Still the outsiders? Women in sport journalism

Harris, A and Bowes, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5635-106X, 2025. Still the outsiders? Women in sport journalism. International Journal of Sport Communication. ISSN 1936-3915 (Forthcoming)

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Abstract

It has long been acknowledged that sport media is a male dominated space, which has served to entrench women sport journalists’ position in the industry as outsiders. This research consisted of interviews with 10 women sport journalists working in the UK, exploring their workplace experiences. Drawing on Kanter’s (1977) theory of tokenism, findings indicate that women working within men’s sport face workplace practices which reinforce their outsider status. Participants discussed workplace harassment and gendered online abuse, numeric inequality, and the additional labor of fact checking and proving themselves to minimise their outsider status. Additionally, this numeric inequality and outsider status leaves women reluctant to raise issues, fearing career jeopardy, thus highlighting the precarious landscape that women face in UK industry. However, there were suggestions that the increasing mediatization of women’s sport was indicative of newly emerging journalistic cultures which could lead to the greater acceptance of women in sport journalism.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	International Journal of Sport Communication
Creators:	Harris, A. and Bowes, A.
Publisher:	Human Kinetics
Date:	2 February 2025
ISSN:	1936-3915
Identifiers:	Number Type 2377528 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Melissa Cornwell
Date Added:	19 Feb 2025 10:26
Last Modified:	19 Feb 2025 10:26
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53077

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