AFL loses its gender equality status a year after it was recogised as an ‘employer of choice’
A year after being recognised as an employer that values gender equality, the AFL has been left off this year’s equality workplace list. Find out why.
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The AFL no longer holds its status as a leading gender equality workplace.
A year after becoming the first Australian sporting body recognised as a Workplace Gender Equality Agency “employer of choice” the league is not on the 2020 list.
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Eyebrows were raised last year when the AFL claimed 40 per cent of its senior executive team were female — a key criteria for the WGEA award.
The league explained at the time that it had reached the threshold because general manager of strategy Walter Lee did not report directly to chief executive Gillon McLachlan.
An AFL spokesman said the league had not reapplied because “a female executive member (corporate affairs chief Elizabeth Lukin) had resigned and her role was filled by a male (Brian Walsh)”.
The league’s current 11-person executive boasts just three women: commercial chief Kylie Rogers, inclusion and social policy manager Tanya Hosch and people and culture boss Sarah Fair.
Documents released under Freedom of Information detail a series of emails sent between WGEA staff in February last year in relation to the AFL’s submission for a gender equality gong.
One references “the unfortunate remark that Gillon McLachlan allegedly made in relation to hush money and settlements” relating to a sexual harassment case involving former Dockers coach Ross Lyon.
The 2017 sackings of AFL executives Simon Lethlean and Richard Simkiss over inappropriate office romances and the removal of another league staffer “following a string of sexual harassment complaints” are also raised in the emails.
In one email, WGEA senior adviser Lesley Delmas told colleagues that the AFL had distanced itself from the Dockers-Lyon saga.
Delmas said she had been told by a league official “that the AFL commission does not have jurisdiction over the football clubs and were not privy to the complaint or settlement”.
Lyon was embroiled in a sexual harassment claim involving a former Fremantle employee, which was confidentially settled in late 2017.
McLachlan came under fire at the time for appearing to endorse the payment of “hush money” to resolve complaints.
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