Dorothy Hawkins (Khafagi, 1975)
Breaking ground for women in sport
Dorothy Hawkins still remembers the moment famously gruff NRL coach Wayne Bennett became an unlikely champion for women’s rights.
It was 1992, and Dorothy was blazing a trail as the first female physiotherapist to work in the league, with the barnstorming Brisbane Broncos squad, when she hit an unexpected roadblock under the Sydney Football Stadium.
Dorothy was following the Broncos from their dressing room onto the field for the Grand Final kick off against the St George Dragons, when an official blocked her way. `We don’t allow females through the tunnel,’ he told the gobsmacked physio.
`Wayne Bennett came storming down—which is quite scary in itself,’ Dorothy remembers. `And he said to me, `What the hell are you doing? Why aren’t you on the field?’
After Dorothy explained, Bennett turned his fury on the officials.
`From that day forward women were allowed through the tunnel.’ And to cap it off, the Broncos won 28-8.
At the time, Bennett had appointed not only Dorothy to a role traditionally filled by a male, he’d also hired a female dietician and massage therapist for his NRL team. The trio of women treating a squad of burly blokes drew a surprising amount of media attention.
Dorothy says something Bennett said when reporters quizzed him about the pioneering females had always stuck with her. `He said, `I don’t care if they’re green with purple spots, if they get results, that’s what I want.’
Bennett hadn't set out to hire females. He just set out to hire the best.
`That really resonated with me,' Dorothy said. `It doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female, if you can get the results, whatever profession you’re in, go for it.’
Just `going for it' had always been her attitude to life—an ethos she says she absorbed as a Girls Grammar student. But she admits getting a rude shock after graduating into a male-dominated workforce at the end of the 1970s
`I went from an all-girls school where anything was possible; to a (female-dominated) physiotherapy course where anything was possible; to a world where it wasn’t possible.’’
After graduating from UQ in the late ’70s, Dorothy knew working with sporting teams was her passion, and set her sights set on the holy grail: an Olympic medical team. She contacted Games organisers to check selection criteria.
`I was told only males were allowed to apply. I thought why should that be? I can do everything males do. Actually, I can do it better.
`I looked at the criteria and it required a certain number of international tours with Australian teams. So, I started working on weekends at grassroots level, which then escalated to state level, and then escalated to Australian team level and then onto international tours. When I applied for the Olympics, I actually had twice the number of international tours behind me that my male counterparts did, and I was very excited to finally be selected.’
At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Dorothy made history as the first female on an Australian medical team. After returning, she joined the Broncos and became the first female physio in the NRL.
At Seoul in 1988
From being barred from the field to celebrating victory: Dorothy with the victorious Broncos team in 1992