The Age’s former chief football writer, Caroline Wilson, shed light on sexism in sports at the 2018 Andrew Olle Lecture last night, recalling the times throughout her three and a half decade-long career that she’s experienced harassment and belittling at work. She acknowledged that a lot has changed since she started out in 1978 as a 17-year-old copy girl at Melbourne’s afternoon newspaper The Herald—a time before click bait or the 24-hour news cycle. Now, the AFL boasts two women commissioners and hopefully there’ll be a third by the end of the year, but when it comes to gender equality in sports Wilson believes we have a long way to go. We’ve pulled sections of her rousing speech so you can hear about her experiences in her own words.

1. “Coming to the end of my Cadetship I was told by my first sports editor Ron Reed that I was coming in as an experiment, a woman in an all-male department who would be given the opportunity to cover everything but boxing.”

2.  “Turning up to work one Monday after covering my first practice game the all-male sports subs desk regarded me with a new-found respect. They couldn’t believe a woman could write a reasonable accurate match report on deadline…”