A Level Playing Field? – What Happens Next? podcast on the culture of sport

Susan Carland:

Welcome to another episode of What Happens Next. I'm Susan Carland, and today we're asking what happens if we don't change the culture of sport? It feels like every other week, there is an allegation of sexual assault or accusations of racism within our elite sporting clubs. Why does this keep happening? Does the elevation of sporting heroes put them under unreasonable pressure and make them feel they are above the law and community standards? We'll find out how some clubs and codes are taking action and how we can all help create a better sporting culture in our communities and our nations. In this episode, Monash expert, Brett Hutchins from the School of Journalism explains why the hero myth is nothing new. We've been idolising athletes for as long as competitive sport has existed. Brett has been writing and teaching about the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport and media for more than two decades.

Brett Hutchins:

My name is Professor Brett Hutchins. I'm a professor of communications and media studies at Monash University. I've got a PhD in sociology and I've been writing about media, political, cultural issues in sport for the past 25 years.

Susan Carland:

Professor Brett Hutchins, thank you for joining us today. Let's jump straight into this issue. Do you think society has always expected it's sporting heroes to be exemplary characters?

Brett Hutchins:

Since the dawn of modern sport and which of course coincides with the dawn of modern media, newspapers, and you see the two rise together. Sports people, and usually men, have performed roles of either role models, celebrities, depending on the era. So at that level they've always performed an exemplary role for some and they're a point of condemnation or criticism for others. The fact they are sort of central or in the public spotlight is what really defines them and they become really a locus of debate depending on the politics of the time and the values of the time. So during the amateur era, of course, which has a certain class bias towards those who can afford to be amateur, they stand for a certain form of moral virtue, muscular Christianity often tied to issues of religion and particularly around Protestantism and Catholicism. But these days, of course, we're dealing with the age of global media, celebrity hyper-commodification, so you see them becoming commercial spokespeople, and commercial figures as much as everything else. So it shifts over time, but they become a lightning rod for public debate in a lot of ways because they are so visible. But what they're actually saying and doing usually requires a close look to work out what they actually mean.

Susan Carland:

Is it fair that we put these expectations on sportspeople? They're just regular people who happen to be very good at sports. They're not moral philosophers or philanthropists.

Brett Hutchins:

If we're talking about sports people right now, there is the issue that the leagues have really created a system in which the wages and benefits offered to athletes are built off a set of commercial claims. And that often produces the notion of their role in the community. Now, if you think about the AFL and the NRL and a lot of Cricket Australia, there's this notion that they perform a positive role in the community. And that's really part of their sponsorship pitch, which of course then ties to media rights, which ties to revenue. The athletes are the beneficiary of that. For those athletes who are prepared to let go of that remuneration, I would agree with that argument fine, but you are being tied into a set of expectations that they benefit directly from. I think where things get really interesting is that when they use that platform, which is so powerful from a media and commercial perspective, to actually project political opinions and create more positive forms of social change around things like social justice and so on. So it can cut both ways, but it's very difficult to have the rewards and benefits they get without actually having some expectations come with it.

Susan Carland:

And having sports people try to create positive social change, is that a recent phenomenon, just an outshoot of the woke culture that we're part of or is it something that's been around for a lot longer?

Brett Hutchins:

They've always had expectations spread on to them. It's how they use them that's really important. These days, we live in a moment where I think social media, the various projections of social movements and really what occurs through what you might call a fragmentation of the public sphere produces a set of values that make sense. Now, the criticisms of so-called sports simply projecting a woke culture, some of the more critical voices you'll hear there also forget that these are also the values being projected by sponsors. I mean, and this is why I think it's a fundamentally conservative relationship, a lot of this. It's symbolic, but if you actually look, let's just take indigenous round in the AFL. It'd be very hard to argue against, unless you don't believe in indigenous rights, which of course I do. It would be very hard to argue against when you think of the personal cost someone like Adam Goodes paid by being constantly booed, but at the same time, where are the indigenous coaches? Where are the indigenous board members? In terms of positions of power and influence and money, where do you see prominent and consistent indigenous voices? And this is where also, I suppose the criticism from the left comes from, that it is primarily symbolic. It doesn't create material change.

Susan Carland:

Particularly in a pretty irreligious society that we live in, it fulfils a lot of the roles of ritual that we don't have anymore. The coming together as people, a collective tribalism, the euphoria. It sort of brings us, in some ways, religion and war together for people in a society when we don't really personally experience either of those anymore.

Brett Hutchins:

Sport engages the gut and the heart far more than the head. I mean, why would anyone sit at a sporting match. If you follow our football team, which I do, your team loses almost every season with varied occasions. So there are only these moments of release where one actually gets to feel like a winner. So in my case, my sporting team hasn't won a premiership in 34 years. I have no expectation it will win anytime soon, but I also got hooked like sport tends to because when I was a kid, they won four premierships in six years in the suburb I lived in, went to school in and I thought this was normal. But I keep going back for more. And I have a very ambivalent relationship with male contact sport by virtue of the fact that there's literally two rape cases going on as we speak by rugby league footballers. And I have walked away from the game at different points because it is just so personally repugnant to me what these rather privileged characters seem to get away with. And also the fact that these clubs and leagues, while they are much better than they were, are still yet to consistently express concern or sympathy for the person who is making the accusation.

Susan Carland:

And what happens if we don't fix these problems, these issues in the culture of sport? What happens? What does the future of sport look like?

Brett Hutchins:

We are seeing a lot of progress on indigenous issues, on women's issues, on representation. The problem of representation is being addressed in a way it hasn't in the past. However, sitting alongside that is a lot of the more entrenched problems violence against women, particularly in male team sports, usually body contact sports. And that's reasonably consistent around the world. If you look at North American ice hockey, if you look at NFL or American football, you look at college sports. All male body contact sports tend to attract... I mean, if you speak to the people who select young athletes, they want risk takers. They want people who are comfortable with violence. And really if one's ever gone on to one of those fields, you're putting yourself at a pretty substantial physical risk. It takes a particular mindset to want that. And we're also relying on people who have a capacity to change their relationship with physical pain. I've spoken to elite athletes about this. I come from a family that's had elite athletes in it. It's around learning that pain is a good thing. And that is a really difficult thing for most people to understand because if you look at it genetically, the figures vary, but less than 2% of the population has the capacity to play at the elite level. Like to basically be given the talent, about 2% of the population has the potential, which is also why I think we have some problems in junior sport because people being pushed into something that isn't really realistic for them is a bit of a problem. But when you take those characteristics, a relationship with pain, that pain is good, you take risk-taking, you take male comradery. You take mostly all male environments in which women may serve as physios and perhaps board members, but they’re not a regular feature, it produces certain forms of insulation or insensitivity from wider community norms around what appropriate behaviour is.

Susan Carland:

So if we are cultivating this, we are requiring our elite sports people to be aggressive, to welcome pain, to be comfortable inflicting pain on others in some capacity in contact sport, to be selfish. You have to be selfish to be an elite sports person. How realistic is it for us to expect them to behave the way in which we require them to on the field and then flick a switch and be gentle, calm, good people off the field?

Brett Hutchins:

It isn't, but that is what we demand of them.

Susan Carland:

So what happens next?

Brett Hutchins:

The problems will likely continue. If we actually see a change in those who exercise power in sport, particularly away from just former male players, who played in an even more violent era. To actually get different voices into clubs, into club rooms, in even player agents. Why are they no female player agents? This is an extraordinary thing when you think about it. Now, players often have a closer relationship with their player agent than they do with anyone else these days because they don’t talk to journalists and they're full-time professionals, so they don't hold down other jobs, yet for some reason being a player agent effectively requires an XY chromosome for some reason, it makes no sense in terms of commercial savvy. So really, where there needs to come from is around whose voices matter at the level of decision-making power, at the level of money. Because in professional sport, a lot of this comes back to money, of course. Player unions is really important. Which is hard because athletes are often hard to organise politically for the record. Individually driven, self-sacrificing, selfish by virtue of what is demanded of their bodies and the discipline and the routine that is required to be successful in the way that we celebrate them for being successful. This is our thing. And also I think it talks to a broader awareness among those who are fans, that when one is cheering for the big hit, when one is cheering for watching someone take somebody out. And I've grown up in a rugby league family. I had a particularly, actually shame is probably not too strong a word, but there was a brawl in the State of Origin a few years back where Paul Gallen, the New South Wales captain, punched Nate Myles out of the blue. Just absolutely clocked him. And of course I smiled and I'm sitting on the lounge with my son and he's got a look of horror on his face. And this is what I mean. It's like I grew up playing the game. This is the brawls, the biff. This is part of the way the game is commercialised and promoted. And it's around changing what we value and fans understanding that if you are going to celebrate that player, you might not want to then criticise too much when they can't turn it off, off the field.

Susan Carland:

But the majority of male sports stars don't do these things. Majority of our AFL or NRL players are not involved in rape cases or sexual assault cases. So there clearly is the capacity to be excellent on the field and not a jerk off the field.

Brett Hutchins:

That's right. And this is my question, and this is the other thing that is missing in the public responses to allegations of sexual assault and rape. Where are the other players coming out against a player for putting themselves in that position?

Susan Carland:

I wonder if that's actually the biggest role, the peer role, other guys saying this isn't what we do?

Brett Hutchins:

And it's completely lacking, at least in a public sense. The problem with team sports, it's about bonding. Sticking by your mate - and fans feel the same way. It's stunning to me that someone who can be so aware of these issues in other areas, so let's say sexual harassment in the workplace, incredibly aware, incredibly strong, but the moment this comes up around someone in their football team, the benefit of the doubt needs to be given to the player. This hasn't been proven. And so, well, yes, it hasn't been proven, but what is it about the fact that these situations keep occurring? There is a statistical correlation between their frequency and the fact that footballers tend to be involved in them. When are we going to, when are players going to actually speak up or express concern for the victim -  because that would be betraying a mate. And the language of sport is quite powerful in this sense. Coaches wanting teams to stay together because really having a lack of conflict in a team is of course absolutely essential to success. So at one level, the things we value, the things we, I suppose, exalt in sport, which is teamwork becomes a negative at the moment where someone in the team has placed themselves in a situation where someone has been quite badly hurt. And who's guilty, legally or not, but someone has been badly hurt? And where is the concern for the person who has been hurt? And seriously, are we really still at the point of believing that every allegation is false? So the constant things around slut shaming, she was asking for it, she was ‘hot’. You're seeing them play out in the court cases right at this moment. Where in fact, as we know in the way the legal system works, effectively the person bringing the charge in ends up being the one on trial. What are we, still Jodie Foster in The Accused in the 1980s? These tropes still play out. And the only way I see them changing, as I said, is through as I say, powerful voices, player agents and athletes actually being prepared to speak out. And one thing I am probably quite correctly criticised for is of course, the sense that I blame all players. And I'm saying you can't claim to be part of a collective, part of a team, part of a group, and then just opt out when it suits. Stick to your principles, own the problem, try and work it out. Beyond people like Meg Lanning and Elise Perry, particularly in cricket, but one of the really most important voices in Australian sport in the last five to 10 years, I think is David Pocock, the Australian rugby union player, who has called out literally homophobia in the middle of a game. Stopped the game to make a complaint. He has been prepared to wear the principles. When he won his first man of the match award playing for the Perth Western Force, went and then bought sleeping bags for the homeless and then handed them out around the city that very evening. Of course, there are great people in sport. There are great people in every sector of society, but it's this question, does the knowledge that all these players are good and not everyone's doing this, is that enough cover? Does that then excuse that problem when we know that there is a minority who are doing it, who is coming from the same group? And how many other sectors of society wouldn't we demand better from? If it was happening in universities, which it has been, if you think about allegations of rape on campus, universities have been absolutely, not only forced to change, but cooperative and willing to change because it's a problem that needs to be addressed. People are being hurt and particularly women. So we are seeing progress in LGBTQI rights. Dressing rooms are changing. There is greater acceptance there. As it turns out there may have actually been some gay footballers in the history of football. Go figure! But I think there is still a long way to play in terms of sport owning its social responsibility when it claims to play a positive social role. Until it deals with that tension, I don't believe that change will come in the way that it needs to.

Susan Carland:

Professor Brett Hutchins, thank you very much for today.

Brett Hutchins:

You're welcome.

Susan Carland:

Ruth Jeanes is an associate professor within the Faculty of Education. She's a social scientist who researches how sport can help address social exclusion among marginalised groups. While there has been some positive progress recently, Ruth says there is more work to be done to address gender disparity in elite sport.

Ruth Jeanes:

Hi, I'm Ruth Jeanes. I'm an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University and my research looks at community sport and inclusion and diversity within community sport.

Susan Carland:

Ruth Jeanes, so nice to meet you.

Ruth Jeanes:

It's lovely to meet you, Susan. Thank you.

Susan Carland:

Let's talk about sport. Where do you think we are in Australia in terms of how well we are doing the inclusivity of sport?

Ruth Jeanes:

I think we've been making some really great strides in terms of inclusivity in sport, but there's still some way to go. And I think the last couple of years really have illustrated that in some of the issues with inclusion in sports. So particularly if we start at the elite level and we've seen some fantastic developments in women's professional sport and the establishment of the AFLW. Greater profile for things like the Super Netball League and real development of women's sport, which is great. But also, that's highlighted there's issues there in terms of pay disparities for women, women having access to equal rights and things like maternity leave and all the things that go along with being a professional in the sports sense. So steps forward, but equally work to do. And over the last year, the Black Lives Matter movement has really highlighted some of the cracks and significant issues, particularly in relation to racism that's happening within sport and continues to happen. So again, whilst we've come forward and we've made some massive leaps in terms of embracing all sorts of different people within sporting context, there's still a lot to be done if we're going to say that sport is truly inclusive and open and available to everyone.

Susan Carland:

If we continue on in the way that we are with our attitudes towards sport and the role that it does play in inclusivity or its attitudes towards gender or race or homophobia or anything like that, if we travelled down that path the next say 50 or a hundred years, what will the future of sport look like in Australia? Is it in a good place?

Ruth Jeanes:

I mean, I think it is in terms of, if you look at historical progress, we've come a long way in the last 50 years. And you'd like to hope that we will continue to do that. I think there's strong foundations now in Australia to do that with the increasing awareness of the fact that sport isn't always inclusive to everyone and a recognition that we need to do more to make sure that it is. But you'd like to see that women's and men's sport is treated equally and seen equally and viewed equally within the next 50 years. And that there isn't these huge disparities in things like pay and profile and the attention given. And equally, things like homophobia and the prevalence of homophobic behaviour within sporting context, you'd expect that should go, with increasingly progressive attitudes in society more broadly. But I think the key thing that we've seen in sport, it can be quite resistant to change and it is very traditional and it comes from a background of predominantly being run, organised and played by white middle-class men. And we need to continue to work to change that. So I think there's a good foundation there, but as has been shown with high profile instance of racism, of various scandals in relation to cheating and things that have hit Australian sport within the last couple of years, there's still a lot to do there, and we need to be proactive in making those changes happen.

Susan Carland:

Do you think we have an unfair expectation on our sporting codes or our sporting clubs in that, in the end, sport is just about sporting success? A team wants to win; a runner wants to run as fast as they can or whatever it is. And yet we're expecting them to be a place where we prosecute and solve the biggest social issues of our time. Racism exists in our society, sexism exists, unfortunately, in our society. Cheating exists outside of sport. Do we put too much pressure on sport to solve these issues when society hasn't solved them?

Ruth Jeanes:

Yeah, I think that's a great point and it speaks to the inherent nature of sport as well in that it is competitive, and that's what we love about it. And there are winners and losers within that. So as a cultural phenomenon, it doesn't speak naturally to inclusion and supporting diversity and everyone having opportunity because by its nature there's winners and there's losers within it. So I think you're absolutely right and there is this tension there in terms of what sport actually is. But I think also just the position that sport holds within society and particularly the position it holds within Australian culture, it's such a significant cultural phenomenon that it has a responsibility as that cultural arena to do more and to not be a mirror of issues that are happening in wider society. But actually to be something that can act as a resource to change those problems and change those exclusions and inequalities that exist within wider society. But aside, I think as well in saying that, sport is sometimes behind in terms of how attitudes have progressed more widely within society.

Susan Carland:

How so?

Ruth Jeanes:

So I think, say, we look at the issues of homophobia and homophobic banter that's pretty commonplace within particularly male sporting environments and male team sporting environments. And that sort of behaviour just wouldn't generally be tolerated now in many workplaces and would have been picked up on and wouldn't have been allowed. So I think there's certain ways that sport is behind and it has a responsibility to catch up with the rest of society and to address those issues as such an important phenomenon in our community and in our culture.

Susan Carland:

Let's talk about sports people who are expected to represent more than one community. So our female sports stars, but I'm also thinking of some of our indigenous sports stars. There seems to be an extra burden on them to be particularly good and particularly nice and particularly represent their community and break down barriers and all these sort of many things that we don't expect of the average white male sports star. What does that pressure do to those sports stars?

Ruth Jeanes:

I think it's incredibly intense and we have multiple examples of this. So you can look at the extraordinary pressure on Cathy Freeman in the Sydney Olympics as one example of bridging communities in terms of representing indigenous communities in our First Peoples, and also as a woman and an elite athlete as a woman. Adam Goodes in the AFL obviously is another high example. Some of our female cricketers, Alex Blackwell, who is openly gay and highly successful female athlete and has advocated for a number of social issues. In terms of those athletes that are sort of working at those intersections, yeah, there's incredible pressure because they have their sort of identity as a female or a person of colour and the expectations of their community of being a champion and being a role model. And I think it is sort of expected that because they are from a marginalised identity, they will come forward and they'll stand up for social issues and they'll be more willing to do so, without thinking particularly about the pressure on them to do that. They've had to fight really hard to get where they are to begin with. And we're then expecting them to take on the fight further and to put the cause out there further and champion it. And it's exhausting. I guess, obviously, what happened with Adam Goodes is the prime example of that and the toll it can take and the extreme negative impact it can have on individuals. But I think again, if we're looking at certain intersections and there's been a lot of issues raised about the lack of openly gay professional male athletes and potentially is that pressure that if you are going to come out as a gay male professional athlete, you're going to carry the burden of being the trailblazer and having to advocate and put that out there that just puts people off wanting to do it because it is such a strong expectation. And it's so exhausting on top of everything else you're trying to do as a professional athlete.

Susan Carland:

Are there any positive examples or studies, anything else you know about that shows how well diversity and inclusion can be done in the sporting world?

Ruth Jeanes:

There's been quite a lot of research looking particularly at the community level of how we can engage with diversity and inclusion within community sport. And I think the key thing there is that it is generally all driven from the bottom up. It's driven by passionate volunteers. It's driven by those individuals that are in the minority wanting to make change. So at that community club level, fantastic examples of parents with children with disabilities getting onto their committees at their sports clubs and driving through change, where they develop teams for young people with disabilities and making that a really strong part of the club and just an everyday part that young people with disabilities will be catered for. Seeing clubs that have overhauled their committee structures and bought more women on. Made sure they've got representation of women, of people of colour and just really tried to diversify their sporting structures.

So I think at that grassroots local level it's happening all the time. I mean, I think you can see it permeating through at the elite level in terms of the development of the new leagues, the AFLW as I mentioned earlier. We are starting to see a bit more profile of women in the sports media now, female commentators. Mel Jones has been prolific in the cricket space and really showing the expertise that women can bring and offer in there. So I think those sorts of things are starting to make changes and within that sort of structural level of sport and within the governing bodies, starting to see again, recognition that we need more diversity on the boards and within the structures that govern sport and trying to put through legislation that makes that happen.

So sporting boards now requiring a quota of women on the boards, shouldn't be necessary, but it's an important step forward in trying to make that happen. Seeing things like coach education, which is vital, offering courses. Football Federation Australia have started offering courses now for females only to try and encourage and engage more women coaches onto coach education programmes. So there are pockets I think, and examples of what we say is good practise and really starting to recognise that there's problems and we need to be proactive, but it's still quite sporadic. And I think a lot of it is driven by marginalised groups and from the bottom up. So I've seen some significant community organisations come into practise the last couple of years. So organisations like Proud2Play, which is really advocating strongly for LGBTI rights within the sport context. Again, it's come from the LGBTI community and driven that and is making sports associations take notice and recognise that there's issues there. Things like Siren Sport, which is really promoting women's voices within the media and doing some great work there. So there are these different organisations that are popping up in different practises, but it's not necessarily top down. It's the marginalised and excluded themselves getting a voice and starting to come forward to make change in sport.

Susan Carland:

Why do you think this matters so much?

Ruth Jeanes:

If things are amplified through sport, I do think it can lead to changes and greater recognition within wider society as well. I mean, just on some of the benefits of sport participation, there is good evidence to show that it assists things like social connection, feelings of belonging, feelings of social inclusion. There's mental and physical health benefits associated, but only when it's done in a welcoming and supportive environment. Along with many other things within society, it has the potential to make significant benefits to people in the community. And those benefits should be available to anyone that wants to engage. And regardless of your ability, your background, your identity, where you come from, you should have access to that. And at the moment that's not always the case. So I think yeah, that to me is why it's really significant because it is such a powerful cultural arena. It has the opportunity to shift and influence and make change, and it provides such important benefits to those that engage with it.

Susan Carland:

Ruth Jeanes, thank you so much for your time today.

Ruth Jeanes:

Thank you.

Susan Carland:

That's it for this episode. We'll be back next time to explore how new research, more support for players and starting with something as simple as the language we use can help drive change. I'll catch you next time on What Happens Next?