Once upon a time I worked in a uniformed organisation - which then had and still has a largely white and male, single tier entry workforce. It employed some of the very best and unfortunately, some of the very worst of people.
The latter were responsible for a culture of work place bullying that was both enabled and exacerbated by institutionalised racism, sexism and homophobia.
An especially egregious instance of the sort of toxic workplace culture this resulted in - a collection of viciously bigoted materials gathered - as ‘a laugh’ - by a team, was dismissed by a senior officer as ‘not as bad’ as stuff he saw all the time ‘on the walls of rugby club locker rooms’.
I mention this because of the rugby connection and the fact that World Rugby has just announced it is striking a blow for gender equality by no longer referring to 'women’s' competitions.
It claims this will enhance the women’s game by no longer specifying it as different from the men’s game.
But it is different. It is a nationally and internationally structured rugby football competition for women, members of the female sex who would not ever make it into national or international level rugby if forced to compete against the male sex - for startlingly obvious reasons that are nothing to do with gender identity but which arise from average differences in biology.
What would enhance the women’s game would be to pay the professional female rugby players something approaching the amounts paid to their male counterparts and put more effort into the grass roots.
And why write out 'women'? Why not add in ‘men’s’ to the male competition?
It’s like when women demanded equality in the workplace and men said ‘ah but you retire earlier than us and that’s unfair discrimination’ – and, instead of lowering the retirement age for men, equality was achieved by raising the retirement age for women, ie women lost out.
This is either just PR puffery or it’s preparing the ground for male to female transgender players to enter women’s rugby 15s and 7s - which will destroy the women’s game because common sense says the traffic will only ever be one way, and the moment one team allows it, the others will be forced to follow or lose.
