The Denver Broncos weren’t the only major stars of the sporting world on campus last week: On Thursday evening, Stanford Women in Business (SWIB) hosted three top ESPN executives and an Under Armour executive for its “Sports Industry Night,” which sought to introduce students to the sports industry.
While the event, the first of its kind put on by SWIB, touched on the four guests’ experiences working in the sports world as a whole, much of its focus was geared towards the expanding efforts to incorporate more women into the industry — whether that concerns the work their organizations or outlets produce or the environment within the companies themselves.
While some companies like ESPN have made great strides towards achieving more equality in the workplace — ESPN The Magazine, for example, just hired the first woman editor-in-chief for a big-time sports magazine — it’s a standard that the rest of sports media will have to follow. While ESPN does better than most sports media in including women on its staff, men still comprise 85-90 percent of sport editorial and writer positions throughout the industry.
But the events’ guests were optimistic that field’s ability to hire women, and to rid itself of sexism, is ultimately moving in the right direction.
“Well it is certainly getting better,” said Laura Gentile, the founder of espnW, after the event. “[But] you still hear stories, with the women journalists on our team, where people sort of just assume, ‘Hey little lady, what are you doing here?’ They still hear that and they are grown women and they are professionals, so the culture of sports still needs to continue to evolve but there are so many positive signs.”
And according to John Kosner, the Executive Vice President of Digital and Print Media at ESPN, making the sports industry more inclusive is not simply an ethical question: it’s a business one.
“The reason why I want to do this isn’t because I think it’s some sort of benevolent effort, it’s because you can expand your business,” Kosner said. “I believe more people will come to ESPN and spend more time there if you differentiate what the coverage is.”
Though women are becoming more prominent in the sports media scene, they are often found in the same roles: as sideline or courtside reporters, but not necessarily analysts, commentators or even writers and editors.
“It feels like an anachronism to me that the only roles on television for women are on the sideline chasing a college football coach,” Kosner said.
“I think we should blow [the status quo] up. But the only way to do that is to put more people, not just women… in different places,” he added. “One of the breakthroughs was the Ray Rice domestic violence story. When that story broke, we covered it just sort of how you would expect, and the talent at espnW basically said, ‘No, there are multiple different angles to this, things you have to look at.’”
To develop one’s brand and stand out in the industry, the panel suggested finding and not shying away from speaking one’s voice — a lesson that applies to various realms of professional and personal life and one that they urged female sports journalists to channel when dealing with subtle or more blatant sexism in the workplace.
Though it can be difficult to challenge such comments or harassment, it may be one of the ways to break down stereotypes and discrimination, ultimately helping advance women in the industry.
“You can point out if someone mistreats you, you can say, ‘Hey, that was offensive,’ and you can do it politely and you can do it respectfully,” Gentile said. “But part of it is having thick skin to a degree and just know what you want to accomplish and know that you are capable of doing a fantastic job. Just keep going and let nothing stand in the way of the work and the output.”
Contact Alexa Philippou at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu.