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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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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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