Only 10% of sports journalists are women. Most top positions are occupied by men and the positions women are given sometimes have an agenda like using women in locker rooms as a marketing strategy, ignoring the harassment that goes on inside that locker room.
How are they harassed inside locker rooms?
Female reporters are harassed by being asked whether they came to spectate men's bodies, being invited to their hotel rooms, flashed by the men and mocked for their gender, or sometimes even assaulted by the sportsmen. But they still need to do locker room interviews because their male counterparts do and this gives male journalists a huge advantage over the female sports journalists.
What do they have to face on the internet?
When it comes to online hate, on the milder side, people post highly sexist comments about how women don't belong in this industry because they don't know sports like men do or about their physical appearance where they are either told that they are only doing this to flaunt their appearance or that they are too unappealing.
On the harsher side, when they are covering something that might harm the sportsmen by exposing them, they receive a slew of threats of sexual assault, threatening phone calls and texts, and threats about releasing personal information.
When ESPN investigative journalist Paula Lavigne investigated 10 university athletic programs she received an onslaught of threatening messages and calls, many using obscene language, doxing, or threats of sexual violence. This is something most female sports journalists face since this industry is seen as something reserved for men, resulting in some of the most violent language and imagery used to harass female journalists.
What about taking legal action?
Higher-ups are often seen to be unwilling to help these reporters take action after being harassed. So the only option would be individually suing their higher-ups or the teams.
The problem with legal action is that proving it is difficult and the repercussions in the business could be fatal, not many people are going to hire a reporter who sued her employer or a team.
How does this impact their career as sports journalists?
As journalists, they need contacts who can get them the information they need, but often these agents and executives try to fixate on their personal lives or ask them unprofessional questions or harass them. As a result, female sports journalists are unable to get access to the information that male journalists do.
The possibility of harassment has been used to limit opportunities for women to cover men's sports, which means fewer opportunities in general for women to be sports reporters.
Why is this happening?
Sports is definitely the most male dominated industry and the roots go back to men finding comfort and masculine identity in sports when women began to protest and society started to shift, therefore, people are very unwilling to treat sports as a gender neutral industry, regardless of talent or merit.
In the end, we need employers to build a better work environment for female journalists and make sure that they can report being harassed and get to take appropriate action because currently, they aren't even seen as sports journalists but just women, whom they can harass or demean, ignore the talent of, purely on the basis of their gender.
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