What Is The Future Of Females in American Sports Broadcasting?
- ajasminewallflower
- Dec 10, 2018
- 6 min read
Type in: “female sports casters” into your search bar.
If you have an Apple computer, Siri recommends “Top 10 Sexiest Female SportsCasters” then proceeds to list these sportscasters off before even clicking on the article.
It wouldn’t be so bad if that were to happen at home, right? Most of us would sigh in disbelief or scoff and move on.
Now, imagine doing that search with your laptop connected to an HDMI cord, teaching a class of students to write about sports, with about 40% of them identifying as female.
That happened to one of my professors here at Cal.
And I was one of the 40% of females in that class to witness that moment.
I tried it again at home to see if my MacBook laptop would do the same thing.
It did.
I tried Youtube to see what the first result would be. I got an even worse first search result:
Google was slightly better but the first five results involved the same article from the Siri result.
It was disappointing. And absolutely disheartening as a female amateur writer.
***
I’m not surprised that sportscasting is a predominantly male occupation. What I am surprised about, even at the end of 2018, is that female sportscasters seem to be viewed as less knowledgeable about their sports commentary and seen more as a way to entice more men to watch a show on ESPN or FOX. Heather Michelle Toro noted this social trend in her Master’s dissertation Public Perceptions of Credibility of Male and Female Sportscasters, “Even the most attractive and most knowledgeable female sportscaster can’t overcome the stereotype of another pretty face who cannot talk sports. Her sex prevents her from being judged as credible as the least attractive and least knowledgeable male sportscaster.” Even if women like Jenn Brown, who has a strong background in multiple sports, become successful in their field, they are still judged more on their looks than the authority of their sport and commentary. What must it be like for a young girl wanting to be on television, talking about the sport she loves and making big strides in her career path.
That isn’t to say that there haven’t been major strides in the sports broadcasting world. But we do need to bring up the elephant in the coverage room—the fact of the matter is, either these historic broadcasts couldn’t be seen by audiences or people had a major problem with them. September 2018, major hype was built up about Andrea Kremer and Hannah Storm becoming the first all-female broadcast team for NFL games. However, many people excited to watch the broadcast couldn’t access it through Amazon Prime Screening. This combined with Beth Mowins becoming the first woman to call an NFL game in 30 years and the second woman to do so in 2017, but running into some major backlash for her voice by NFL fans makes for some concerns that females always have and always will have a hard time being viewed as equal to their male counterparts.
What about new, fresh female talent trying to break through the industry? Less surprising and more disconcerting is how hard it is to break into the sportscasting world as a woman. An NBC Sports interview article featuring Dionne Miller emulated this fact. She states that “as a woman in sports, I already know I HAVE to push harder. I have to know more, I have to research more, I have to work harder. I can’t make as many mistakes.” But then goes on to give this advice for girls who want to be sportscasters:
“Also, understand the landscape of the business. Yes, we will always be outnumbered. Yes, we will be judged by our dress, hair, and make-up before anyone actually hears the words we say. None of this is a surprise. I’m not saying just accept ignorance. Not at all. But to act like this isn’t happening is ridiculous. It is. And it’s not just on TV. It happens in every job.”
There is something so obviously wrong with this kind of workplace mentality to be applied solely to women— which to be fair, doesn’t only exist in the sports entertainment industry. Men and women should be held to the same high intellectual caliber to be taken seriously and looks should be kept out of job qualifications in a perfect world. But as Sherry Lowe, one of the first female sportscasters in history, bluntly advises, “If you’re a woman working in any type of male-dominated field, from politics to law enforcement, tech to sports media, it’s vital to always be aware of your surroundings, especially gender roadblocks, so you be savvy and strategic about your next career move.”
Unfortunately, female sportscasters don't have to deal with just in internal job sexism. Their job in the public eye also includes mass criticism for anything and everything from the validity of their commentary to whether they look pretty on camera. But some people who might like female sportscaster may not like them for their sports commentary but instead take their obsession to terrifying levels. Unlike male sportscasters, women sportscasters have more dangers involved in their profession. One particularly scary story of Erin Andrews being secretly videotaped naked by a stalker and Andrea Kremer being called by a stalker in her hotel room. Social media doesn't help this much, considering their public persona is much more available to the general public. They get called derogatory names on a daily basis, mostly for working in a male-dominated career. Not only are they invalidated in public forums like Twitter and Facebook, but they also have to deal with harassment on Instagram Direct Messages. It is hard enough to be a normal woman just living day to day—imagine being hated for just being a woman by millions of men who don't know you.
I haven’t painted such a great picture of what the current career landscape looks like for female broadcasters. There is a huge glass ceiling for women to make it into mainstream sports media, they are judged harshly on their looks, they deal with unfounded critiques on silly things male sportscasters don’t and in some cases, discover the extra dangers female sportscasters go through just being in the public eye. But what could a future with more female broadcasting mean for the sports industry? Would that mean sports media moguls would cater to more of their female fan base? Would the male fan base finally allow capable women to give smart, sound commentary on a sport they know about?
I don’t know because frankly, no one is making any kind of speculations. I couldn’t find one single article projecting what a future might be like if female or more people of color sportscasters had more screen time. At the end of the day, sports are a direct socio-psychological representation of society: American sports media is dependent on market demands of a very niche demographic of white men, some who still hold “traditional” views. Right now, our society is at a crossroads. The #MeToo movement has had a lot of influence in opening the eyes of how women are treated in both the private and public, and the sports world is no exception to the expose. Many female sportscasters, including Andrea Kremer and Hannah Storm, have openly commented on how difficult the sports entertainment industry can be for women. The question here is whether sports media has the ability to change and evolve to different and diverse demands for both their employees and their fan base?
Things could easily stay the same as it is: American sports media catering to and representing the “Three in four men [that] describe themselves as sports fans,”in a Gallup poll while ignoring “just half of women [that] are fans.” Or sports media can take it upon themselves to dismantle much of the institutionalized sexism ingrained within itself. This shift in business practices could be done by openly changing many of their hiring strategies and making new policies that will encourage women and people of color to have a welcome seat in the commentary booth. None of this would helpful without having an open and honest with the general public about these mistakes and how they intend to fix them. Who knows? Maybe it might alienate their traditional fan base or it could create an even bigger fan base just based on more inclusion. But one thing is for sure: changes should be happening in sports media and one of the ways that it can be implemented is representing a more diverse cast of sportscasters and commentators and protecting the people that represent their brand.
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