@simmo41 is a lawyer?
Respect lost.
Are you saying you think the definitions of President and CEO are blurred? I’m fairly certain this would not be a problem for most Essendon supporters. Almost all non for profit organisations in Australia use the term President, while CEO is only used to define a person who is in management. There is a big difference.
Maybe if we were a US sporting club it might be different given the term President can be used for executive roles over there. But this isn’t the case in Australia so I think maybe you’re trying to make an issue out of a complete non issue.
all i want to know, is are we about to see an influx of random candidates come in here and face the firing squad?
I agree that we could simply change the name from Chairman to Chair if we want it to be gender neutral rather than changing it to President. But I can live with either.
But how does naming the position President create confusion with the CEO?
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We originally had a President & Vice President anyway. Somewhere along the way when I wasn’t paying attention President morphed into Chairman. I checked the Annual Report from 1971 (I have no idea why I kept this all this time so don’t ask) and Allan Hird was and Tom Clarke Vice-President.
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Lots of NFP entites can use a chair “person” rather than “chairman”
There is probably not much difference between the two, but the gender neutral change from chairman would be chair person IMO.
I think President sounds cooler though 
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Too late. Nobody ran against the incumbents so they didn’t hold an election.
Putting ‘person’ at the end of words doesn’t resonate well with me. ‘Chair’ is perfectly acceptable.
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…
That’s something a lawyer would say
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No way - anonymity is more fun
OK… so I’ve been banging my head against things trying to decipher these changes. What I couldn’t understand was why.
Why were pretty significant changes to the structure of the board hidden within a set of innocuous, feel good changes to the constitution?
And why is it being spun as not a change at all.
After a weekend reading stuff that is beyond boring I think I’ve found it, when having a look at the financials on the club website I noticed something I hadn’t seen before, a section titled “Workplace Gender Equality Agency Reports”…always look in the place least likely 
So along with the IMO less than impressive and from my impression extremely optically driven Mel who was appointed last year, we’re getting another token woman that we didn’t vote for. All at time where things are looking up on-field and the recruiters are flying so the membership should be malleable.
I dislike publicly set quotas for anything. I want more women in positions of power but I want it via making said positions more attractive and accessible to attract the best women, not by appointing women exclusively instead of men to fill a quota rather than what’s in the best interests of my footy club.
Setting a quota of positions to be filled by women on a majority elected board means that manipulation of candidates and diminishing the size of the selection for appointed seats is guaranteed - how can that possibly be in the best interests of the club?
This feels a lot like a regression to the bad old days of under the table manipulation, it always seems small at the time. This change, if it gets through, increases the board size by 10% but grows the appointed portion of the board by 25%, that should worry all members who want a representative board.
I don’t like this manipulation of of our elected board one bit. If this gets up we can kiss goodbye to any sense of representation we thought we had.
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You need to go easy on the tin foil hat. I believe you have taken too very long pieces of string and twisted them into something because you want to find an issue. I could put it in the same bucket as the strands of a cable argument.
If the year for reaching the 33% gender equality target was 2019 then maybe you would have a point, but it’s not until 2021. There is more than ample opportunity to reach this target without creating the extra board position. Plus this percentage is only a target - not something that has to be achieved.
The club’s point for increasing the board position by 1 is to allow flexiblity to bring in an executive expert in a particular area should the need arise. What is it that you don’t like about this point? I think it’s great that the board will now have the flexibility to do the right thing to work through any issues that the skill set of the board don’t have. I’m sorry I just don’t see your concern.
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I believe Ken Lay has a fanatical desire for more women on the board.
That’s what quotas are for m8. Women are far more likely to put their hand up if they know they’re not going to be up against in-built prejudice.
The trouble with this stance is it’s an assumption that, generally speaking, women are less competent than men by default.
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I couldn’t disagree with you more. I want the best person to serve the interests of the Essendon Football Club and don’t give a ■■■■ if it’s a man or a woman, reducing the talent pool by half by removing an entire sex from the possibility of being appointed cannot be spun in any way as serving the best interests of the football club, regardless of which sex it is.
I’m a successful and driven woman, any suggestion that I feel that women are less competent than men by default is idiotic, yet it’s exactly the kind of argument that is made to win points when gender politics are played. I hate it.
Hypothetically, let’s say you’r entirely right and I’m entirely wrong. Why not be transparent about it. Why not say, we have committed to having more women on the board and this clause is going to help us achieve that.
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Because the additional board member position is nothing to do with gender equality. You’ve created a link between two points which are entirely disconnected because you’re wanting to find something that isn’t there.
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No link?
I don’t buy that for a second.
If you look at the current makeup of the board the club will have great difficulty getting more women on the board by 2021 without an extra appointed seat as all the appointed seats are currently filled for the next several years, one of them currently by a woman.
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Honestly if you want to think there is something untoward happening go for it. However I think you’re way off the mark. As I have said there is absolutely no link between the two things you are trying to make an issue from.
Yep you have said it before, but you’ve not offered an explanation as to how else, by 2021, they will reach the 33% target.
Sometimes the truth isn’t in your face, sometimes you have to search for it.