Women's rugby in NZ may be on a roll, but it took almost 100 years to break down the societal barriers stopping females officially taking the field. And the status of the women's game still feels precarious, writes Toni Bruce.
As we look forward to Saturday’s Farah Palmer Cup premiership final between Canterbury and Waikato, being broadcast live on Sky, it’s worth reflecting on how far women’s rugby has come in a relatively short time.
Earlier this week, a new women’s semi-professional competition, Super Rugby Aupiki, was announced, creating an additional pathway to national selection and a professional career. Even if the season only lasts four weeks, it builds on the success of this year’s one-off Blues versus Chiefs women’s exhibition match at Eden Park, which showed women’s rugby can attract both fans to the grounds and TV viewers.
This new competition reflects the rapid growth and growing professionalism in a game that New Zealand women have dominated since the 1990s.
Accolades and global recognition for New Zealand’s rugby women have come thick and fast, accelerating in recent years.
Five-time World Cup winners. Olympic gold and silver medallists. World Rugby team of the year. Five-time Women’s Sevens Series winners. Hosts of the next women’s Rugby World Cup next year. Not to forget that the Black Ferns 15s - leaving next week to play in Europe - are one of the most-winning Rugby World Cup teams ever.
The achievements don’t stop there. Individual players have won seven World Rugby Sevens and five World Rugby player of the year awards. Portia Woodman - now the most famous Woodman player - recently won World Rugby Women’s Sevens player of the decade and the women’s 15s try of the decade, as well as World Rugby women’s and Sevens player of the year awards.
Media have embraced her skill and talent, reflecting on whether she is “the best women’s rugby player on the planet” and describing her as the “Black Ferns wonder wing” and her rugby style as “fast, furious and full of excitement”.
Then there are the New Zealand awards. Three-time rugby team of the year. First women to win player of the year and Māori player of the year. New Zealand Sevens player of the year. Twice New Zealand co-coaches of the year.
Almost 30,000 fans turned up to watch the inaugural Black Ferns versus Wallaroos double-headers with the All Blacks and Wallabies in 2018, and the games attracted high TV ratings.
Former Poverty Bay representative and rugby fan, Richard Bruce, who has been watching rugby for 75 years, now prefers the women game because it’s more exciting. “It has all of the speed, energy and skill, without the brutality or the desire to hurt people,” he says.
Many players have become household names. Some will be familiar - Woodman, Michaela Blyde, Kendra Cocksedge, Sarah Hirini, Tyler Nathan-Wong and Ruby Tui. Others won their awards in the shade of little media or public attention, such as Kayla McAlister, Farah Palmer, Carla Hohepa and Monique Hirovanaa.
In the light of these recent successes, it would be easy to forget how hard women had to fight to carve out space for themselves in the ‘national’ game. Many Kiwis have no idea how long women have desired to play rugby.
What is shocking, but perhaps not surprising, is that it took almost 100 years to break down the societal barriers that stopped women officially taking the field. Indeed, until recently, rugby was so strongly naturalised as a masculine sport played by males, the idea of women playing was almost incomprehensible.
We’ve come a long way, baby
In the well-known phrase that emerged in the late 1960s we've come a long way from 1891 when the Auckland Star newspaper described women's desire to play rugby as "essentially unwomanly" and the game as something "for which women are constitutionally unfitted".
The women pushed back against such views, presenting women’s rugby as “a clever game without any of the roughness characteristic of men’s play” and arguing that the public would see “not the slightest breach of propriety”. Even though some media were mildly supportive - such as the writer who identified the players as “muscular girls of respectable character” - the attempt to start the first women’s team failed.
"We’re invited to the party and we are celebrated, but there’s always a risk that we could be kicked out.” - Dr Farah Palmer
We’ve also come a long way from women’s next attempt in 1921, when fears arose that playing rugby would simultaneously undermine women’s femininity and men’s masculinity.
As one journalist wrote, “Football is a man’s game, but if the ‘chummy’ girls want to play it, let them. But we don’t want our girls to become half-men. Personally, I have as much contempt for masculine girls as for ‘sissy’ boys.” Even the New Zealand Education Department urged females who were interested in playing rugby “to consider the possible consequences...to the future mothers of the race”.
A female London doctor quoted in the Auckland Star went as far as to suggest that women playing “strenuous sports” like rugby could lead to “racial suicide” because they would be unable to bear masculine sons. Instead, sons born to sportswomen “are apt to be puny and delicate, or generally emasculate or of inferior type.”
Both these attempts, 30 years apart, failed, leaving rugby to further solidify its masculine status, and resigning women to roles supporting on the sidelines, washing team jerseys and providing food for after-match functions.
Indeed, it was further 50 years before women’s rugby finally gained some traction. A century after the first attempts, an official New Zealand women’s team competed at the 1991 Rugby World Cup.
Even so, women’s rugby was still marginalised as an amateur game, and the players’ sexuality and ability to bear children were often questioned. It is only recently that lesbian players have been openly and publicly accepted within the women’s game. We still await that acceptance for gay male rugby players.
Female players occasionally faced outright hostility and public condemnation, and their experiences and successes were barely visible in news or television coverage.
Echoes of earlier ideas have also continued. Dr Farah Palmer - after whom the Farah Palmer Cup is named - recalls being asked questions about her ability to have children and rugby’s effect on her reproductive capabilities.
Luckily her family’s concerns about injury quickly disappeared. “I think my mum was worried,” the former Black Ferns captain says, “but once she saw me play, she was, ‘Get in there! Get in that ruck!’” Palmer also remembers the pressure to wear feminine clothes and make-up.
Palmers’ ongoing involvement in women’s rugby since 1992 - as a player, captain of three Rugby World Cup-winning teams, and current New Zealand Rugby Board deputy chair - has allowed her to watch and influence the game’s development. Even in her time, women’s rugby has come a long way.
In the 1980s, she says “everyone was telling women it couldn’t be done, but they did it anyway. They played on the back fields, got changed in their cars, or tents, wore second-hand rugby jerseys from the men’s team from last season, had to put up with sexist jokes and innuendo at the after-match functions [if they were invited in]. But had a blast with their kindred spirits on and off the rugby field.”
She believes these early trailblazers “had the ‘freedom’ of doing rugby in a way that felt right for them... with very little input from the rugby fraternity. It was both liberating but still very much on the margins.”
The next generation demanded more and were “shocked or vocal” when they didn’t receive same resources, attention and level of respect. As a result, the media-savvy players “now have their own uniforms, often made for a women’s body”, are often visible in awards ceremonies, photographs and media coverage and have developed “their own way of sharing news and the message.”
The current generation are players, coaches, referees, administrators, volunteers, parents and leaders who have benefitted from the actions of earlier generations but are “much more aware of what is going on behind the scenes.”
They want “to change the system” by using their love for rugby, “status, mana and profile” combined with a “passion for women’s rights, gender equity, inclusion, diversity, and a ‘fair go’ to influence decision-making”.
So while we should celebrate the progress, Palmer reminds us that status of women’s rugby remains precarious. It feels like, she says, “we’re invited to the party and we are celebrated but there’s always a risk that we could be kicked out.”
The long fight continues.
* The Farah Palmer Cup grand finals will screen live on Sky Sport 1 on Saturday: The championship final, Manawatu v Hawkes Bay, at 11.30am; the premiership final, Canterbury v Waikato, at 2pm.
