“NBC paying you to dress like a hooker on TV?”
This is one of the milder comments sports broadcaster Maria Taylor has received, from women and men alike, in response to photos on her Instagram page. For female reporters, fielding these types of sexist responses is a normal part of the job.
Just over a week ago, young sports reporter Olivia Cleary was harassed on-air at a college football game by a group of men. Cleary had to remain professional throughout her segment, even as the treatment towards her escalated.
Gender discrimination on the job and harassment on the internet only encompasses one layer of the problem–female sports journalists experience numerous challenges foreign to their male coworkers. While there has been a noticeable effort to diversify sports journalism, it remains a male-dominated field, according to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports.
“Men have a higher advantage and a better foot in the door than women do no matter how much we try. Sports is a male-dominated field, and that stereotype has been for generations,” University of Maryland journalism student Shannon Raneri said.
The University of Central Florida conducted a study on female athletic reporters, which was later cited in a Forbes article. They estimated that only 14.4% of sports reporters and 16.7% of sports editors are female across a sample of 100 news outlets.
“People are often surprised when I ask if they have seen a particular game and then talk about it in the correct lingo because I am a girl,” University of Nebraska Broadcasting and Sports Media student Kate Dziewinski said.
Having a small female presence in sports media can create issues at both the individual and societal levels, starting with young women. If girls grow up watching sports but only see male athletes and reporters on their screens, sexist beliefs are internalized. They begin to believe a woman’s place is on the sideline, literally and figuratively.
“When I turn on any male sporting event all I see is males on my screen. I don’t see me in that TV screen, I don’t see a girl. It’s not like girls can’t do it, girls can do anything a male can do.
Now I can get over it, but when I was younger it made a difference because it showed the persona of sports being a men’s game and not a female’s which ultimately forced me to turn off that TV or switch the TV channel. More female reporters in this industry will bring in more of a girl audience,” Dziewinski said.
The quality of sports coverage can be affected, too. Many writers, both male and female, believe that athletes are more likely to open up to reporters who are women. Studies have found that women have a larger capacity for empathy.
Athletes, whether conscious of this or not, often give emotional, in-depth responses to female reporters that men may not be able to coax out of them, and these are the types of interviews that readers enjoy.
Male sports reporters have also noticed sexism in the industry. Dalton Reid is attending Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas, where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with an emphasis on sports media.
According to Reid, sports journalists should be hired and promoted based on their qualifications, not gender.
“I’ve never been against having women in sports journalism. I will never be against that,” Reid said. “I think we all have to familiarize ourselves all the way through, whether you’re a woman or a man, and I think they’re capable if given the opportunity.”
Reid calls the sports journalism industry a “saturated market” with a “sports commentary food chain” that mostly benefits retired male athletes. Essentially, athletes play a sport at the college and professional levels. They win championships, retire and become broadcasters for their sport.
There are fewer women’s professional leagues, and the ones that do exist receive less coverage than men’s sports. This makes it more difficult for women to become established in the athletic journalism field.
Sports journalism continues to be male-dominated, which has implications within and outside the industry. Though progress has been made, the playing field remains uneven.
“I knew someone who said, ‘Oh, these women in the football industry, do they actually know what they’re talking about, or do they just sleep their way to the top?’ The person who said that was a woman,” Raneri said.
