Tracey Gaudry’s appointment as CEO of the Hawthorn football club earlier this week represents a landmark in the cultural progression of Australian sport – it is the first time a woman has taken on such a role at an AFL club, and takes Hawthorn’s senior leadership team to 50-50 in gendered representation.
The impact of Monday’s announcement should not be underestimated. Women languish at all levels of officialdom in the AFL. To date there has been only one female club president (in Peggy O’Neal at Richmond), while St Kilda assistant coach Peta Searle steered VWFL powerhouse Darebin to five consecutive premierships and was a five-time premiership player and three-time all-Australian before she was considered for a senior role in the men’s game.
And despite the many years of gruelling hard work by stalwarts of the women’s game such as Jan Cooper and Debbie Lee (amongst many others), the AFL appointed two men – Simon Lethlean and Josh Vandaloo – to head up the AFLW in its inaugural year.
Gaudry’s progressive appointment comes after a career steeped in achievement in both sport and sporting administration. She spoke of her pride in being the first female CEO, and lamented the parallels with the macho culture in the AFL and cycling.
Herself a champion cyclist who reached world No3 at her peak, she represented Australia at the Atlanta and Sydney Games before moving into sports administration. It was then that she became the first woman appointed to the board of the International Cycling Union in 116 years (as vice president). She reminded her audience that she remains the only woman on that board, a situation she described – with a considered pause – as a “tragedy”.
Last month she was listed by Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates on his seven-person ticket for board positions. This is the same man whose staunch supporter and media director, Mike Tancred, stands accused of workplace harassment and bullying by the former AOC chief executive Fiona de Jong, who made a complaint that she says was ignored by Coates until she went public with it.
In a cruel twist of irony, De Jong, who is looking for other employment since abruptly quitting her AOC post last year, was also in the running for the Hawthorn CEO position before being beaten out by Gaudry.
It was hard to get a read on what Gaudry’s appointment will mean for gender relations at Hawthorn, or in the AFL more broadly, at her first media appearance in the role at Waverley on Monday, although she was quick to laud the progressive turn in Australian sport: “Australia is a very progressive society, in all parts of society, in business and in sport. Inclusivity is now the norm. Possibly it won’t be too long before another [female CEO] is appointed.”
Perhaps this was first-day-on-the-job talk, but a glimpse into Gaudry’s politics was offered when she was asked if affirmative action was necessary to ensure equality of gendered representation in leadership. “I’m not one for affirmative action,” she said. “Perhaps that’s because as a person I found the strength to find a way through. That’s fortunate in terms of what my personal makeup might be. And having been the first a couple of times, [that’s] probably a demonstration of that.”
In other words, Gaudry ran with an insistence on the power of individual strength and resilience to break through so many glass ceilings in existing structures. One can only hope that her milestone appointment will change those same structures.
