Social inclusion and sport: culturally diverse women's perspectives

Australian Journal of Social Issues, Autumn, 2009 by Natasha Cortis

However, perspectives celebrating Australia's sporting opportunities tended to surface early in the groups, then subsided as discussion broadened to cover the range of factors which may, potentially, hamper participation. Many of the barriers the women identified are likely to be shared with some Anglo-Australian women and some men, including a lack of access to transport; poor health or old age (or perceptions of being too old to participate); a lack of self-confidence or interpersonal networks; and a lack of money and time (although barriers relating to affordability and caring responsibilities may be more pronounced among culturally diverse women where migration has broken extended family care networks) (CCEH, 2006; Tsai and Coleman 1999; Miller and Brown, 2005 Taylor, 2001).

Other barriers, and those explored in the remainder of the article, seemed to relate specifically to the cultural diversity of these women, including cultural priorities; racist exclusion; language barriers; and the cultural appropriateness of sporting spaces, with the women highlighting how venues (including commercial gyms and pools) present barriers by failing to cater for diverse practices of female bodily expression. These perspectives highlight a need for sport policy and provision to depart from the focus on mass participation and mainstream targeting evident in national and state sporting organisations, to more effectively cater for the health and wellbeing needs and preferences of this large subgroup of Australian women.

Cultural priorities

One set of barriers the women identified relate to cultural priorities. While the women felt sport and recreation were generally accessible in Australia, both those who had grown up overseas and those born in Australia suggested that sport had lower priority in their cultures than in mainstream Australia. Women from Korea and Hong Kong, for example, described how studying or learning musical instruments rather than sport were encouraged for children and young people. Other women described how they had not even considered doing physical activity for recreation or leisure before coming to Australia, with some women from African backgrounds feeling they confronted the concept of 'sport and recreation' for the first time in Australia. With the exception of dance (part of ritual, ceremony and expression as well as leisure) physical activity had, prior to coming to Australia, been more a 'way of being' than a leisure activity for these women, a way of tending to the necessities of life. Sadia, a young woman from Sierra Leone, described how [back home]:

Exercise was part of our routine without realising it was exercise. What western countries call exercise, we didn't have that concept, it's just you did your daily routine, you walk everywhere you know, do really physical manual handling ... back home everybody walks to every place ... We don't think of it as exercise; to us it's just I have to get there, I will walk (Group 7)

The groups also discussed how they felt they were not socialized to do exercise for health and leisure, let alone play a sport. Reflecting a view also expressed by women from Indian, Japanese, Italian, Iraqi and Afghan backgrounds, Sadia continued: