Aussie Pastimes No Longer Just For The Boys

It’s a little outdated to think of things in terms of gender, isn’t it? Still, there are things in the world that tend to have more patronage from one gender rather than the other, its undeniable. Australian pastimes are no different. Over the course of history, traditionally, sports have been more followed by men rather than women and vice versa, fashion has had a similar distribution in the opposite direction. However, that paradigm is starting to shift. More women have become more interested in things that would differ from their mothers and grandmothers and the world finally appears ready for it.

The End of Sex Discrimination in Sport

In 1984 the Sex Discrimination Act was signed into the Australian government and officially made it illegal for anyone to discriminate based on sex alone. For the first time, women started to join male sports clubs and more and more women started playing sports like soccer, cricket, and Australian rules football. There are more than 50 female cricket clubs in Australia these days and that number is likely going to increase in the next few years.

There have also been increases in a number of other sports such as Netball, which has become so popular that some players make comparable amounts of money to Australian male basketball players. These female athletes and their respective sports have gained enough popularity that we have begun to see them included in relevant betting line and odds within the options for legal gambling in Australia.

Australian Rules Football

Another notable Australian pastime that is becoming more and more gender diverse is Australian rules football. AFL Women’s inaugural season started in February of this year featuring 8 teams with two more expected to be added in 2019. There were originally 18 teams representing high level clubs in the country that were able to bid for licenses in the new AFL Women’s. 8 of them made the cut with 4 coming from Victoria, and one each from South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia, and New South Wales.

Professional Kickboxing

Outside of the more traditional Australian sports, Aussie women are making a big impact in the world of professional kickboxing. The patriarchal sport in stereotype has some Australian women at the top. Caley Reece is an Australian Muay Thai fighter who is commonly known to be the best in the world in her weight class. She has repeatedly flown overseas to beat internationally ranked champions of outside organizations and has never lost a professional fight. One of her trainers, John Wayne Parr, who is a national celebrity in the Muay Thai community, also has a daughter who competes at a high level for her age bracket and is working to show the world that the girls can play rough too. Jazzy Parr recently won an Australian championship.