This article is 6 years old

Gender Discrimination in Athletics Permeates Sports Reporting

Illustration by Kate Greenblatt Just last month, Holly Neher of Hollywood Hills, Florida came on the field for her high school football team, and made history in her very first pass attempt.

Sports

Illustration by Kate Greenblatt

Just last month, Holly Neher of Hollywood Hills, Florida came on the field for her high school football team, and made history in her very first pass attempt. Despite losing the game 27-7, Neher threw what people believe is the first touchdown pass by a woman in high school football in the state of Florida. This remarkable achievement even earned her a shoutout on Twitter from Florida Senator Marco Rubio. The second girl in her school’s history to participate on the tackle football team, Neher is admired by her coaches for her ‘it’ quality as a quarterback.

So let’s talk about the elephant in the room: professional football is played by men, coached by men, primarily announced by men, and 73 percent of those who watch the sport are male. This isn’t to say that women don’t watch, announce, or play football, but shows that the industry is dominated by men.

This becomes a problem when women are on the receiving end of gender based discrimination. As inspiring as Neher’s story is, for every encouraging story about women’s progress there is another that represents regression. Recently, Beth Mowins became the first female play by play announcer to announce an NFL game nationally. Her achievement, however, was met with a lot of criticism from football fans. Many took to Twitter to call Mowins’ voice ‘annoying’ and said that they would just watch something else if she was announcing again.

During and after the Monday Night Football (MNF) game Mowins announced, tweets emerged critiquing and questioning ESPN’s choice.

Examples of these derogatory tweets included comments such as “Did @espn use #BethMowins for #MNF because she sounds like a guy or because she actually knows the game?” and “Last night’s #MNF on @espn was a perfect case of what happens when you value diversity over talent.”

This incident brings up the question of why there is such blatant criticism towards women in sports culture. The idea that women don’t belong in the sports industry is constantly reinforced through the persistent judgements that are made regarding their talents and qualifications.

Kate Scott, the first woman to ever announce a play by play for the NFL over the radio, discussed her experience as a sports announcer for local radio station KNBR. Scott expressed that her experience and hard work allowed her to receive the opportunities to do the play by play over the radio for the 49ers, and the televised play by play for the Pac 12 Network’s broadcast of Arizona’s season opener against Northern Arizona University.

She did state that though her experience and hard work opened the door for her, she had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. Scott noted that her male coworkers are “often given the benefit of the doubt” when it comes to mispronunciations and blunders, while most women’s qualifications are questioned for the same mistake that gets overlooked for men.

This double standard includes more than mispronunciation slips. In a live interview with the Huffington Post, ESPN reporter Erin Andrews shined light on the numerous comments that are made about the clothes, hair, makeup, and physique of female reporters while her male coworkers don’t experience the same thing. “They work out all the time. [They’re] beautiful men wearing beautiful clothes, and no one says anything about that.”

While both Scott and Andrews agree that they don’t think they are passed up on work opportunities because of their gender, they both acknowledge the fact that they often work harder than their male peers to meet the same goal.

Scott says, “As women, we just have to be better [than our male counterparts]. Period.” These double standards appear in many industries, and even though sports allow many of us to escape from our lives, we are still unable to escape from these injustices.

Scott hopes that the opportunities that she has received and her performance will provide evidence that women should be more integrated and involved in sports broadcasting and the sports industry overall. As more women are incorporated into the sports broadcasting culture, there will hopefully be a societal change that reduces the criticism and discrimination of women in sports.