Week 7 - Hardin Female Sports Journalists

              Right off the bat, this article had me interested. “This little girl raises her hand, and she looks at me and said, ‘Why do you write sports?’ It was like, so did you get forced into this terrible job, you know. She was perplexed by this. She was a little sorry for me.” That is exactly the feeling most people have these days about women in sports journalism, and it’s amazing to realize that it’s not just educated adults who see this, but it’s little kids too. This article discusses the findings of various research studies about women in sports journalism, as well as the results of a focus group discussion with women working in sports journalism.

              

               It is appalling to think that the percentage of women working in sports has actually gone down. I would have never thought that possible (the article says it’s gone down from 13% to 11%). The article discusses some research findings, including that more than half of women who responded to a survey said that they had experienced discrimination in the workplace, and that nearly 3 out of every 4 female sports journalist had considered leaving their career at one point or another. Later on in the article, it is noted how most female sports journalists say that the best way to get more women in that newsroom is to be a mentor and persuade young women to pursue careers in sports journalism. But when they see these kinds of statistics, I have to assume that most women would probably shy away.

              

              That being said, I feel that women absolutely belong in sports journalism. Clearly based on what this article says, I am a minority in this sense. The article says that based on survey research, female sports journalists say that they work in an environment where they are “tolerated but have not been integrated.” This has to be mostly because the male members of the newsroom do not value what the females have to offer, and don’t believe that they know enough about sports to be sports journalists. This is not fair to them, as most of them (probably all of them) know plenty about sports, and are very qualified for the jobs they perform. Unfortunately for all women working in sports journalism, and those who aspire to one day become sports journalists, I don’t see this issue being resolved anytime soon, but I hope I am proven wrong!