Susie O’Brien: Gender agenda won’t win over all spring racing punters

Victoria Racing Club’s decision to remove gender altogether from the fashions on the field competition doesn’t make much sense and risks alienating many.

Why shouldn’t we have a gender-neutral fashions on the field category? It would allow those whose gender identity doesn’t fit neatly into either male or female categories to dress any way they choose and still go home with a new car.

But a gender-free category shouldn’t come at the expense of male and female classifications; it should be a supplement, not a replacement.

The decision of the Victoria Racing Club to declare the fashions on the field competition as gender-neutral is hardly a surprise. There is a growing list of gender-neutral fashion labels, schools have gender-neutral school uniforms and even pop icon Harry Styles wore a dress on the cover of Vogue not long ago.

I welcome such moves, which are an overdue recognition that not everyone is born, or identifies, as male or female. But the decision to remove gender altogether from the fashions on the field competition doesn’t make much sense and risks alienating many.

Instead of male and female entries, prizes in the esteemed competition will be awarded according to “Best suited” and “Best dressed” categories, which are highly gendered anyway.

Why not just make an additional gender-neutral category in addition to the male and female categories? It could have a twist such as “Best outfit under $500” or “Most stylish” to attract a new array of entrants from across the board. In any case, the gender-neutral fashion competition is little more than hypocritical window dressing while the VRC retains highly gendered dressing rules for other parts of its operation.

A gender-free category shouldn’t come at the expense of male and female classifications. Picture: David Caird

If the VRC really was committed to driving “equality, inclusion and individuality” it would remove the sexist dress codes that apply to the rest of the track. Anything goes for fashions on the field, but women in the members cannot wear leather pants, shorts, playsuits, pants tucked into socks, anything showing midriff, leggings worn as pants, parkas or untailored leather jackets.

Gentlemen members, they say, must wear suits, tailored slacks and a coat, tie and dress shoes.

They cannot wear jeans, untailored slacks, parkas, bomber jackets, safari suits, cardigans or jumpers.

Such rules, which shame women for showing formal parts of their bodies, are in desperate need of an overhaul.

The VRC is inviting people to “experiment with fashion, creativity, and style” but too bad if a male fashions on the field winner in a dress wants to go into the members’ enclosure.

He’d be stopped at the door.

VRC chairman Neil Wilson said the club was “looking at everything we do through a lens of transition and being contemporary” but the VRC is clearly missing the mark.

Its overcompensating in fashions on the field by removing gender altogether but doing nothing about making other parts of the business more contemporary.

Whether the VRC likes it or not, the vast majority of the population continues to identify as either male or female.

These categories continue to define most people and give our lives meaning. They should not be erased altogether, although it’s time to accept that not everyone is one gender or the other.

The VRC decision comes as two-thirds of Australians support others being able to identify as gender-neutral and 16 per cent of people say they know someone who fits into this category, a University of Sydney study found.

If the VRC really was committed to driving ‘equality, inclusion and individuality’ it would remove the sexist dress codes that apply to the rest of the track. Picture: AAP

Another study of 1000 people included two who identified as non-binary. Medical surveys report that about 1.7 per cent of people are born with intersex variations. Of course, this doesn’t include those with an intersex gender identity.

A survey of the Victorian teaching workforce in June 2021 found 0.1 per cent of people had a “self-described” gender.

And yet being inclusive shouldn’t come at the expense of the majority. This is why we should celebrate Special Person’s Day alongside Mother’s Day, for instance. But we should be proud of Mother’s Day and should not replace it with Biological Parent Day or Birthing People Day or anything silly like that.

I am all for the addition of gender-diverse or gender-neutral categories, whether it’s in the census, school applications or even passports.

But gender is still a relevant category to most.

Today – August 30 – is Victorian Equal Pay Day, the day we mark the fact that female wages are 14.2 per cent less than men’s wages.

In 2022, this means women must work an extra 61 days after the end of the financial year to earn the same as men – a difference in average weekly earnings of $263.

With women retiring with 24 per cent less superannuation than men, one in three single women over 60 living in poverty and 60 per cent of those accessing homeless services female, it’s clear that gender still matters.

The future of fashion – and fashions on the field – may be fluid, but gender for most people is here to stay.

Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist