Misogyny and Other Occupational Hazards of Women Sportswriters
In a world that embraces the pervasive myth that women are not sports fans, one where “throwing like a girl” is lobbed as a critique, women who write about sports face immense challenges. While women sportswriters may not necessarily write about female athletes, they still face the bias—that has been disproven time and time again—that women aren’t sports fans. As the Women’s Sports Foundation found, there is “no research that shows boys are more interested in sports than girls.” It’s a “lack of opportunity” and “lack of peer group support” that leads to girls dropping out of sports at a much higher rate than boys. Same goes for women sportswriters. Institutional and gender biases propel the belief that women aren’t sports fans and therefore women can’t write about sports. But: this is all false (obviously). Of course women are sports fans! Obviously, they can write about sports! This shouldn’t be a revolutionary idea, yet here we are.
Enter and , two authors whose sports books were released in 2018. Bass’s tells the story of the Maine state is about the amount of Winter Olympians this small town in Vermont has produced.
