women in sports – The Concordian

A commentary on the #MoreThanMean campaign against cyber harassment

“This is why we don’t hire any females unless we need our c**** sucked or our food cooked.”

“Hopefully this sk*nk Julie DiCaro is Bill Cosby’s next victim. That would be classic.”

“Sarah Spain is a b**** I would hate f***.”

In 2016, sports journalists Julie DiCaro and Sarah Spain sat down with a handful of randomly selected men who were asked to read aloud some of the terrible comments these women have received. The campaign, called #MoreThanMean, was created by the same group behind the podcast Just Not Sports. It was intended to bring attention to cyber harassment, and the impact of words regardless of them being read online through a screen.

Fast-forward to today and this campaign is still just as relevant as it was five years ago. It is widely known that women are severely underrepresented in sports media — both as athletes and reporters. However, as audiences become more and more interested in women’s sports coverage in general, a rise in women sports journalists is also expected.

Unfortunately, this trend hasn’t caught on with sports reporting. A 2018 report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) that looked at 75 different sport-media companies found that only 11.5 per cent of sports reporters were women. What makes this statistic even more pitiful is the fact that the percentage has stayed the same since 2012 – until this year, when a slight rise was seen.

In 2021, TIDES finally reported a rise in the percentage of women sports reporters, moving it up to 14.4 per cent: a dismal growth of less than three per cent in the same number of years. That increase still earned gender hiring an F grade in the Institute’s Sports Media Racial and Gender Report Card.

So why exactly are there so few women sports reporters? Some may argue it is due to poor treatment from male coworkers or even harassment from the athletes. However, most sports journalists describe a good relationship with their coworkers. In fact, some even attribute the gains women have made in the industry to the support of their male counterparts.

If we look back, those comments read to Julie DiCaro and Sarah Spain came from listeners and readers. The hate women sports journalists receive is one of the driving factors that push them out of the industry. A 2014 study by the International Women’s Media Foundation found that nearly one third of female journalists consider leaving the profession because of online attacks and threats. Unfortunately, this trend is only expected to get worse because 90 per cent of those women reported an increase in online threats over the past five years.

And how do we repay these women for having to deal with all this extra harassment? By paying them less than their male coworkers, of course. A report by The Washington Post stated that with five years of experience, male journalists earn 13.5 per cent more than women journalists with the same experience .

How can we expect women to continue in an industry where the fans and the management both treat them unfairly? What’s more is that women actually want to work in sports journalism. For example, at Arizona State University, 25.1 per cent of sports journalism majors are women. However, that number isn’t matched in the field because of inequity women face once they enter the workforce.

Encouraging and protecting women is important for the future of sports journalism. One way to promote women in the field is through representation. The 2021 report by TIDES found that women only represented 36.3 per cent of upper management. It’s important to increase the number of women in positions of power so they can help lift others with them. A mentorship program is a great way for women to support other women. It helps to talk to someone who has experienced the same difficult situations, such as online harassment.

Another strategy could be access to mental health services by the employer. Many media companies already have legal teams for the physical safety of their reporters. However, having constant hurtful and hateful comments being hurled at you is difficult to ignore no matter how hard one may try. Sports media should be providing all their employees, both male and female, with mental health services to help them cope and deal with the hate.

Audiences can even make a change while sitting at home. Women sports journalists receive negative comments all the time, but that doesn’t prevent people from adding positive ones to the mix. Take the time to reply to your favourite woman reporter if you enjoyed their call on a game or one of their articles. That support might remind them why they do the job they do and get them through their more difficult days.

Photograph by Catherine Reynolds

Formula One is starting its season with a driver who inappropriately touched a woman in its line-up

Content warning: Sexual harassment

I need to get it off my chest: my favourite sport is going in a direction that I cannot ignore anymore.

As Formula One’s (F1) 2021 season began this past weekend, I am now, more than ever, realizing how it is basically the white, straight man’s sport of honour.

As a woman, being an F1 fan is hard.

Back in 2013, my 16-year-old self was ecstatic when I saw a woman would be in charge of an F1 team for the first time; Claire Williams.

Williams’ Formula One team, however, has not been performing as it once was for the past few years.

Now, many would be quick to associate this downfall with Claire Williams’ promotion; however, the team was doomed to fail since the 1998 Concorde Agreement; a contract which dictates how F1’s television revenues and prize money are distributed, changing the money distribution drastically.

Williams was not even given a fair chance as she was the victim of the glass cliff.

This phenomenon occurs when women in leadership roles, such as company executives or even political candidates, are more likely than men to achieve these positions when the organization is facing crisis or the chance of failure is high.

Williams addressed her struggles linked to sexism and even mentioned how it got worse once she became a mother.

“I have actually had someone say to me that a lot of people in the Formula One paddock think that the team started doing badly when I fell pregnant and had a baby,” she said. “How dare they? There are nine other team principals in F1 and I am sure the majority of them have children. Would you ever level that criticism at them?”

As I grew up trying to find my place as a woman in the sport, I had to endure seeing my only representation in the sport being critiqued all these years for supposedly leading the team to failure.

As a young girl, the only image I had of women in the sport was of its “Grid Girls,” and how conventionally beautiful and useless, for a lack of better word, they were.

Despite their absence today, the image of the paddock remains a playground of sexual advantage that catters to a heterosexual male audience.

As Hazel Southwell, a motorsport journalist, wrote: “Women who work in motor sport warn each other about the predators because they don’t face consequences. I know more women who’ve left the sport after harassment, by far, than men who’ve got even a stern email about doing it.”

This toxic climate was always something I knew of from hearsay, but never actually something I wanted to believe, until Dec. 9, 2020.

Only eight days after Nikita Mazepin was announced as a Haas 2021 driver, he posted a video on his Instagram story where he can be seen groping a woman’s breast.

Mazepin’s list of controversies already included punching another driver in the Formula 3 paddock in 2016, demanding nude pictures from a woman in exchange for paddock tickets, endorsing racist comments, and record-breaking violent driving on the track.

The incident was met with outrage amongst fans, as the hashtag #WeSayNoToMazepin was circulating on social media, and a Change.org petition was created demanding the driver face proper correctional measures.

What is frustrating as a woman who enjoys the sport, who has given money to the sport and who would eventually like to work in it, is that the only thing I got was a statement from the Haas Team condemning his actions, but keeping him on board for the ride and saying that “No further comments shall be made.”

The son of a billionaire who will most likely help the sole American team to get out of its financial struggles, Mazepin’s controversy was quite frankly not the groping, but the broadcast of it.

He made an embarrassment of the sport and the Haas team, upset the sponsors and, most intriguingly, opened up the curtain behind the sexism still present in the paddock.

Although I believe that punishing Mazepin for his actions should not be too much to ask for in 2021, I do believe the F1 group and the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) should address Mazepin’s case as what it truly is: not an isolated incident.

I am writing this article as McLaren driver and Twitch streamer Lando Norris’ sexist comments during a recent stream have just come out.

Norris can be heard objectifying women as he refers to them as “yours,” “mine,” “that one” and “the nationality one.”

In times dominated by seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton, where every driver wants to be as fast as him on track and every fan admires him for his performance, maybe the men of F1 should start taking notes on his off-track activism as well.

After years of watching the sport demonize my gender, at the start of the 2021 season, I am left feeling as though I am going back into a toxic relationship. Because the part of me that loves the sport believes it can change for the better.

But will the sport I love ever love me back?

Graphic by Taylor Reddam