints or threats to leave the club, which would have had a negative financial impact on the club.

In contrast, unequal divisions of space were not apparent on the netball courts. Women and girls occupied the courts simultaneously and there were no obvious hierarchies or divisions as to who accessed which court. Each team was given a full court to train on. Very few males, beyond fathers of junior players, were seen at the netball courts and there were no male players. Other than the netball representatives, club committee members rarely visited the courts, even on match days, when both netball and football teams were competing.

The netball courts were, as Marfell (2019) suggests, a space where heteronormative and acceptable versions of sporting femininity could be enacted. All of the women and girls were physically and ideologically “othered,” within the periphery of the club space (Smitheram, 2011). Despite the high numbers of women and girls playing, their hidden position within the club did little to contest the imagined perception that the club was a space for men, where idealized performances of masculinity were enacted. It also reinforced women’s lack of value within the club operations.

As indicated, the clubhouse was at the center of the club’s facilities and was an important hub where committee meetings, social events, and team meetings took place. Within the clubhouse, each section of the club had its own noticeboard. The netball teams had not updated this board since 2012, suggesting that it was not a key means of communication for players, parents, and volunteers. Apart from the noticeboards, memorabilia and information pertaining to the male senior football team covered the remaining walls. There were pictures on display of players sponsored by local businesses and organizations. These were located on the wall next to the entrance door, thus holding a prominent position within the clubrooms. Of the 15 sponsored players, only one was female, resulting in an array of male player photographs covering the wall. There were also pennants and trophies on display in the clubhouse, predominantly showcasing the success of the senior men’s teams. As Mills and Hoeber (2013) suggest, “artefacts shape the culture of a local sport club” (p. 494). The trophies on display provided a further visible illustration of the importance of the men’s competitive successes and the invisibility of the other teams. The women’s teams were not deemed important enough to be visually represented and celebrated within the club house, reinforcing the lack of value attributed to women’s presence within the club.

Pavlidis (2018) has critiqued existing research in sport for failing to consider the “relations between clubhouses or facilities in sport in analyses of how women and girls experience inequality in sport, with venues and facilities somehow presented as inert, apolitical objects” (p. 347). In the current study, observations of the clubhouse were invaluable in demonstrating women’s exclusion from the “heart” of the club. It was rare to see the building used extensively by anyone other than committee members, the senior men’s teams, the U19 junior boys’ team, and the over 35s players. All other players arrived already changed for practice, and would leave their belongings, kit, and equipment to the side of the oval or court, not entering the clubhouse at all. All players were expected to use the same changing rooms: senior men and U19 boys would use the “home” changing rooms, and women the “away” rooms. The changing rooms were originally constructed for the men’s senior teams and, although other players were now able to access them, the built environment remained unchanged, with a prominent urinal attached along one wall of the changing space, together with open showers and benches, which were unappealing to women and junior players. The physical environment once again reinforced the space as masculine; although women could now occupy this, it remained symbolically and physically for men (Carmona & Ezzamel, 2016). The netball players used a lockable container at the side of their courts to store their equipment, so they were not required to visit the clubhouse during training. In contrast, the senior men’s teams and U19 junior boys’ players always used the changing rooms, clearly feeling comfortable inhabiting this space. They would leave their belongings and bags inside the clubhouse, claiming the space as theirs and designating the clubhouse as an almost exclusively male space.

The club president and other committee members described Thursday evenings (when the senior men’s football, women’s football, and senior women’s netball teams trained) as a significant social night at the club. On Thursday nights, the canteen was open and food was provided to teams after they had finished their session. The president had introduced this practice as part of his efforts to encourage socialization and connection between teams, and also to reduce the perception of the club as a male-dominated space. His intention was to encourage more women and juniors to attend the social evenings to create a family-friendly environment where all teams could congregate at the clubhouse and have dinner while team selection for the weekend games was finalized and announced. This was promoted by the president and committee members during training sessions and on social media, encouraging players, coaches, parents, and volunteers to stay on for dinner. Each week, the president would speak to the players and coaches, recapping the achievements of the previous week.

Despite this effort by the committee, the senior men tended to be the only players who habitually used this opportunity to gather socially. The few women who regularly attended were serving food and drink, or were part of the committee. Some of the women footballers and their coach would come into the clubrooms and sit together at tables to discuss selection issues, but did not eat or stay for long periods. They rarely interacted with any of the senior men. The netballers were also noticeably absent. Despite training on a Thursday night, the senior teams would not come across from the courts to the clubrooms. This caused some frustration with the committee members who interpreted their nonattendance as a sign that the netball players were choosing not to integrate with the broader club.

The perception that the club remained a men’s space was further demonstrated through the spatial practices in the clubhouse. Valentine (2014) suggests that discourses can be invisibly imposed across space, “influencing what assumptions, expectations and social behaviour are expected or deemed appropriate for particular spaces” (p. 32). Although women and other identities are “allowed” in the space, in a way that they had not been traditionally, little else has shifted in relation to the discourses and practices that are played out in the clubrooms (Pavlidis, 2018). The clubhouse is still the heart of the club, where men congregate and their achievements and presence are visibly celebrated in artifacts within the building, whereas other identities are either restricted from or do not feel comfortable congregating in this space. The women who do enter tend to do so through scripted roles (McEwan, 2002): They serve food and drink, engage in committee discussions or team business, but they do not stay, relax, and socialize because this is what men do within the space (Spaaij, 2009).

The end-of-season club presentation night provided further visual representations of the celebration of dominant forms of masculinity. Awards and speeches focused on the senior men’s teams. Women footballers and netball players attended, but considerably more time was spent on presentations for the male football teams than for the netball teams. There was also a noticeable disengagement and increased level of noise among male attendees when the netball teams did their speeches and were presented with their awards. The coaches and volunteers from the netball clubs spoke quickly, keeping their speeches shorter than their football counterparts. The inferiority and lack of importance attributed to the women’s netball teams resulted in women being unable to command any significant length of time to outline their achievements. They are effectively silenced and dismissed within a public context (Baxter, 2006). Both men and women, through their social interactions, co-constructed dominant gender identities in the space (Baxter, 2006); men assert their dominance by refusing to give time and space to the women’s contributions and the women respond by reducing their speeches, speaking quickly to swiftly move out of the public setting that they should not be taking up space. These practices further invalidate their achievements and reinforces their partial occupancy of the club space. The speeches become a further way through which men and women construct and comply with socially appropriate gender performances, reflective of the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990). Women remain deferential to masculine authority, working the boundaries of performing femininity within this sporting space.

Interestingly, those women challenging and disrupting traditional gender discourses most overtly, the female footballers, were not granted any space for speeches or player awards, a further symbolic act that suggests that the club does not view their success as legitimate or worthy of celebration. Although women may have been allowed by men to be in the club space and play football, practices such as rendering their achievements invisible assist in maintaining the perception that it is still a masculine sport and women’s participation is not “real” football (Willson et al., 2018). The women footballers accepted this without resistance, demonstrating the strength of the existing gendered power relations within the club and the lack of right women felt they had to actively challenge these. A number of the men’s awards reinforced the gender hierarchy and stereotypical discourses of masculinity and femininity. A “toughen up princess” award was given out to a senior male player who was perceived to have displayed behavior during the season which did not align with dominant versions of masculinity. Examples of what might constitute “weak” behavior included avoiding physical tackles during a game and wearing several layers of clothing to training during the colder months, practices thought to be at odds with performances of idealized masculinity.

The celebration night could be considered a “materialization of the cultural norms” (Tyler & Cohen, 2010, p. 193) that reinforces the ways in which men continue to control and subordinate the position of women and other nondominant identities in the club. On the surface, club practices would point toward an environment that was challenging and contesting the perception that it was a masculine space. The presence of women’s football teams overtly challenges the belief that football is for men only, while the introduction of women to positions of influence on the committee suggests an attempt to demasculinize the club’s governance structures. However, our analysis of spatial practices reveals the ways in which diverse identities continue to be overtly and consistently marginalized and devalued across the club despite the obvious broader efforts of the club committee.

Spaces of Representation: Lived Experiences Within the Club Environment

Both imagined and tangible landscapes shape participant experiences of gender and sport (Stoddart, 2011). While spatial practices represent the concrete and tangible aspects of space and the practices that occur within particular settings, van Ingen (2003) suggests that lived space combines the real and the imagined: “it is both oppressive and enabling” (p. 204). In general, an exploration of the lived experiences of club members suggests that, whereas most male members consider the club to be welcoming and inclusive for all, many women, including those in committee and leadership roles, acknowledged that they were othered, and expressed feelings of exclusion and marginalization. Women and girls described feeling devalued within the club by the spatial practices outlined. As one of the netball coaches explained,

I find it difficult that no one values what we do; all the publicity and effort goes into the men’s football even though there’s so much more netball games a day—there’s ten games a day on the netball compared to four football games.

Members of the netball club in particular felt that they were disadvantaged in terms of resources and support because of the focus on the men’s sections, which is reflected in the following remark from a netball coach and senior player:

I personally believe that men’s football is recognised more than a netball club. We do not get sponsorship compared to football clubs which I’m sure is similar to everywhere. . . I believe that the football club is seen as a higher want, especially from the community, and they want to put more money into the football club; whereas, netball clubs go as they have to and just make it.

The female footballers, along with the netball players, indicated that they did not fully consider themselves as part of the club. Several of the female football players were resentful that their achievements were not celebrated in the club despite success in grand finals and the selection of players for professional clubs. As one player put it, “if the men had done this well, we’d all know about it.” Whereas studies in a sports context suggest that challenging dominant gender binaries, through contesting feminine discourses, can be empowering for women, the footballers, in particular, expressed disempowerment, resulting from their invisibility within the club and the ongoing practices that restricted their participation. As one player expressed, “I don’t think the club really cares that much about us, they are happy for us to play but that’s about it.” The netball players also expressed their feeling of detachment and disengagement from the club. One interviewee referred to being attached to the club by “name only.” Women at the club have been afforded little opportunity to reshape the spatial dynamics; they are simply allowed into men’s space. The impact of this, as one netball coach explained, was that the clubhouse was “not that welcoming or friendly; I never really feel like I should be there.”

Male interviewees commonly suggested that the club was welcoming and inclusive, pointing to the breadth of teams as testimony of this: “We are very inclusive, we’ve got the women and the girls now, all the women playing football and the All Abilities team. The club really does cater for everyone and everyone is important” (Male committee member). Somewhat in contrast to the observations described in the previous section, one junior male player reported that his experiences of the club were that “everyone is treated the same, no matter how good or bad you are. . . or if you’re a female or a male.” The club president explained,

Women’s football—we’ve really included the girls last year. . . Historically women’s football has been sort of pushed out, but last year I insisted that we got them on this oval here [back oval]. . . Again, still changing that theory of it’s a men’s club at a football club into a “no it’s actually just a community club” and that’s what we aim to be.

Despite these attempts to involve women and girls within the club, an empirical exploration of the spaces of representation suggests that men’s and women’s experiences of inclusion differ significantly, and that more work is required before gender equity can become a reality.