Reimagining Women’s Sport in Australia: Changes and challenges

Join experts in women’s sport for an online conversation about the current state of women’s sport in Australia.

Recent decades have seen significant advances in women’s professional sport in Australia. Multiple successful professional women’s leagues have been created, like the AFLW and NRLW, and elite women athletes like Ariarne Titmus and Jessica Fox have put Australia on the map internationally. At the same time, women athletes continue to earn less money and less media attention than their male counterparts. How do women athletes make sense of these advances amidst continued marginalisation?

Working together, a team of Deakin academics and ABC Sport journalists created a national survey of elite Australian women athletes in order to understand what they think about discrimination, health and wellbeing, professional employment, and the support they receive. In this session, we draw on findings from the national survey to reflect on the role of social institutions like the media and universities in advancing social change and gender equity in sport.

Join academic experts in women’s sports A/Prof Kim Toffoletti (Deakin University), A/Prof Jessamy Gleeson (Deakin University), Dr. Kasey Symons (Deakin University) and Dr. Zoe Avner (Deakin University) alongside media experts Amanda Shalala (Deputy Editor of ABC sport) and Kate O’Halloran (ABC Sport) to discuss where women’s sport can go from here.

The event is designed to be accessible, engaging and relevant to people from diverse backgrounds and levels of familiarity with the topic and is intended for a broad public audience.