Voices of Career Trajectories, and Gender Performance
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Pioneering Women in Television Sports Media: Voices of Career Trajectories, and Gender Performance Student Submission ICA Conference 2018 Conference Theme Paper/ Feminist Division Keywords: women, sports media, narrative, career trajectory, feminism, and gender performance 1 Introduction Over 40 years ago, schoolgirls were given equal opportunities to play sports on account of the passing of Title IX, a federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sex in any federally funded education program or activity. On the 40-year anniversary of Title IX, in 2012, The New York Times estimated that 3,373,000 girls and women in American were playing high school and college sports, an increase of over 3 million females then prior to the mandate. This recent generation of female athletes has parlayed their love of sport into occupations within sports media. Women’s role in sports media is continuously evolving. While men still largely outnumber women in this profession, women are hosting national sports broadcasts, serving as national game broadcast analysts and occupying sports media roles in a majority of the television markets in the United States. A generation ago, females who coveted a position in sports media had few role models. Though they are small in numbers, the groundbreaking women who set the stage for today’s sports media opportunities for other women offer important narratives when analyzing how gender affected their careers in this masculine hegemonic profession. Two female sports media pioneers, Jane Chastain and Lesley Visser, were interviewed for this study. Both of them performed various duties as sports reporters covering football in the 1960s and 1970s that had previously been held exclusively by men. In this article, through grounded theory, I will seek to achieve two objectives. First and foremost, to provide a critical examination of how the subjects narrate their career trajectories. And secondly, to explore how they establish the relationship between gender and expertise in sports. Hence, how 2 they perform gender roles in authenticating themselves as capable and proficient in their field. Football is a violent, extremely physical sport that until recently (girls now are being allowed to play football, most often as kickers) did not allow girls to participate. Therefore, women who initially covered football were criticized for opinions and interpretations of the sport, having never played it in an organized manner. These women’s resistance to social norms can be a learning tool and give historical perspective to women’s insurgence in any masculine hegemonic field. History of Women in Sports Media Interestingly, female journalists were covering sports decades before they won the right to vote in the late 19th century. Midy (Maria) Morgan was reportedly the first female media member to report on a “male topic,” working as a livestock reporter for the New York Times in 1869. (Creedon 1994). Following Morgan, there were female reporters known as “stunt girls,” who performed and chronicled athletic activities (p. 71). In the western United States, women reported on sporting events for newspapers in California and Nevada from the later 1800’s (p. 70). Mary Bostwick started her career as a reporter in Denver in 1903. She spent 25 years as the only women at The Star. She covered football, boxing, baseball, hunting, and basketball, though her specialty was aviation and racecar reporting (p. 72). The Great Depression forced many women out of the labor force in order for men to occupy what few jobs were offered (p. 78). However, at least three women were reportedly still active as sports reporters in the 1930’s (p. 79). During World War II there was a shortage of male reporters, subsequently women rejoined the work force in various positions, including sports reporters. 3 even though women were given this opportunity, they still faced arduous working conditions. Women were demoralized and denigrated, kicked out of the press box while endeavoring to complete their assignments (p. 81). The Press Box was considered a “good old boys club” and women weren’t invited or welcome. Mary Garber, considered the “Dean of Women Sportswriters,” did not sit by quietly when she was removed from a press box. In 1946, Garber challenged the rule at Duke University prohibiting women in the press box. She was finally admitted into the press box only after the managing editor of her newspaper, the Winston- Salem Sentinel, threatened to withdraw its coverage of the team (p. 80). A Federal equal Opportunity employment mandate passed in the 1970’s opened more doors for women in sports reporting. In addition, Sports Illustrated magazine filed a lawsuit in order for their female reporters to be allowed into Major League Baseball clubhouses (p. 84). Jane Chastain was reportedly the first female sportscaster in local television when she worked for a Miami television station in 1967. She was also the first woman to serve as a television football sideline reporter. Chastain reported from the National Football League sidelines and also worked as a color analyst for CBS Sports during NFL broadcasts including the Super Bowl in 1975. Lesley Visser has had a long storied career in sports media. She was the first female television sideline reporter to work a Super Bowl and in 1998 she was the first woman to join the highly coveted Monday Night Football broadcast crew. She also remains the only woman to be inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. Her career began in 1974, when she worked as a sports writer for the Boston. She was the first newspaper beat writer to cover an NFL team. Both Chastain and Visser are widely and historically revered as being pioneers in the sports media 4 profession, particularly as groundbreaking female reporters in the National Football League. Their narratives have historical significance, thus it is vital to document and examine their experiences through an academic lens. Narrative and Career Trajectory Delineations We utilize narratives in our everyday conversations. Storytelling is a social activity that is created in our interactions with others (Tracy & Robles 2013). Narratives come in boundless forms; they can be spoken or written about the past, present or future, real or imagined, long or short, with or without detail and for any purpose. What typically separates a narrative from an everyday story is generally the occurrence of relating an account to a particular time, when the teller of the narrative experienced an event or problem. The event discussed is then deemed “newsworthy – out of the ordinary and/or interesting in some way” (Tracy & Robles, p. 222). Additionally, an assessment of the event is expressed (Tracy & Robles). Gerald Prince (2001) referred to William Labov’s analysis of oral narratives of personal experience and tellability by writing, “compared not only pointed and pointless stories, but more specifically, narratives that ‘are complete in the sense that they have a beginning, a middle, and an end’ and ‘more fully developed types’ that include their own evaluation and indicate their point: whey they are told and ‘what the narrator is getting at’” (p. 28). A career trajectory begins at the point of entry into a particular field. The term trajectory has several definitions, however, for the purposes of this discussion it will be considered as the path or process of development. 5 Women and Language Feminist researchers have constructed language as an important topic early in their scholarship (Lakoff 1975; Miller & Swift 1977; McNay 1999). “Women’s speech generally has been devalued for a very long time” (Minister 1991). Tracy & Robles referred to studies showing that in women’s stories, “often people have names and do a lot of talking.” While men’s stories “tend to be more details about place, time and objects; people more frequently are nameless and silent” (p. 242). Chanfrault-Duchet offered this assessment from the perspective of feminist methodology: “In women’s life stories, the social self does not merely occupy a place within the social order; rather its place is over determined by the status of women. This means that, women’s life stories unlike men’s, deal not only with the relation between the self, and the social sphere, but also, and above all, with woman’s condition and with the collective representations of woman as they have been shaped by the society with which the woman being interviewed must deal” (p. 78). Therefore, women’s narrative within a masculine hegemonic field will have been molded by masculine influences. When considering women in media, Byerly & Ross (2006) point out “the consequences for women who choose to work in the male-ordered domain, which is the newsroom, are to develop strategies that involve either beating the boys at their own game or else developing alternative ways of practicing journalism” (p. 79). Predictably, women and men’s narrative discourse vis-a’-vis are as divergent as gender differences would indicate. In this premise, Abrams (2010) 6 pointed out Mary Gergen’s analysis of a series of autobiographies written by well- known men and women. “She concluded that the ‘manstories’ adopt linear, progressive narratives leading to goal achievement, they are individualist and in Gergen’s words, ‘seem to celebrate the song of self’. By contrast, even amongst her sample of self-motivated and very successful women she found their ‘womanstories’ deviated from the unilinear narrative. Often in order to focus on aspects of personal life, they stressed their emotional interdependence and indeed crafted more complex and fuller stories than their male counterparts“ (p. 44). Chanfrault-Duchet (1991) also affirmed the importance of women’s narratives when addressing narrative structures, social models, and symbolic representation in the life story: “Women’s words collected by the way of the life story are neither mere gossip nor words that can be treated as a set of information providing direct access to women’s mentality.