Female umpires have described cases of sexual harassment from spectators and fellow umpires that caused them to consider quitting, as the AFL faces a desperate shortage of umpires at community level.
The girls and women describe their experiences in a research paper by Dr Victoria Rawlings, a lecturer in education from the University of Sydney, and former AFL community umpiring development manager Damian Anderson: Girls and women in Australian football umpiring: understanding registration, participation and retention.
Some female umpires have described cases of abuse and harassment from spectators and even other umpires.Credit:AFL Photos
The paper, funded by the AFL and published in August last year, found that female umpires experienced “exclusion due to their gender in material ways, including in relation to change rooms and written and verbal communication”, and “had their umpiring ability questioned by fellow umpires, spectators and player coaches due to their gender, causing them to question whether to continue umpiring”.
While some harassment related to their ability, other more overt sexual harassment “often manifested in an aggressive masculine heterosexuality”, said the study, which was based on focus groups and interviews involving 27 umpires of diverse ages and ethnicities.
A state league umpire described an incident at training in which she overheard a comment from a fellow umpire.
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“I openly overheard a group of guys talking about my boobs at training one night… I was walking up the stairs, and I overheard them being literally like, ‘Oh my god, have you seen [her] tits?’ And I turned around and I looked at them, and I was like are you serious? Like that’s what you’re going to say? That’s what you say at training? And it freaked me out a little bit to be like my god, what do you say, like, as a group behind my back?”
Another umpire said she was made to feel uncomfortable by a coach who “would always try to talk to me and meet up with me outside of training”.
“… So, I just stopped going to training after that, so that was probably the worst experience I had when I was targeted.”
‘I had hoped things would have improved’: Female umpires abused, harassed
Source: Philippines Alive
