As women’s sports booms across our mass media, coverage remains male-dominated.
2024 was a groundbreaking year for women’s sports, a year where female athletes across the globe took to the world stage to make a statement that times were changing. This was the year where Caitlin Clark became the first WNBA Player to win TIME’s Athlete of the Year, where Katie Ledecky became the most decorated female American Olympian in history, where the Paris Olympics shattered viewership records while featuring the first ever 50-50 split between male and female Olympians. And yet, in an era where women’s sports broke viewership records across the board, and new female-centric professional leagues are being created for sports like hockey, the media outlets reporting on these historic achievements are almost entirely male-dominated.
It feels impossible to discuss the revival of women’s sports without addressing the lack of female representation in sports journalism, and by exploring these topics together we often find that the same systemic challenges are to blame both on and off the field.
The multifaceted roots of women’s underrepresentation in Sports Journalism.
In 1977, Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke made headlines when she was barred from entering the clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, despite the fact that she was sent there to cover the World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers. Though Ludtke’s subsequent legal action eventually led to an MLB ruling of equal access for all reporters, the biases that led to that scandal continue to make an impact on sports reporting in modern day – including a case as recently as 2015, where the Jacksonville Jaguars banned 3 journalists from entering the locker room, there only reason being “you know how guys are.”
These incidents indicate the persistence of gender-based stereotypes that women in sports journalism face both inside and outside the office. Not only do female sports journalists face rampant harassment online (where these women are often reduced to hypersexualized stereotypes), they also battle assumptions made about their objectivity and credibility, as though just because they are women they lack expertise or are less capable than their male counterparts.
Ultimately, the continuation of these harmful stereotypes is both a cause and effect of women’s underrepresentation in sports — and while the interdisciplinary nature of those stereotypes make them hard to tackle, we have still seen noticeable improvement in recent years.
As reported by Forbes in 2024, from 2018 to 2021 there was a noticeable increase in female sports journalists across the industry. “Sports editors rose from 10.0 percent to 16.7 percent, reporters from 11.5 percent to 14.4 percent, and copy editors from 20.4 percent to 24.7 percent.” Although the percent of women in sports media grew, there still wasn’t an equal representation of men to women in this field.
Today, there are only about 16.7% of women in the field of sports journalism. While yes, sports journalism is a male dominant field, that shouldn’t stop a female from pursuing her dreams and representing the other women in the field.
Female representation is necessary to challenge the systemic flaws of the media.
At its core, female representation in sports media is essential because of the visibility it provides to the women who have fought the uphill battle in this male-dominated field and emerged victorious on the other side. When women journalists are given a platform in sports media, they are also granted an opportunity to create real change across the industry. Their visibility alone impacts not only from how young girls perceive their potential in sports and the media, but the harmful ways that sponsors, investors, and even coaches approach women’s sports and female journalists.
Representation is also key to breaking down the systemic barriers that prevent this kind of diverse reporting in the first place, ensuring that executives and higher-ups within the industry will incorporate their diverse perspectives into their decisions. In a 2013 study investigating the lack of serious, respectful coverage of women’s sports, researchers found that sports media itself has a history of encouraging narratives that diminish and ridicule women’s sports, which negatively impacts the hiring practices for women in sports media.
As Lindsey Darvin of Forbes writes, “The result is a lack of women role models and mentors in the industry, making it challenging for aspiring women sports journalists to navigate their careers.” The systemic flaws of mass media perpetuate an ongoing cycle of inequality in sports journalism, and increasing female representation across these outlets is the best way to break that cycle.
Media investment in female journalists pave the way for a more inclusive future in sports
Although sports media still faces a significant exclusion of female voices, fortunately there are many strategies we can take to combat this inequity head-on — including some solutions that are already starting to bear fruit across our major media networks.
As we experience a state of increased monetary and social investment in women’s sports, it falls to the media to make that same investment in female journalists: promoting mentorship programs to facilitate personal growth and leadership positions for women in sports media, or spearheading gender sensitivity initiatives to combat the implicit biases that reduce or marginalize female voices in sports.
These supportive, inclusive strategies for change are perhaps reflected in the rise of women-led sports media organizations like The Gist, TOGETHXR, and Just Women’s Sports – organizations which not only facilitate a strong support network to elevate women in sports journalism, but grant viewers a diverse perspective on women’s sports that major media outlets still lack.
As these support networks propelled women’s sports along their meteoric rise in popularity, their message began to resonate in our legacy media as well, with journalists like Paula Levigne and Lisa Salters becoming major voices within the national phenomenon that is ESPN.
The more we see women athletes and journalists being celebrated for their talent, skill, and hard work, the more we normalize the idea that women belong in every level of our sports – eroding the harmful stereotypes and outdated frameworks that keep major sports media male dominated.
Female representation in sports media isn’t just important, it’s essential for equity, growth, and progress in the world of sports and beyond. It helps us all – athletes, fans, and society at large – see that sports are not a male-only domain, but a space for all of those fueled by the universal thrill of competition.
