In April 1874, on a cricket ground in Bendigo, 22 women took to the field to play in the earliest recorded game of women’s cricket. By 1904, the first state-based women’s cricket association had formed in Victoria. A little over a decade later, the first recorded game of women’s football would be played on an oval in Perth.
These moments in Australia’s sporting history are hugely important. Not only because they speak to the way in which the idea of sport being inherently masculine is simply inaccurate, but also because they illustrate the very deep foundations of women’s sport. But they do something else too, something that makes them incredibly pertinent today. They mark the beginnings of a story of marginalisation, a story too often co-written by the very organisations tasked with administering our favourite sports.
In her book, Half The Race, published in 1991, Marion K. Stell writes that “a conspiracy of silence has enshrouded the deeds of colonial sportwomen”. Stell may have been writing about Australian women in the 19th century but her point crosses generations. While the modern triumphs of Australian sportswomen are increasingly documented, up to a point, too often the decades of history and the many women that came before today’s heroines are not. And that silence is, inadvertently or otherwise, supported by sporting organisations who seem indifferent to this history and these women and their remarkable feats.
In March 1931, more than 50 years after that game in Bendigo, the Australian Women’s Cricket Council was formed. For 70 years, the Women’s Cricket Council, who changed their name to Women’s Cricket Australia in 1995, administered women’s cricket across the country. In 2001, Women’s Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricket Board, recognising that by merging their respective resources they could do more to promote cricket, particularly to women and girls, began the process of integrating their organisations. By 2003, that process was complete and Cricket Australia was born. But this is not the story Cricket Australia tells.
On the history page of CA’s website there is no mention of Women’s Cricket Australia, no mention of the formation in 1931 of the Australian Women’s Cricket Council, no mention of women’s cricket at all. Instead, the name change is noted with a single sentence: “the organisation changed its name in 1973 to the Australian Cricket Board then on 1 July 2003 it became Cricket Australia”. CA, despite being the result of the merging of Women’s Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricket Board, effectively writes women’s cricket completely out of the official story.
But CA is not alone. Neither the AFL nor the AFLW website offer a history of the women’s game, no mention of the first recorded game in Perth or the many games that were played throughout the 20th century across the country or in the state-based leagues that began forming in the early 1980s.
When the VWFL became the VFLW in 2016, three years after AFL Victoria took over the administration of the competition, they initially removed the medals named in honour of women like Debbie Lee and Helen Lambert from the top tier competition. While these medals, albeit in a slightly different form, were reinstated in 2018, that AFL Victoria felt comfortable to remove them in the first place is staggering. And it speaks to a bigger cultural issue within Australian sport and within organisations like the AFL which have long been dominated by men.
The history of women’s sport reveals the marginalisation and exclusion of women. For organisations like Cricket Australia and the AFL that pride themselves on their message of inclusivity and sport for all, this history must be uncomfortable. Especially because their organisations have often contributed to that marginalisation and exclusion. But they, and others like them, have a responsibility to the full story of their sport. They cannot shy away from telling that history because it doesn’t suit the narrative they sell today.
To ignore that history does a huge disservice to the many women who fought to take to the field, to play the game they love. Women who held onto leagues and competitions by the skin of their teeth and faced substandard facilities and closed doors. Women without whom we would not be enjoying the incredible growth and success of women’s sport both at home and internationally. Success that organisations like Cricket Australia, the AFL, the NRL and FFA enjoy the fruits of.
The stories we tell matter. When the history of women’s sport is pushed to the edges of the field, that has an impact well beyond the boundary line. By only telling half the story, by not celebrating the richness and vibrancy of the history of women’s sport, we reinforce the broader inequality in the community. When we tell the full story, with all its depth and complexity and beauty, we can begin to break down the hierarchies that have long placed women at a disadvantage, both on the field and off.
