Yesterday we saw England’s men’s football team reach the final of the Euro football championship for the first time. It is the first time since 1966 that England’s men’s team has made it past the semi finals in a major football competition and only the second time ever to make the final of a major tournament. I know this is men’s sport, but stick with me for a bit! Gareth Southgate became head coach of England in 2016. One of the first moves Southgate did was engage Owen Eastwood (Ngāi Tahu), a Kiwi lawyer living in London who has worked with many international high performance sports teams and organisations. Owen’s work focuses on whakapapa, knowing where we have come from to help give us purpose to move forward. With his work with the English football team, one of the first things he did was research the three lions symbol that appears on the national shirt, where it came from, what it represented. A lot of time was spent with the team to discuss their role within the team family, how they are connected to their three lion logo, and how they are connected to each other and to those how have come before them. They focused internally on their own story, rather than external pressures from media and fans. Each of the players now have their legacy number stitched into the collar of their playing shirt, to remind them they are part of history, part of a bigger team, and as part of the presentation of their legacy number, the team watched a moving video on the players that had come before them. The work by Gareth, Owen and the team management focusing on belonging and inclusion has had a massive impact on the English men’s team both on and off the field. I highly recommend reading Owen Eastwood’s recently released book Belonging: The ancient code of togetherness, and you can listen to an interview with Owen here.
In other news, while we have a greater representation of female athletes at the Tokyo Olympics, there are only FOUR female coaches out of around 70 head coaches! The Australian government introduced their ‘Respect at Work’ bill, based on the comprehensive report by Kate Jenkins last year. But there are minimal changes, most importantly, like NZ, the law is reliant on a complaint by the victim/survivor of sexual misconduct, and the organisation is not legally required to take action or take proactive steps to prevent it happening in the first place. Similarly, as we found out this week, if a 50-something teacher initiates sex with a 17 year old student, who he started touching when she was having panic attacks at school, even if she says no and is crying throughout, it’s somehow not actually illegal. The law acts as if most cases of sexual misconduct are random attacks by strangers, even though research shows this is not the case. In more than half of reported sexual assaults the perpetrator was known to the victim, 30% of sexual assaults took place in a business, half in residential properties, and only 10% in public. We need to change how sexual misconduct is treated.
Speaking of law reform, on this day in herstory the Homosexual Law Reform bill was finally passed in 1986, although it wasn’t until 1993 that discrimination based on sexuality became illegal when it was added to the Human Rights Act in 1993.
Check out all the media headlines in women’s sport for the 9th July right here.
Alida Shanks 