Gender Inequality in sports

Female Sports Fans and Athletes

NYU junior Alyssa Sultani had grown up as a fan of sports, specifically basketball, soccer, and tennis. Through conversations and attendance with her father and friends, Sultani found different ways to maintain her interest in sports. However, Sultani has said that her interest in sports has been tested by male sports fans who ask her to prove that she is a “true fan” due to her gender.

Sultani, among many other female sports fans, has been subject to this kind of treatment from their male counterparts as a result of the overwhelmingly large number of male sports fans and players. Male sports fans have continuously managed to silence women’s opinions and interests in the sports realm, leading to both controversial and belittling comments.

“Recently, I had a male friend who decided to challenge me and ask me to name 10 different players on separate teams just to see how much I knew about the NBA,” Sultani said. “It made me feel kind of like a joke and like I wasn’t being taken seriously.”

According to GWI, 86% of men watch sports while 72% of women watch sports, highlighting the fact that men watch sports more than women overall. Perhaps as a result of this divide, female sports fans struggle to be taken seriously by their male counterparts.

Sultani said that women have to constantly prove their status as sports fans as a result of gender differences.

“Sometimes I think men just want to prove their knowledge and that they know more about something,” Sultani said. “[Men] might also want to exclude women from something that they perceive as strictly for men.”

Amina Hamawy, who previously held the position of highest-ranked martial artist with the Brunswick Martial Arts Academy, has said that she faced discrimination as a woman in the space. The Brunswick Martial Arts Academy, located in North Brunswick, NJ, has offered a variety of martial arts courses such as Kempo-Karate and Jiu-Jitsu and is one of the top places to train in the Brunswick area.

“Usually, the instructors pair you off with someone that is your size but they usually exclude women in martial arts because we’re built smaller than men,” Hamawy said. “Yet, at the same time, women should be included because we were there to learn how to fight against male predators.”

As a result of the higher rates of male sports fans, different media outlets have catered to male audiences, effectively excluding female fans.

“Most sports that people watch are men’s sports and it's more interesting because it is catered to the male gaze and nothing is really catered to us,” Hamawy said. “I think that’s an issue where women need to prove themselves so that they can be seen as worth something because you don’t see a lot of ads for sports with women on the covers.”

Women in Sports Journalism

As female reporters within the sports industry, the levels of discrimination and gender inequality are especially palpable. According to Zippia, 20% of sports journalists are women and 79.1% of sports journalists are men.

Alex Coffey, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, said that men may be more abrasive with women than other men as a result of women in predominantly male spaces. Coffey is one of five reporters on a baseball beat who broke the story on Pete Rose sexual assault allegations.

“Maybe [the misogyny] stems from the fact that we’re covering male athletes and I guess male journalists can claim that they used to play these sports,” Coffey said. “I think it’s more of a reflection of people questioning you because they don’t think you come from a personal background that qualifies you to write or cover these sports.”

Claire Smith, assistant professor with Klein School of Media and Communications at Temple University, said that there have been stronger implications for women of color in sports journalism. In addition to her position at Temple, she is the only black woman in the baseball Hall of Fame for her coverage of the New York Yankees.

“There has always been a deeper racial issue between people of color and those they work for within the sports industry,” Smith said. “[The racism] is always going to hurt but it’s not as overt as it used to be.”

Despite the polarities between women and women of color in sports, Smith believes that giving these issues labels doesn’t address the need for change within the industry.

“It’s been quite a journey to have to narrow these lines when it is completely unnecessary,” Smith said. “Inclusion suggests that there is a problem and inequity suggests that there is a solution. What one wishes for and wishes to live are completely different things.”

Regardless of women’s sports fans comprising less than half of global sports fans, the inherent assumption that women aren’t knowledgeable enough to be fans needs to be forgotten. Coffey said that as a female sports reporter, she tries to lessen the attention drawn to her gender.

“I think focusing on the job and making it less about the fact that you’re a woman in that space,” Coffey said. “I’ve seen women that call attention to [gender] all the time. I just feel like it kind of makes you be associated with that and distracts you from the actual work you’re doing. If the goal is to normalize women in sports, the way to do that is to draw less attention to our gender.”

However, despite progress being made, issues of gender discrimination and inequality within sports, amongst fans and athletes, continue to persist. These forms of adversity that women in sports face stymies progress in a lot of different ways such as deterring players from playing at the collegiate and professional levels.

But in the end, with influential women such as Hamawy and Smith continuing to raise the bar in challenging gender discrimination, progress is being made in many faces by women in different areas of the sports world.

“Women, especially women of color, play an important role for these younger generations,” Smith said. “It isn’t a commitment to your job as to being the first in your field, but having the ability to become a role model for someone is the most important thing to keep in mind.”