For years now female football journalists have been facing constant battles of abuse and inequality within the industry in terms of their roles and opinions. Will there ever be equality?
It’s 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, you’ve just taken your seat in the press box, fans begin to gather in their thousands and you as a female have no idea what the next 90 minutes will bring…
Over the last 50 years, the amount of females becoming football journalists has increased massively.
According to a study by the University of London, females reporting on football has increased in countries all across the world, not just here in the UK. However, the industry still remains male dominated.
Despite being a male dominated industry, the roles previous female football journalists had when they first started out compared to now, have changed massively.
“It is our right to be able to write about it and comment about men’s football because females are 50% of the world’s population. And I’ve always felt that.”
– Dame Julie Welch
Ex female football journalist for Fleet Street Newspaper Dame Julie Welch who was in the industry for around 30+ years spoke about her experiences.
“Becoming the first female football reporter for Fleet Street was a great breakthrough, obviously, for my career. We had a change in our head of sports. My first editor was a really interesting guy. Very amusing, but definitely believed women should know their place. But the new sports editor was different. He knew I was sports crazy, especially football crazy. So I jumped in, which is what you’ve got to do.
“After filing my first report, the radio was ringing up. I couldn’t believe that it was such a big deal. I think I was tolerated for a while because they thought oh she’ll go off and do something else. But then the press pack realised that I wasn’t going to go away.
“I’m quite relieved that we didn’t have social media back then. Because I think I would have gotten trolled an awful lot. Some people were incredibly nice and encouraging. And some were pretty horrible.
“Funny things were said by stewards and the doorman at the press box trying to turn me away because you know, girlfriends aren’t allowed in the press box. I used to feel really fantastic when I waved my press card at them. I’m entitled to be there. The
other thing that I did find and because it’s still very much a male world, it’s quite isolating. As there is a sort of distance between you and the pack of men. As we are different.”
The role of social media…
As Julie said, she is relieved there was no social media when she first started out.
As proven over the last couple of years, social media is a brilliant place for female football journalists to promote themselves and their work; however, it opens them up to mass amounts of abuse and criticism.
Recently Karen Carney, an ex professional women’s player made some comments about Leeds at a Premier League match. As a result of these comments, she received mass amounts of criticism despite her comment being completely valid. Due to the sheer amount of abuse she received online, she deleted her Twitter account which was a huge story across the UK and stood out to many female football journalists.
Julie said: “Well, when I read that stuff, I just thought, how could they. Most of the males who do the trolling like winding people up. There’s no thought behind it. The only thing you can do as a female is try to mute certain words. You’ll find with females, we really have to do our homework, we have to research everything.”
So have the roles for female football journalists changed now?
It’s hard to say really if the roles for women in football journalism have changed.
They’ve changed in terms of women getting higher paid jobs within the industry and more females have begun working for the likes of BBC Sport and SkySports however they still aren’t accepted. And there is still a major GENDER DIVISION.
In the United States currently, a country where gender pay and gender equality is important. There are over 7,899 sports reporters employed. However, only 21.8% are women while 74.5% are men. Is this fair?
In the UK this year it was revealed there are still fewer women reporting about football than men.
Current female football journalist Chloe Streak who’s been in the industry for six years explained some of her roles as well as barriers she’s faced.
Chloe said: “My love of football started when I was six years old. I started to branch out and I got roles in different fields, which gave me all the opportunities I have now.
“I’m having more problems now than I did when I first started. I think this is because of social media being so prominent.
“In terms of my roles I’ve been a producer and now I’m Senior Major executive, which for me, at my age is huge. Some good and bad things happened on my journey, some things that have changed my perspective of football and sport. There have been some barriers but they empowered me to do more work and get out there.
“You can see on SkySports and every sports outlet there are more female pundits and more female presenters, which is good to see. But at the end of the day, if you go on Twitter, after a female pundit has been on, they’re getting slated.”
When Karen Carney received her abuse, Chloe had her own personal experience of abuse on Twitter.
“The comments Karen got were spiteful. I went on Twitter straightaway and stuck up for her. When I put the tweet out, I was getting comments underneath saying, go back to the kitchen or you shouldn’t have a comment on football. I actually wanted to delete my social media account but instead I deleted the tweet.”
Will things ever improve?
Eventually, things should and will start to improve…
The company Women in Football, celebrated their 13th anniversary in 2020. They focus on improving women’s representation in the football journalism industry by challenging inequality and discrimination by lobbying for positive change.
When asked if they could share any advice for aspiring young female football journalists, Julie and Chloe said:
“Don’t give up! There’s been times where I’ve wanted to stop because I’ve been told I’m not going to make it, I’m not strong enough, I have no knowledge of the game. But don’t give up because your gender shouldn’t determine how good you are at something. Because if you want to do it, you can do it. Focus on yourself, no one else matters.”
To conclude, female football journalists still face a constant battle in terms of their roles every single day. However, the roles have changed significantly from the 1970’s to now.
But more needs to be done in order to stop the abuse female reporters receive on
social media and more importantly eliminate the gender division, so we are all equal and the industry is no longer male dominated.
Sporty AF 
Excellent Ashlea 👍👏👏👏
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