Today the North Melbourne Football Club created history by becoming the first sporting club in Australia to launch a gender equality action plan. 

North Managing Director & CEO Carl Dilena, emphasised the significance of the plan and the Club’s vision to be a “Club of Choice’ by creating a culture of respect, dignity and inclusion for everyone.

Please find his speech below.

Welcome all, thanks for joining us

Today is an important day in the history of the NMFC and the AFL as we launch Australian sport’s first Gender Equality Action Plan.  This is a plan that we hope will set a precedent and act as an important catalyst for sporting clubs and leagues across the country.

North Melbourne Football Club celebrates its 150th anniversary next year. A lot has changed throughout that time, most notably the number of women involved with our club and Australian Rules Football.

North has been a quiet achiever over many years in growing female participation, through our strong track record of female employment and our more recent efforts in developing female players.

We were the first club to have a woman appointed to the role of Football Operations Manager more than a decade ago and the first to have a women’s team through our partnership with Melbourne University Women’s Football Club back in 2010.

Today our staff workforce includes 39 women (34%). 13 of these women are in the football department, something that would have been unheard of not that long ago.

So, we have solid female representation across our business but there is more we can do.

There are systemic challenges facing women and gender inequality is a daily experience throughout our society.

It is time to change the story, for all women. Sport and the AFL in particular play an important role in shaping Australian culture, our beliefs and our behaviours.  Accordingly, they provide an important platform for driving behavioural change.  North Melbourne wants to play a lead role in driving such change.

Over the past 18 months, we have worked with Our Watch to test a range of standards, tools, resources and training and education to challenge attitudes and behaviours to address gender inequality. Later you will hear from Mary Barry, from Our Watch, and I would like to acknowledge Our Watch’s support and expertise in building our capacity to design and integrate the standards across our workplace to strengthen gender equality and support the prevention of violence against women.

We have engaged experts and consulted widely to develop the first evidenced based Gender Equality Action Plan in Australian sport.

We aim to be a ‘Club of Choice’ by creating a culture of respect, dignity and inclusion for everyone.

North Melbourne commits to strengthen gender equality in our workplace, at our games and in our community.

Guided by ten standards, informed by Our Watch’s Change the Story Framework, our five-year Action Plan has been designed to create conditions where power, resources and decision-making are shared equally between men and women.

Each standard has specific and measurable actions, informed by evidence to shift attitudes, behaviours and beliefs.

Importantly, our Gender Equality Action Plan strongly aligns with the Victorian Government’s Safe and Strong, Victoria’s Gender Equality Strategy and the AFLs Respect and Responsibility Policy 2017.

As part of our commitment to gender equality, over the next five years we will:

  • Challenge traditional gender roles for women and men
  • All of Board, players and staff undertake annual training and education
  • Ensure flexible working conditions through progressive workplace policies
  • Target a minimum of 40% of female representation across the club
  • Achieve more than 40% female members across our men’s and women’s teams

Externally (spreading the message using our influence):

  • Work closely with 12 junior football clubs in our regions to support the development of their own Gender Equality Action Plans
  • Positively impact more than 40,000 families through our commitment to gender equality at our home games.
  • Increase the profile of women’s participation consistently to more than 290,000 social media followers 

In summary, North Melbourne will lead the way in gender equality with sustained and measurable actions.

I would like to thank the Board, Executive team and the Gender Equality Working Group, made up of senior representatives across the whole of Club including players and partners for their passion and support to drive this important work.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge and celebrate the women, past and present, that have helped make us one of the most socially progressive clubs in Australian sport.

Thank you

View the Gender Equality Action Plan