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Female Journalists Shun Sports Reporting: lack of opportunity vs lack of attractiveness more by Catherine Strong2,706Download (.pdf)
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Female journali
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sts shunsports reporting:lack of
opportunity versus lack of
attractivenessCathy StrongMasseyUniversityAbstract:
There is ample evidence that sports journalism is still a male domain
and that NewZealand is poor in this gender balance, despite its strength in
female equality in otherareas. Over recent decades women have swarmed into
journalism, often makingupthe majority of the graduates from
journalism schools and recently making up equalnumbersof journalists
covering hard news stories in our media. It is commonto seewomen as political
reporters, business reporters, crime reporters, or health reporters;bu
t very few women are sports reporters inthe newspaper industry.
Those who doarea “rare breed”, willing and able to faceextraordinar
y challenges. This paper examines whythe bright new female journalists
do not flow into the sportsdepartment as theydo other departments.What is the
major deflector for women totake up the challenge and turn around the
low percentages?Editors say women don‟thave the interest norskills to be
sports journalist. However, thewomen surveyed seeit a different
way. They perceive that it is not a lack of opportunity,but rather a
lack of attractiveness. Women with journalism qualifications and
experience viewworking in the sports department as a detour
for their career path.Strong, C. (2007). Female journalists shun sports reporting: lackof opportunity
versus lack of attractiveness,Communication Journal of New Zealand, He Kohinga Korero, 8:2: p7-18.
Introduction:New Zealand stands out as a countryhistorically
offering equal opportunities to women. Itwas the first country in
the world togive women the vote, and in recent yearsit has boastedfemal
es holding several top positions inthe government –
Prime Minister, Leader of theOpposition, Speaker of the House,
Governor General, Chief Justice, andCEOs of theMinistries of Health,
Transport, and Education. Women are leading in the businessworldtoo,
with a youngfemale at the helm of New Zealand's largest company for
the past eightyears.This would lead to expectationsthat women in the media
here would have betteropportunities thanother countries. In general
terms this seems true. However, once the datais scrutinised
more closelyit shows that New Zealand‟s female journalists
are still laggingbehind theirmale counterpartsin some areas. The
most notableis in sportsjournalism.Background:
A quarter ofa century ago Gray‟s nationwide survey of the New Zealand
media showedwomen journalists fared betterthan their overseas‟ counterparts
, making up about half thestaff of many newsrooms, compared
with one-third globally (Gallagher, 1979). This wasnot a true
balance, however, as women were not in decision-making levels; were
betterqualified than menon the same level; and tended to bebunched up in the
lower, less-paidlevels. Almost half the women were young and working in the media
less than five years,compared to the majority of men surveyedwho had been
in the industry formore than tenyears (Gray, 1983).Updated figures
still show New Zealand media is more gender-balanced than other countries.Th
e 2005 Global MediaMonitoring Project (GMMP) surveying 76countries
showed thatgloballywomen still are outnumbered by men working in
newsroom, but not in New Zealandwhereoverall women and men are
represented equally in the ranks ofjournalists,and wherein some news outlets
women are the majority(Gallagher, 2005; Fountaine, 2006).
More detailed research, however, shows that this equality is
not across the board, especiallyinmanagement, in daily newspapers, and in some
areas of reporting such as sports. The2006 report by the Human
Rights Commission identified asignificant male dominance intheeditorshi
p of daily newspapers, with only 19percent having a woman editor. The
HRC alsolamentedthe low numbers of women on theboard of directors of
the private mediacompanies (McGregor & Fountaine, p.18). A further studyof
metropolitan newspapers (Strong &Hannis, 2007) showed that women wrote only 36percent of
articles. This figure varied in thedifferent sections of the newspaper. While women
produced at least half ofthe hard newsand front-page articles, they were poorly
represented in opinion pieces and almost invisible in sports sections.
The sport section is an importantpart of newspapers, accounting, for
instance, for about one-fifth (21 percent) of the articlesin New
Zealand‟s main newspapers. In the metropolitannewspapers only seven
percent of the sports stories werewritten by women journalists;intwo
newspapers this was even lower at only fivepercent. Thedifference between
individualnewspapers should not be considered statistically
significant,however, as one female journalist joining or leaving the
staff would account for a few percent spread.Othercountries showed
similar results. A study of Australian metropolitannewspapersshowed 11
percent sports articles were writtenby women (Strong & Hannis,
2007). ABritish survey showed nine percent of the sports journalists
in the national UK press werewomen (Boyle, 2005). Hardin &
Shain reported that women make up 11 percent of thoseworkingin sports
departments in the top 200 U.S. newspapers (2006, p. 325). TheInternati
onal Sports Press Survey2005 of 10 countries calculated only 5 percent of
sportsarticles were written by women (Rose,2007).Little movement
over past decade:These current statistics are not surprising
considering that sports journalism has had a longlegacy in many countries of
being seen as a male bastion. Although this imbalance washighlig
hted during the women‟s movement of the 70s, andwhile other areas of reporting
shifted to abetter gender balance, sports did not, and by the mid
1990s it waswelldocumented that women had still not made any significant
gains in joining the ranks of sports journalists (Boswell, 1994;
Gallagher, 1981, 2000, 2005; Lowes,1969; Fleder, 2004;Wojiechowski,
1990,). Chambers, Steiner and Fleming (2004) summed up
the situation:“Sports newsis home to one of the most intenseand most
historicallyenduring gender
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