Rio 2016 - Australian Sailing's gender imbalance queried in Parliament

by Sail-World.com on 22 Jun 2016 The gender imbalance in the Australian Sailing team selected for the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro was questioned in the Victorian State Parliament on Tuesday.

Victoria, Australia, is the host state for the Final of the 2016 World Sailing Cup in December.

Using her allowed 90 second slot for Members to speak on a topic of their choice, Margaret Fitzherbert (Lib) raised the issues of gender imbalance, 'medal capable', and the requirement of the International Olympic Committee to have 50/50 gender balance in the 2020 Olympics, in terms of medals and participation.

She concluded with the point that given the big change that had to be made in just two or three years it made little sense to be denying female sailors the opportunity to compete in the 2016 Olympics, when they had met World Sailing's qualification standards for their classes.

Margaret Fitzherbert is the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Women's Health and Rural and Regional Health. Her electorate office is in Port Melbourne close to the venue for the Final of the Sailing World Cup in St Kilda at the northern end of Port Phillip.

The full text of her address follows:

Ms Fitzherbert (Southern Metropolitan)— In only 45 days we will farewell hundreds of athletes who will represent Australia at the 2016 Olympics. They have years of training and sacrifice behind them, and they all deserve our support and encouragement.

It is very disappointing that Australia will be represented in only two of four women’s events at the 2016 Olympic sailing regatta, plus one woman in the mixed team event. This decision has been made by Australian Sailing. I understand there will be 4 women and 7 men in our Olympic sailing squad, and one woman and five men in the Paralympic sailing squad.
Decisions about who is on the sailing team are made on the basis of how likely it is that participants are ‘medal capable’.

Who is considered ‘medal capable’ is judged on the basis of performance, but there is dispute about how fair that assessment is. The International Olympic Committee has signalled that from the 2020 Olympic regatta it is aiming for a 50-50 split in male and female competitors, in terms of participation and medals.

In other words, in the future if our sailing team is going to fully compete with those of other nations, it will need to field more women. We do have women who could compete in Rio in categories where currently we have no competitors. For example, Australia has a team of two women who ranked 14 by International Sailing Federation world rankings for the 49erFX events.

How are we creating a pipeline of success for our women sailors in 2020 if we do not bother sending teams in some women’s categories in 2016? Because if women have less opportunities to compete in sailing at an elite level, how on earth are they supposed to become ‘medal capable’?

S-W: The decision in the 49erFX crew's Appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport is yet to be announced.