A glimpse at life in a male dominated industry

I knew from the beginning I would always be outnumbered, but sometimes the reality still shocks me.

As a woman in a sports program at one of the best journalism schools in the country, it’s typical to be outnumbered on a ratio of one girl to 5-10 boys in every class. It’s normal to have all the boys talk about their fantasy team behind you while you sit there silent, still understanding everything said (and mentally probably making better decisions for their team than they are). And it’s a usual occurrence that your male classmates will look at you funny when you say something smart about sports.

I hate when I’m doubted in knowing a simple fact about something because I’m a woman and I’m not supposed to know anything. I’m supposed to only care about looking at the cute guys on the field or what they’re wearing entering the arena. Not how many plays the team had on their scoring drive or why a team could win the national championship.

When I go to work for a tournament, the men around me offer to help carry heavy things. They tell the other interns to grab something because I’m a woman and shouldn't be doing actual labor. That the man should do the work, not the woman. It’s not like I have no idea that my job requires me to work with my hands. Last I checked, I knew what I was doing, but because I’m a woman I don’t. And when I’m in charge at one of our tournaments and I need to talk to the men in the pro shop, I’m treated as if I was not running a large junior tournament. As if I need something rather than trying to get them to help me run the event and make it all go smoothly. I get looks from them like I shouldn’t be in charge of whatever is going on and should just go back to school because I can’t possibly be old enough to be doing my job.

On top of that, at work I’m surrounded by club-goers, most of whom are older, white men. And when I hear their conversations, I can’t walk away fast enough from the things I overhear. The way women are talked about or the manner they even talk about the people they know who are supposedly friends. It’s an environment where sometimes the women just have to put their heads down and serve the men to make a living and receive good tips.

I wish this wasn’t the case. I wish these things weren’t my normal at school. I wish sports could just be equal, but it seems like it never will be.

Every time I watch sports, ever since I was a little girl, there has never been a lot of people that looked like me on that screen. It’s almost always older men who are multiple generations past mine talking about something that’s not even relevant. How am I able to connect with the sports I love when I can’t relate to the people I’m watching?

All throughout college golf, I saw the disparity. The boys team was given new shirts each year and had more money to travel to tournaments. We only had three polos to make it four years and could barely afford the cheapest hotel in the city we were in. They were able to have more players with the scholarships they got, while us girls were left paying for more than 70% of our tuition. Again, my normal was dominated by men controlling how my life of sports was lived.

When I got to my new school after transferring, I saw girls who were on the same mission I am on. To prove that we belong in this world and that we know what we’re doing.

The only problem is that I may be doing well in proving I can do that, but then a day later I’ll get slammed back down to the ground, having to climb my way back up again.

For example, in my sports reporting class, I earned the highest grade for the semester. In a room of 20 students, four girls and 16 boys, I felt the need to prove myself. That I can write and that I can write well about something other than football because there are other sports that exist from the months of August to November, like golf. I got some weird looks and people who questioned the work I did. I was told a couple months prior by my teacher that he didn’t know what to expect from my writing when he first met me and doubted what I could do because I’m more on the quiet side. Yet here I was proving that I could do what I was made for.

Unfortunately, my highs in this program don’t last long.

I had a group project for another class with two male classmates. We were discussing who would do what on the entrepreneurial idea one of them spawned, giving no one else a chance for input. I had mentioned that I would take the information and put that into a new PowerPoint to make it look appealing. When the guy whose idea we were going with was assigning us our roles, I first had a long pause on what I was going to do. He then told me that I would “just make things look good.” He didn’t tell me to contribute any information, do a slide or research anything we were going to be talking about.

Nope. None of that.

I’m not going to lie, my blood was boiling. I was furious.

This is how we’re seen. Just there to make things pretty because we probably don’t know anything. And while I don’t know the exact number of men who think this, there are obviously some who still exist and of course I was with one for this group project.

So yes, I did make the presentation look good. I also contributed information, developed the logo for our new company, added to the product, researched the market we were shooting for, and shared how investor funds would be used in the initial stages of the prototype. Sounds to me a lot more than just making things look good.

At the end of it all, I had to move past it and accept that this is how things work. An unfortunate reality that we’re desperately trying to change, but can never seem to catch up.

I hope one day it can be to where men and women in sports are seen as equals. A world where there can be an equal amount of women in the broadcast booth as there are men. And it goes beyond just broadcasting, but in the workroom of sports teams and companies and in the classroom where we build some of our foundations for going into the industry.

I know that in my lifetime, the issue will most likely not resolve itself, but I’m hoping that one day at a time women can continue to keep closing the gap.