For me, finding a way for more women to play at my local club reflects one of the greatest social challenges of our time: how to achieve both diversity and inclusion. The club is not old-fashioned or posh.

Our social tennis is organised to bring people together. It attracts members and non-members from different ethnic and class backgrounds.

During the summer when the Australian Open is on, it is common to see the courts full of chattering, competitive and congenial players: all of them men. New women who pop in are welcomed. But after playing set after set with bloke after bloke, they sense that this is not the place for them.

It wasn’t always this way.

Thirty or so years ago, almost as many women played social tennis at our club as men. Mixed doubles was popular and we had influential women presidents, some of whom have become life members.

But we can’t return to the old days.

Back then, women had fewer opportunities to develop their careers and more time and energy to devote to their sports communities.

The prominence of women at our club was in part due to the dominance of men just about everywhere else.

Pervasive busyness has also disrupted the way that we play. The once popular Saturday afternoon pennant competition in Canberra is nigh extinct. It involved a best of three-set singles match. Then you chatted to the opposition as your teammates played their singles. And then the doubles began. It was a splendid luxury that nowadays few people can afford.

Time-poor players want from tennis what they want from life: drop-in-drop-out convenience, a reliable product and controlled thrills.

Together, gender equality and hectic globalisation, have radically changed the way we play and live with one another.

Specifically, as the diversity of our club has increased, the chance of playing with those who are better, worse or different has decreased. Instead of intermingling, we find ourselves fenced in, playing  alongside one another in homogenous little groups.

Women at our club tend to play together.

So too, the vibrant Vietnamese group that occasionally overlaps with the Chinese one. There are several South Asian clusters. The Anglo-Saxon retirees play in the morning. The coach runs special needs classes and trains juniors in the afternoon. A nearby club hosts a queer tennis night, the prospect of which might attract more different players to ours.

Diversity abounds, but in the absence of togetherness.

This is because engaging with difference is hard work when compared to the comforts of sameness. In my experience, the importance and value of promoting diversity in the workplace, at my child’s school, in the media, online and just about everywhere in public, often makes me desire what’s familiar in my time off.

So when I play tennis each week, I tend to catch up with mates with whom I can recount past victories and defeats both on and off the court, who know how I play, and what beer I drink.

Perhaps more experience of the benefits of diversity in our public lives will create more energy and
enthusiasm for it elsewhere.

But there remains the pressing matter of the absence of women at social tennis. Recently, one member started a women’s network whereby courts are reserved for what could be regarded as a safer space or lean in circle: that is, women of different standards getting together to advance their games and the sisterhood.

This initiative raised some questions. What if men wanted to set up a men’s network? Could the women’s network fit in with existing groups and bookings? And what resources should the club allocate to nurture it?

Concerns were raised that, by establishing yet another autonomous group, the women’s network will lead to women shunning social tennis for good.

The hope is that the women’s network will attract more women and people to the club and eventually facilitate greater participation in social tennis and other activities including representative pennants,  club championships and the leadership committee.

The question for our club and for our society is, ‘Can we achieve diversity without division?’

Kim Huynh teaches politics at the Australian National University and is the vice-president of Belconnen Tennis Club.