Social inclusion and sport: culturally diverse women's perspectives

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

Facilities

Overwhelmingly, the women's practices and preferences around dress and privacy, and their self-consciousness about skill, beauty and body image point to a common need for policies and programs to accommodate diverse bodily expression in public spaces, and to improve ways sport and recreation venues and facilities recognise and allow for difference. Muslim women in regional Victoria aspired for access to space for sport and recreation, on the basis that activities could offer opportunities to strengthen identity and forge a sense of belonging. One Iraqi woman described (through a translator):

We would like to have any big hall and we will do any activity ... we just want to do [physical activities] with [people in the] community and to see each other to achieve something for ourself and feel important. (Group 3)

While these women have access to women only swimming time at a local pool, this did not fully meet their needs, in terms of timing (given their caring and domestic responsibilities), and in terms of standards of privacy, with one woman commenting, for example, that the 'curtains at the pool aren't secret enough' (Group 2). Similarly, in South Australia, Naja was deterred from attending a women's only gym because the facility lacked a fully appropriate design and fit out. While she was happy to find a female only gym, the change rooms didn't offer an appropriate level of privacy:

It's really good because it's all women so you feel really comfortable, you know you don't have to wear hijab, you can wear clothes that keep you cool during the workout but the change rooms are still an issue for me. We change in the toilets, and then it's like aren't we supposed to be changing in the change rooms? It's totally open it's just benches and lockers. There's nowhere for you to actually go into and change. And they should do that. Then they would attract every single type of woman. (Group 9)

Indeed, Naja felt change rooms were more important for her than other women, who she saw could dress for the gym before they arrived:

I noticed a lot of the women come already dressed in their gym clothes. Like us Somali women we dress differently to that, we don't consider that the type of clothes we can leave the house in. So we have to change basically down to underwear, that's why it's really awkward in the change rooms and we have to use the toilets ... It would be good if they had change rooms like most of the shops have separate change rooms (Group 9)

In highlighting their unrecognised and unmet needs for culturally appropriate sporting spaces, these women's perspectives problematise national policies that promote mass participation, and peak sporting organisation's dependence on mainstream targeting as legitimate strategies for pursuing social inclusion. The women highlight how culturally inappropriate dress codes and a lack of privacy not only turn some women away from organised team sports, these also make it difficult or uncomfortable for them to participate in physical activities in public as well as commercial facilities.