Breaking through the barriers of Sports Sports have been around for many centuries dating way back in time. In America sports are a huge part of American’s entertainment. Little boys grow up watching football with their dads, and they pick out their favorite player on the team and they tell their dad “I want to be just like him one day”. When someone says the word sports most people think of men’s sports like football, basketball or even baseball. Sports started as strictly male, but not for long soon after women wanted to play sports. Not only has sports itself been a male only field, but also sports media. In the sports media industry men where the only people covering sports. Viewers on television didn’t see women on sports shows, or even …show more content…
They were essentially just supposed to be house wives. Women were supposed to stay feminine, but they didn’t want to. “The history of how gender barriers were broken in sports follows a somewhat different trajectory” (Naison). “For women, the story is not about how female sports talent was kept out of competition; it is a story of a powerful gender system that insisted participation in sports was inappropriate because it would masculinize women” (Naison). It wasn’t more about men being scared that women could be better than men. It was more about the image of how women were supposed to be. They didn’t want sports to masculinize women. “For most of the twentieth century, women were socialized to believe that competitive sports was a male domain, and they were given few opportunities to develop their own athletic talent” ( Naison). For some reason there was this stigmatism ton sports, and that it was their territory and there was nothing women could do. “It was not until the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the passage of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that women as an organized political force began to define sports participation as a women’s rights issue and to insist that girls have the same opportunity to participate in sports as boys”(Naison). Women began to believe and to embrace the fact that they had a right to participate in …show more content…
In 2012, those percentages were exactly the same (Morrison). For 2013, it was actually worse: 63.7 percent male and 36.3 percent female (Morrison). These reports just show how sports media is an area where there are a lot more men than women. Many sports media outlets are trying to combat these reports and get more women in the newsrooms. “… the majority of female columnists and editors worked for ESPN, which the report notes has made an effort to diversify its newsroom” (Morrison). Women are having it tough all across the board especially the limited amount of women sports reporters. They have to deal with men always thinking they are better than them. They also have to endure “…harassment from fans, the athletes they cover and even their own colleagues (Morrison). “Sports journalism is a uniquely difficult beat for the few women that are lucky enough to get the job”(Morrison). "Women, it seems have come far only if you count progress in inches," Arizona State University's Cronkite School associate dean Kristin Gilger said in the press release (Morrison). "This report reminds us all how important it is to take a step back, see where we're at and pay attention to how far we still have to go" (