D&I in rugby
Funny…the Rugby Football Union has a page on Diversity and Inclusion, which shows that they do realize women exist and are not always included. The RFU says it wants to improve diversity and inclusion…or, as they call it, D&I.
The RFU has conducted research with over 4,400 people from the rugby community to understand attitudes and opinions to D&I in rugby and it has undertaken a detailed analysis of sport participation from Sport England Active Lives and YouGov data. The findings will inform areas of focus for D&I action planning in each part of the game. The results included:
Despite growth of the women’s game and the most diverse England men’s team ever, compared to the overall England adult population, those who participate in rugby union are significantly less likely to be female, of a BAME ethnicity and of the lowest socio-economic group.
Aaaaand…they’ll be even more less likely to be female now, because of this “we’re going to go right on letting trans women play on women’s teams” policy.
Brilliant joined-up thinking there.
Simple strategy, there. “We have a problem. We have plenty of white men in column A, but hardly any women or BAME in columns B and C”. “Well, that’s an easy one to solve; just tell the men that they can identify as a member of columns B and C! We’ll soon have them balanced!”
Black Asian Minority Ethnic ethnicity (for everyone else that had to google wtf is BAME)
Union (aka cross country wrestling) has always been a game for the upper class, drawing players and supporters from the same elitist private schools. League (aka bum sniffing) was the worker’s game which is why its English stronholds are in the industrial north.
Ah, thanks Roj, a nicety I was unaware of.
I should also have added that is why New Zealand with its largely wealthy landholder agrarian base favours Union, whilst Australia having once had a thriving industrial base, is a League stronghold, albeit in only two states, Qld and NSW.
Union occupies a very minor position in the Australian sporting landscape, whereas Union is New Zealand’s National Religion.
Roj, you’re quite right, with the main hot spots for league being the West Coast (traditionally mining and logging) and Auckland (industrial and with a large Polynesian population).
Roj @ 3 – “a game for the upper class”
Not in Wales! Very much working-class – which gave an extra spice to beating the Saeson (Saxons). As I recall, Rugby League came about largely because ex-public schoolboys from the south didn’t like travelling up north only to be beaten by a lot of working-class louts, as they thought of them. Also, rugby clubs up north would sometimes give their team members a bit of money to make up for their not being at work on Saturday afternoons. Professionals! A horrid thought for moneyed and leisured amateurs – the buggers were getting paid to beat them as well! So the south split off from the north, and the north developed their own game.
A lot of Welsh rugby players – Dai Watkins (the Welsh fly-half before the great Barry John), Keith Jarrett, Howell Davies, Jonathan Edwards among them – went into Rugby League when RU was still a ‘gentleman’s game’ (i.e. amateur), and even after RU became professional; and since it is only in South Wales that rugby is played, this was a great drain on Welsh resources, and accounted for the slump the Welsh went into for a time. One can hardly blame the Welsh players – they were not from the moneyed class, and did not have the kind of understanding that the English got from the companies, etc they worked for. Steelworkers, miners (the great Gareth Edwards was a miner’s son), and so on, though some had more middle-class jobs, but not highly paid ones.
Fair call, Tim. But I was careful to state England in my example, not Britain or UK.
Question without notice – Does any one know how many trans women compete in Equestrian/Dressage events?
There’s a wonderful BBC Wales documentary entitled ‘We Beat the All Blacks’. It is about the victory, in !972, of Llanelli over the All Blacks touring team, made forty years after the event. It is readily available on Youtube. I really recommend it, even if you are not greatly interested in rugby, for it is also a portrait of the town and its people.
Roj #8 – I’d guess none, as there’s no advantage to be had over female competitors. And horses don’t bend over backwards (or perform perfect tempi changes) just because they think their riders are stunning and brave.