I was nine years old when I quit playing baseball.
I didn’t want to, but I was tired of my teammates pulling my braids and teasing me about which one of them I had a crush on (spoiler alert: no one). I felt like I had to work extra hard, just to be seen as a teammate — “one of the boys” — instead of just a girl.
This started the long internalization that if I was going to succeed in sports, in any capacity, I would have to give up some, or all, of my femininity in order to be taken seriously. I learned to mould myself to fit into this “boy's club.”
But it didn’t matter how hard I played in gym class, how tomboy-ish I dressed or how much I knew about a sport — everyone seemed to see my gender before they saw anything else. Someone heard I was a fan of the Toronto Raptors? Name five players. I was called a “puck bunny” for wearing my brother’s hockey jersey for a school spirit day.
As I grew up, this misogyny stayed constant. It just changed shapes. NFL fans reduce my interest to liking Taylor Swift, and I see the side-eye before the huffed answer when I ask about a rule in golf.
In February, I went to a journalism conference and asked a male sports journalist if the sports scene was changing to include more women.
“Absolutely,” he said.
Days later, I was at my first professional sports event as a journalist and was the only woman in the room. The other women there were social media coordinators — which makes sense since most women in sport I know do social media, since higher-ups see that as a “girl job." And somehow journalism or communications isn’t.
When I walk into a sports environment, whether as an athlete or as a journalist, I am tired. Tired of being in a constant state of questioning how much I’ll have to prove myself before they start treating me as an equal. Tired of wondering if I’ll have to ask the right question, wear the right stuff, make the right play and THEN I will be accepted as someone qualified? Tired of wondering if it wouldn’t be so hard if I was a man.
You might think I’m exaggerating.
I’m not. I wish I was.
Some things are getting better — professional women’s leagues are at an all-time high and the men I play flag football with have relatively no problem that I play with them, even though I’m usually one of two girls on the field.
But I can’t say that sports won’t always be a “boy’s club” because ultimately it’s not up to me. It's up to the men in the sports spaces. They are the ones who decide who’s let into their club.
So, men, I ask you to include women. Hire women. Pay women. Pay women equally. Support women. Believe women.
It’s time to step up to the plate.
Share this article
