It’s 7.30am in London when Stacey Peters picks up the phone.
“Sorry if I’m talking a little bit quietly, my daughter’s still asleep,” the Golf Australia female pathway manager said.
“I promise I’m usually a little more enthusiastic.”
There’s nothing for Stacey to apologize for. The fact she’s agreeing to an interview at this hour says everything about her enthusiasm for her work. Being flexible and adapting for caring responsibilities is part of everyday life, although perhaps something that is not quite yet normalized for women working in sport, particularly in high performance.
Peters has just come off a week supporting elite amateurs in the World Amateur Championship recently held in Paris. It’s a huge event for up-and-coming golfers to show what they’re capable of and during this tournament, Stacey was captaining the Australian women’s team of Kirsten Rudgeley, Kelsey Bennett and Maddison Hinson-Tolchard.
Golf Australia’s High Performance (HP) program plays an important role in supporting these athletes through their development, which includes ensuring HP staff are there every step of the way at these international tournaments.
But for new mum Stacey, jumping on a plane to continue doing the job she loves was a little daunting, and leaving her 16-month-old daughter Zoe was unimaginable.
“As soon as I mentioned, ‘I don’t think I can go away without Zoe for two and a half weeks’, Brad (Brad James, Golf Australia’s general manager of HP) was like, ‘what do we need to do? ‘” Peters said.
Golf Australia is working to put their gender equity strategic focus from not only attracting and recruiting talented women into high performance roles, but also retaining them.
Making parental support a priority
To ensure Peters was able to continue the work she loves, Golf Australia covered the cost of Zoe’s travel as well as offered to pay for another caregiver to go to Paris with her so she could feel at her best to do her job.
Golf Australia’s Vision 2025 strategy includes a focus on creating more visible heroes to inspire future generations of girls with more female coaches in roles to develop those players. A key part of that strategy is supporting working mothers within Golf Australia’s high performance program.
Supporting women returning to careers in sport from time away, like taking parental leave, is something the Victorian state government has also identified as needing more tailored attention. The Office for Women in Sport and Recreation’s latest scholarship programs included a specific stream for women who had taken a career break, highlighting the different support some women might need.
Brad James, Golf Australia’s general manager of high performance, sees the challenges women can face in the high-performance space and is embracing golf’s strategy to help drive change in his team.
“Female staff are really hard to come by in high-performance, because there’s such a need to travel, especially for our sport where the majority of our athletes are based internationally. A lot of the time you’re servicing these athletes all around the world. So it was like, how do we continue to get the best staff or keep the best staff.
“I don’t want someone like Stacey to leave, I don’t want any of our good staff to leave, so we’ve got to try and find a way to keep them.”
James sees supporting women and families with childcare, travel companions and on-going flexibility as a commonsense piece of the puzzle when it comes to attracting and retaining women working in sport. The additional cost this level of support incurs is also something he sees as part of that, no different to other staff incentives.
“At the end of the day, you’re just adding it to a budget line. This is a priority, and if it’s a priority, you’re going to find a way to find that. And having [women] as part of our team is a priority.
“When you look at organizations, they’re always trying to make sure staff are happy. Now whether you do that through social outings, bonuses, whatever you do, to me, this is just part of a process of making sure staff are happy so they can perform their role at their best.
“That may be providing a good computer, a staff car, that may be providing a service to take care of their child.
“Organizations are already doing these things. They just haven’t added this taking care of children line. They give staff computers, they give them parking, they give them clothes, what’s the difference?”
Support is linked to performance
This approach to retaining staff with family and caregiving responsibilities also goes beyond trying to keep staff happy, albeit a worthy reason to support staff in these high-pressure HP roles, but for James it’s also strategic and linked to the overall performance of the organization and their athletes.
“I’ll do anything to make sure our staff are delivering their roles, because then I know my athletes are getting better, which is ultimately what we’re trying to do.
“But what we also hope is that women look at our sport and say, that is a sport that I might want to engage in, because I may want to work in it. I may want to go play it.”
For Peters, this tailored, case-by-case approach to fulfill her needs has solidified her love for her job, her sport and her organization.
“I feel even more supported by Golf Australia now because of what they’ve done. So I’m like, in it, you know what I mean? My love for working for Golf Australia’s gone to another level, because of this.
“I know that they’ve gone above and beyond for me and so I don’t take that for granted.”
The grass isn’t always greener
Golf’s approach to supporting staff with young families is not something that is widely available at other sporting organizations.
Peters reflects on the realities some women face in this space when they decide to start a family, and if she were also put into a situation where additional care and support were not on offer.
“If I can’t get much of the traveling done, then I’m not going to be able to do my job as well. So I guess you may start looking at other options that are maybe not in sport and that to me, even the thought of that to me right now, that doesn’t make me very happy.
“I would obviously think very differently because we 100 per cent want to have a family, and it’s no secret, I don’t just want one kid either, so I want to make it work.
“I want to work in sport and I want to work in golf. But if they hadn’t been as supportive, well, then I think I’d be looking [at my job] very different.”
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Peters hopes the approach Golf Australia has taken to support her in the HP space becomes more of the norm in sport for women to be able to make it to more traditionally male dominated sports, and male dominated positions in those sports.
“I think to retain good female staff in sport through this period in their lives, I think this kind of approach is a must for other organizations to make it work,” Peters said.
James also wants to see more sporting organizations being more open to case-by-case support to keep more women in these roles so we see more progression.
“If anything, just be open to the discussion with your employee. Don’t just think ‘well, no, this is not something that’s done’.
“If more sporting organizations can find a balance of tailoring some more support to women during this stage in their lives, more women like Stacey can continue in the careers they love without the fear that choosing to have a family, means losing out in their job .”
ABC Sport is partnering with Siren Sport to elevate the coverage of Australian women in sport.
Kasey Symons is a Research Fellow in the Sport Innovation Research Group at Swinburne University in Melbourne and a co-founder of Siren: A Women in Sport Collective.
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