Elle Duncan, host of NESN Live, explains difficulties she’s experienced being a women in this field.
“It’s as simple as players in the locker room doing things because you are the only woman around,” says Duncan
Women are discouraged from having any other position than “sideline reporter”, because apparently that’s all they know, and that’s all they're good for. Asking questions and discussing injury reports are all women know thus far.
There are plenty of male writers, reporters and anchors that have never played professional sports but are stilled allowed to give their opinions, but when women add their thoughts about a sport, they are challenged because they’ve never participated in a professional sport.
“Girls are trying to over…show more content… “You only see these pretty girls as sideline reporters, but never analysts,” says Duncan. “Women always have to defend themselves and prove that they should be able to get the same jobs that the men have.”
The stereotypes that occur because of incidents with women in the media have created roadblocks for all women pursuing a career in sports media. The modern depiction of a female sports reporter is ‘a pretty girl in front of a camera reading questions off prompters’. This has truly become the glass ceiling for women in sports journalism.
Things will only improve for women in time if women start to fight for their right to be equal, and prove they are capable of the same jobs that men have in sports.
Duncan believes that women that want to make it in the field today must aim high. They have to stop reaching for “just being a sideline reporter”, and start reaching for becoming the anchor or an analyst. She says that young girls should aim for the highest that they…show more content… Women have the right to not only stand next to men and report on the sidelines, but also become female sports anchors as well as female analysts.
A Huffington Post article, ‘It’s Time to Have Female Play-by-Play Announcers’ states that in 2011, Alex Flanagan, a female sideline reporter, told USA Today, "I always laugh. Our industry is filled with a lot of sports reporters who have never played the game of football. So what's different between you as a (male) sports reporter, or sportswriter, who never played the game of football, and me as a female who has never played the game of football, in knowing the game of football?"
Women sportscasters are always held to a higher standard than men. People assume things such as ‘Oh, she's just a pretty blonde. She doesn't know what she's talking about.'
Reporters often are stereotyped as clueless eye candy and aren’t taken seriously. Women are harassed and disrespected.
However, many women are sports fans and follow sports religiously, unlike previous years before when stadiums were filled with white men who smoked cigars and gambled on the