The forced resignations of two male senior AFL executives, both married, for workplace affairs with younger women significantly lower in the organisation's hierarchy has triggered much debate.
Broadly, there are two opposing views. One is that once the clandestine sexual liaisons had become public, the AFL was right to force the executives out, on the grounds they, as leaders, had a duty to set high standards and provide an unimpeachable example, particularly when the AFL is seeking to reform a culture long and rightly seen as disrespectful to women. The other is that relationships between consenting adults are no business of the business that employs them.
The AFL acknowledges its culture needs reform; the treatment of women by players has often been appalling. It has brought in Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins to assist the league improve its respect and responsibility policy. But the issues should not be confused – the fact that men and women have affairs in a workplace does not necessarily at all reflect a sexist culture. Such relationships also happen in exemplary workplaces.
Amid the overarching, murky controversy, some things can be said with clarity. First, people's private lives are just that, private. When extramarital affairs become public, an excruciating event no doubt, it is a matter for the individuals involved and their families. No crimes were committed. Many people, for myriad personal reasons, have affairs.
Second, there is a profound difference between sexual harassment or abuse and secret sexual assignations. The former is clearly cause for dismissal and sometimes prosecution.
Third, the issue of consent is complex. It is evidently wrong for a powerful man to in any way use his power to influence a woman into an affair. That does not at all preclude that a younger, lower ranking woman is fully consenting or the initiator. It is patronising and unfair to assume the woman is either a naive victim or a calculating predator. Every case is unique. Neither woman was the direct report of the executive with whom they had an affair.
Fourth, history and research show that when workplace trysts sour, it is most commonly the woman involved who is most harmed professionally in the long term. That is unjust, and reflects the lamentable fact that men still hold the overwhelming majority of positions of corporate and institutional power.
Neither the state nor employers have a right to interfere in what consenting adults legally do in private. Both, though, have a duty to ensure everyone in the workplace can feel safe, supported and respected.
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