Tigers commit to lead on Gender issues

[Topkent]

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/tigers-commit-to-lead-on-gender-issues-20140830-10aevt.html

The club has already set itself a 10-year target of having a staff corps with a 50/50 gender split.

Using a groundbreaking, and in parts confronting, report from a three-year Australian Sports Commission and AFL-backed project as a guide, the Tigers believe they will reap considerable financial rewards through the affirmative action.

A strong theme of the paper is that women have suffered from a commonly held belief within the AFL that they should "fit in" to the culture, rather than have cultures adapted to be more inclusive.


2 Points Here-

- What a ******* load of garbage, Stop making a big deal out of having women in sport
Either they are suitable for the job and they should get it, or there are 500 blokes who are better and they should deal with it
Why do you NEED a 50/50 split, how about just the best available .. Stop bringing Gender into it


- Common Belief they should 'fit' into the culture rather than the culture adapting
Why should the majority change for the minority? Footy is footy .. You should fit into the footy culture because it is what it is
It was created 150 years ago and people love it because it is its own culture, stop trying to accommodate it so everyone can get involved

The amount of talk about the stopping of sexism, racism etc
Then we take every woman, black etc person and we make a big deal out of everything they do like they are 'different' to us and there achievements should be celebrated differently

Its just a different form of what they want to stop

BEFORE PEOPLE SOOK AND GET THIS WRONG
I HAVE NO ISSUE WITH WOMEN IN FOOTY, BUT STOP CALLING THEM WOMEN IN FOOTY AND CALL THEM THE ASSISTANT COACH OR THE PRESIDENT , NOT 'FEMALE' MEMBER


People who missed the point list
radiojake

 

[radiojake]

This thread will not end well.

Why are you so threatened?

I'm all for this just so all those jimmies can be rustled...

I'll try to keep an updated list of those whose jimmies were rustled...

1) nickgrant69
2) Barry_Badrinath

 

[Topkent]

This thread will not end well.

Why are you so threatened?

I'm all for this just so all those jimmies can be rustled...

I'll try to keep an updated list of those whose jimmies were rustled...

1) nickgrant69

How am I possibly threatened? Hire 1000 women for all I care
Just when you do it there is no need to say they are a woman or gay or black, just tell us why they are good

 

[Rainfall]

I HAVE NO ISSUE WITH WOMEN IN FOOTY, BUT STOP CALLING THEM WOMEN IN FOOTY AND CALL THEM THE ASSISTANT COACH OR THE PRESIDENT , NOT 'FEMALE' MEMBER

They say it like they're nervous about a female being around, kind of like a nerdy virgin

 

[Blackas87]

Why not just hire the best people for the job regardless of gender.

 

[Topkent]

Why not just hire the best people for the job regardless of gender.

Thats pretty much my point whether or not it comes across in my spiel at the top
Hire the best person, if that is a man/woman/alien/cow then whatever, it doesnt need to be mentioned

Just give them the job

 

[tigs2010]

Why not just hire the best people for the job regardless of gender.

Precisely.

 

[radiojake]

How am I possibly threatened?

I don't know - You tell me. But your post is hyperbolic, it reads as hysterical and you actually resorted to a paragraph of caps.

I read it that you were somehow threatened by it, and your jimmies were rustled...

 

[Cmarsh]

As a male who is a nurse, I am often curious to see in the media advocacy groups campaigning to see women being encouraged into traditionally male industries like mining and engineering.

However I often wonder why there is a complete lack of vice versa encouragement for men to go into traditional female dominated roles.

For instance I have not come across any promotion of men to go into nursing during my career despite 90% of nursing graduates being female and despite men being just as capable as women in fulfilling nursing roles.

 

[Topkent]

I don't know - You tell me. But your post is hyperbolic, it reads as hysterical and you actually resorted to a paragraph of caps.

I read it that you were somehow threatened by it, and your jimmies were rustled...

Because I knew there would be people who would read what I said, and automatically jump to a conclusion that Im a sexist or 'threatened'

You can't discuss it now or have an opinion now without being labelled something
Im not talking about anything to do with them getting the jobs, you made that assumption poorly
Im talking about seperating them from everyone else by pointing out their 'differences'

 

[radiojake]

Ideally, and eventually, the best person for the job will get hired. However, at this stage of the game, it would be interesting to know the current ratio of male to female working at AFL clubs. We currently have 1 female assistant coach (Searle) out of how many in the league? (Quick guess of 6 or so at each club, 18 clubs is about 108 assistant coaches. 1 / 108 - That is actually less than 1% )

Admin would be a little bit better but I wouldn't imagine by much.

The idea that 500 men would be more qualified for the job than any one woman is absurd, so the OP has already resorted to hysterics. In a football club culture where men have dominated for over a century, it's fairly obvious to me why a bit of affirmative action is required.

I'd imagine that once the 50/50 split is achieved and maintained for a while, that the affirmative action ideally wouldn't be neccessarily required anymore... it would ebb and flow depending on the best candidate, but you need a good few years of women actually being around the club before some people realize that they can actually work in those roles.

It's all well and good to say 'Just hire the best person for the job, I don't care if they are an alien, donkey, boy or girl' etc, but when you keep just hiring men, it's all lip service.

Richmond are trying to do something about it.... or they are after PR..... not sure... maybe both...

 

[Topkent]

Ideally, and eventually, the best person for the job will get hired. However, at this stage of the game, it would be interesting to know the current ratio of male to female working at AFL clubs. We currently have 1 female assistant coach (Searle) out of how many in the league? (Quick guess of 6 or so at each club, 18 clubs is about 108 assistant coaches. 1 / 108 - That is actually less than 1% )

Admin would be a little bit better but I wouldn't imagine by much.

The idea that 500 men would be more qualified for the job than any one woman is absurd, so the OP has already resorted to hysterics. In a football club culture where men have dominated for over a century, it's fairly obvious to me why a bit of affirmative action is required.

I never said that there is 500 better, I said if their is 500 better then someone shouldnt get a job because they are Black/Female/Christian

Why are you aiming for a 50/50 split? Why not aim for the best people in the job and encourage more 'people' to study and work towards it

 

[Barry_Badrinath]

Absolute bullshit. Really disappointed in my club over this. Many more qualified men will now be overlooked in the name of equality.

 

[radiojake]

Because I knew there would be people who would read what I said, and automatically jump to a conclusion that Im a sexist or 'threatened'

You can't discuss it now or have an opinion now without being labelled something
Im not talking about anything to do with them getting the jobs, you made that assumption poorly
Im talking about seperating them from everyone else by pointing out their 'differences'

I never called you a sexist or even tried to imply that...

Affirmative actions seeks to balance out traditionally unbalanced parts of the job sector. You can't deny that there is a huge inbalance of male:female workers in the AFL industry. The only people who get really put out of joint by programmes like these are generally (not always) the ones who don't normally have to face barriers to work because of their genders/race/background etc.....

There are programmes like this all over our society. I went to a High School in Adelaide's Northern Suburbs with an extremely low turnover to University. It was so low, that they decided to give every student from our school who applied to University an extra 6 marks on their TER. That's affirmative action, trying to level massive inbalances in certain fields dependant on demographics. One girl who was in my graduating year did really well and got 92 TER. With the extra 6 points she got 98 TER and thus was accepted into Law at Adelaide Uni. If she only had 92, she wouldn't have been accepted. The extra 6 points got her over the line. She spent the first 6 or so months of the course being self conscious that every other student were from private schools and they knew that she was from Salisbury and only got into the course because of the bonus 6 points that she got. There was a stigma.

After the first year, she stopped caring because she started topping scores in the cohort and realised that she was smarter than most of the smug elite private school kids anyway.

Affirmative action was required for her to get that initial shot. Yes, I know that she probably could've done Arts for a year or two and transfered with good marks that way, but I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make and what programmes like Affirmative Action seek to rectify.

Affirmative Action isn't perfect. No doubt, there are issues that arise with it, however the current system isn't perfect either and it currently locks practically an entire demograhic from certain work industries...

 

[Iron]

Positive discrimination is still discrimination.

 

[radiojake]

Why are you aiming for a 50/50 split? Why not aim for the best people in the job and encourage more 'people' to study and work towards it

Ideally, the latter is the goal. Eventually, the split wouldn't be required.

But what is the current split? I'd love to know the current data. 'Business as usual' isn't currently equitable. This is an attempt to rectify that and a 'forced 50/50' for a period of time is probably the best way for that to happen....

 

[Tas]

Get the best people involved in your organisation, be it sport or business. As soon as you make quota for including a percentage of a particular race or gender you are abandoning the policy of recruiting the best available.

 

[100action]

affirmative action: the piece of s**t system that actually restricts quality candidates based on factors they cant control.

committing to lead? more like committing to sending humanity back decades.

 

[radiojake]

Absolute bullshit. Really disappointed in my club over this. Many more qualified men will now be overlooked in the name of equality.

Haha - How do you know that? How could you possibly know, right off the bat, that the men who will apply for these future positions will be more qualified than the women who apply for them? How do you know that the number will be 'many'

Added to the Jimmie Rustled board

 

[Topkent]

I never called you a sexist or even tried to imply that...

Affirmative actions seeks to balance out traditionally unbalanced parts of the job sector. You can't deny that there is a huge inbalance of male:female workers in the AFL industry. The only people who get really put out of joint by programmes like these are generally (not always) the ones who don't normally have to face barriers to work because of their genders/race/background etc.....

There are programmes like this all over our society. I went to a High School in Adelaide's Northern Suburbs with an extremely low turnover to University. It was so low, that they decided to give every student from our school who applied to University an extra 6 marks on their TER. That's affirmative action, trying to level massive inbalances in certain fields dependant on demographics. One girl who was in my graduating year did really well and got 92 TER. With the extra 6 points she got 98 TER and thus was accepted into Law at Adelaide Uni. If she only had 92, she wouldn't have been accepted. The extra 6 points got her over the line. She spent the first 6 or so months of the course being self conscious that every other student were from private schools and they knew that she was from Salisbury and only got into the course because of the bonus 6 points that she got. There was a stigma.

After the first year, she stopped caring because she started topping scores in the cohort and realised that she was smarter than most of the smug elite private school kids anyway.

Affirmative action was required for her to get that initial shot. Yes, I know that she probably could've done Arts for a year or two and transfered with good marks that way, but I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make and what programmes like Affirmative Action seek to rectify.

Affirmative Action isn't perfect. No doubt, there are issues that arise with it, however the current system isn't perfect either and it currently locks practically an entire demograhic from certain work industries...

Your talking about action that helps 'EVERYONE" ( the extra 6 points )

What Richmond are talking about doing is giving an extra 6 points to their application process because they are female

So what if there aren't many female in admin and coaching, its been a predominantly male sport for a long time which means predominantly male coaches

When your a kid growing up you dont sit around and chat footy with your chick friends...

There are always going to be imbalances in life, stop changing everything because a minority section of an industry ( across everything not just women in footy ) has a whinge

 

[Mitchell Madness]

The same as the racism issue

Problems of a bygone era have resurfaced, with rights groups pushing a semi-extremist agenda, and anybody who speaks against it is labeled racist/sexist

 

[Topkent]

Haha - How do you know that? How could you possibly know, right off the bat, that the men who will apply for these future positions will be more qualified than the women who apply for them? How do you know that the number will be 'many'

Added to the Jimmie Rustled board

Added to the 'list of people who have missed the point'

 

[Iron]

Haha - How do you know that? How could you possibly know, right off the bat, that the men who will apply for these future positions will be more qualified than the women who apply for them? How do you know that the number will be 'many'

Added to the Jimmie Rustled board

I think he's arguing that if you have a sterilised system of having 100 male employees and 100 female employees, you're almost definitely not going to get the best people on the job. There could be 150 men that are fantastic for the job, and 50 women. Or vice versa. I think, however, it's a reasonable assumption that in a male-driven organisation such as football, or any sport really, more men would be interested in the types of jobs.

Anyone who picks a man over a woman just based on gender is obviously not running a competent organisation. But sport is a naturally masculine environment and it doesn't really make sense to purge that just because society is moving forward. Just reeks of trying too hard. They've got the right idea, but this execution is horrible and I think that's the problem a lot of us have with it.

 

[blitzer]

I agree with the OP on this one. The emphasis should be on getting the best people for the job (regardless of background, race, sex, religion etc) rather than on meeting a quota of hiring minorities.

I wouldn't be keen on this if i was a tigers fan. You know that instead of just hiring the best people out there they will be hiring women regardless of whether they are the most qualified applicant (obviously in some cases they will be, but in others maybe not). But anyway that's their issue to confront and deal with.

 

[radiojake]

Your talking about action that helps 'EVERYONE" ( the extra 6 points )

What Richmond are talking about doing is giving an extra 6 points to their application process because they are female

Wrong. The extra 6 points did not help everyone. It was for a certain demographic of students. That demographic was those of us who were from low socio-economic area and went to a high school with low graduate to university turn over. Kids in Unley or Norwood are not getting these 6 points.

So what if there aren't many female in admin and coaching, its been a predominantly male sport for a long time which means predominantly male coaches

When your a kid growing up you dont sit around and chat footy with your chick friends...

The first sentence is the crux of the point. It's been an entirely dominated male field because of throwback traditions. There are women who love footy and are capable but don't get a shot because footy clubs are 'boys clubs'

You didn't talk footy with your chick friends because you were probably scared of them. I've had plenty of female friends who love footy. I currently play in a social aussie rules league that is mixed. Women love their footy just as much as men

There are always going to be imbalances in life, stop changing everything because a minority section of an industry ( across everything not just women in footy ) has a whinge

Who had the whinge? These seems like a plan Richmond have implemented. Also... minority ? ? Last census counted more women in Australia than men. They are not a minority.