Media Relations and Female Sports Journalists Summary 1. Read the following two articles and submit a 1-2 page summary (separately for each). Female Sports

Media Relations and Female Sports Journalists Summary 1. Read the following two articles and submit a 1-2 page summary (separately for each). Female Sports Jounalists – Hardin.pdf Women SID_p51-68.pdf2. Please research Professor Connie Hicks (guest speaker) https://www.barry.edu/department-of-communication/undergraduate/faculty/hicks.html (Lenker til en ekstern side.) and come prepared with 3 questions. International Journal of Sport Communication, 2012, 5, 51-68
© 2012 Human Kinetics, Inc.
On Being a “Good Sport”
in the Workplace: Women, the Glass
Ceiling, and Negotiated Resignation
in Sports Information
Erin Whiteside
Marie Hardin
University of Tennessee, USA
Pennsylvania State University, USA
This research survey explores the gendered work experiences of women in sports
information, including their perceptions of the “glass ceiling,” their rationalization
strategies for dealing with those perceptions, and the factors contributing to their
low numbers in the business. The findings suggest that women perceive a glass
ceiling but are hesitant to admit its existence. Second, women are internalizing
some of the value systems embedded in this male-dominated industry. Finally,
along with perceptions of a glass ceiling, women are facing a “maternal wall” that
makes staying in sports information extremely difficult for women with children,
given the job’s untraditional schedule.
Keywords: gender, media relations, women’s sports
In 2000, a group of women in the sports information profession came together
to form an association they called Female Athletic Media relations Executives
(FAME). The women were troubled by a recent study that showed a significant
percentage drop in the number of NCAA institutions employing female sports
information directors, or SIDs as they are known in the industry. They hoped that
the association would discuss issues facing women in sports media and present
a support network that provided strategies for dealing with those issues (FAME,
2001). Now in its 11th year, FAME is a tool for women in the profession and
has seen the number of women in director positions increase since its formation.
Although the gains are celebrated, women in sports information still face many
of the challenges and obstacles that women in other sports-related professions
have struggled with (Neupauer, 1998; Whisenant & Mullane, 2007; Whiteside
& Hardin, 2010).
SIDs are public relations managers at the collegiate level. They are responsible
for a wide range of tasks including media relations, crisis management, marketing,
publications, Web site management, statistics archival, and photo management
Whiteside is with the School of Journalism and Electronic Media, University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
TN. Hardin is with the Dept. of Journalism, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
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(Stoldt, 2002). Thus, sports information is a public relations function within
collegiate athletics. Despite the similarities in job functions, sports information
differs from the broader public relations industry; as many scholars have pointed
out, the latter field is dominated by women and considered a “feminized” industry
(Fröhlich, 2004; Grunig, Toth, & Hon, 2001, 2000). Nonetheless, the industry is
plagued by sexism, most notably a lack of women in upper management (Grunig
et al., 2001).
This exploratory study, a survey of 187 female SIDs, examines the gendered
work experiences of women in sports information, including their perceptions
of the “glass ceiling,” their rationalization strategies for coping with those perceptions, and the factors contributing to their low numbers in the business. The
study explores the glass ceiling concept from several different angles. First, we
evaluated the women’s awareness of a glass ceiling in sports information with
the expectation that women would express an awareness of such a barrier. The
next step of this study evaluated the ways in which women cognitively negotiate
that awareness. In this step we borrowed from Wrigley (2002) and employed
the concept of “negotiated resignation,” an idea that women use rationalization
strategies to come to terms with the idea of working in a gendered organization.
Finally, we explored the way issues of hostile work environment, pressures of
family life, and attitudes toward a glass ceiling affect the level of job satisfaction
among the women in this study.
Literature Review
Women, Men, and Sport
Sport is a domain that is tightly guarded by men through their nearly exclusive hold
on organizational responsibilities, authoritative positions, and public voices such
as media personalities in sports (Acosta & Carpenter, 2010; Smucker, Whisenant,
& Pedersen, 2004). The media construct sports as masculine through a series of
strategies such as exaggerating the strength and power of male athletes, ignoring
women’s sports in sports publications, or overemphasizing feminine traits when
reporting on women to neutralize the assumed masculinity in sports (Duncan &
Messner, 1998; Hardin, Lynn, Walsdorf, & Hardin, 2002).
Women who try to work their way into the sports industry face a variety
of forms of resistance. For example, female sports journalists, although generally satisfied with their jobs, face sexual harassment and discrimination in the
workplace (Claringbould, Knoppers, & Elling, 2004). Furthermore, when they
do decide to leave the profession, it is largely out of frustration because of lack
of advancement or the negative costs their jobs had in their life outside of work
(Hardin & Shain, 2005). When they stay, they face difficult odds in advancing
to managerial positions and serve in a leadership capacity far less often in sports
departments than in the overall newsroom (Hardin & Whiteside, 2006; Lapchick,
Little, Mathew, & Zahn, 2008).
Women must also work in a hierarchical system that privileges team, contact
sports played mostly by men and considered revenue-producing (Suggs, 2005).
Furthermore, research suggests that media producers see women’s sports as having
little or no interest or value (Hardin, 2005; Knoppers & Elling, 2004; Miloch,
Women and Negotiated Resignation
53
Pedersen, Smucker, & Whisenant, 2005). Many women who work in sports media
fields also distance themselves from women’s sports because they see them as generally trivial; such attitudes of women in the field reflect their assimilation into the
hegemonic sports workplace (Everbach, 2008). Assimilating may have a cost; by
accepting the low status of female athletes and athletics, women who cover sports
also promote their own low status as authorities on sport (Hardin & Shain, 2005).
Women Working in Sports Information and Public Relations
Research has shown that gender plays a critical organizing role in sports information; men dominate the managerial ranks, and sport assignments fall along gender
lines (Acosta & Carpenter, 2010; Whiteside & Hardin, 2010). Furthermore, women
do not stay in the profession long and generally make less money than their male
counterparts (Stoldt, 2002). The situation for female SIDs is, in some ways, a marked
contrast to that of women working in the broader public relations field. A survey by
Aldoory and Toth (2002) showed that over 70% of public relations practitioners are
women; yet, as women dominate the profession, they are not making headway in
the managerial ranks, a phenomenon researchers have coined “the velvet ghetto”
(Cline et al., 1986; Scollard, 1995; Toth & Cline, 1989). The large pay gap and
lack of women in management have been criticized by many as evidence of a glass
ceiling for women in this industry (Grunig et al., 2000).
The Glass Ceiling
The Wall Street Journal popularized the term glass ceiling in the mid-1980s in a
special report on women and business (Hymowitz & Schellhardt, 1986). In 1991,
the U.S. Department of Labor, responding to disproportionately small numbers
of women and minorities in top-level business positions, defined the glass ceiling as “those artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that
prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organization into
management-level positions” (U.S. Department of Labor, 1991, p. 1). In an effort
to study the phenomenon, the Department of Labor created the Federal Glass
Ceiling Commission. The commission, made up of prominent business, law, and
social leaders, submitted its final report on the concept in 1995. Of the commission’s recommendations, one key part of the report focused on the media. The
report asserted that media do not mirror society, but rather shape it, and that the
media play an important role in the creation and destruction of stereotypes. With
this in mind, the commission recommended that media make a concerted effort to
diversify to include more women and minorities.
Hakim (2000) cautions scholars from internalizing the notion that all women
inherently want to “break through” the glass ceiling, calling such a perspective
masculinist. She argues that it is less one’s perceived aptitude for a specific task
and more a woman’s desire to work in general that will predict women’s work rates.
Hakim’s “preference theory,” based on longitudinal survey data on women’s desire
to work, suggests that women generally fall into three groups that she calls home
centered, work centered, and adaptive. Work-centered women prioritize work and
make up a minority of overall women, in comparison with men, who most often
fall into this category. Home-centered women, conversely, prioritize their domestic
54   Whiteside and Hardin
duties and prefer not to work. Adaptive women prefer both, prioritize neither, and
make up the largest of the three groups. Caven (2006) has argued for scholars to
consider alternative explanations in discussing women’s choices in the workplace,
including the pursuit of goals that may not dovetail with traditional “rise-to-power”
narratives stemming from capitalistic cultures.
How the Glass Ceiling Is Reinforced. Robinson (2005) argues that until women
reach one third of the leadership in any given organization, they lack the power
to eradicate the glass ceiling because they cannot make “strategic deals with the
majority” (p. 97). She further argues that the reference to “attitudinal or organizational bias” in the U.S. Department of Labor’s definition of glass ceiling does not
adequately acknowledge the role of gendered social expectations for women. For
starters, women “have to accept the elastic definition of ‘working day,’ historically
developed by male professionals as a norm, even though it has higher social costs
for females only” (Robinson, p. 96). The barriers that compose the glass ceiling are
many and complex (Fröhlich, 2004; Robinson, 2005; Wrigley, 2002). In a survey
of corporate executives, women identified the top issue facing them as gender
stereotyping in regard to leadership; men identified the top barrier for women
as being lack of professional experience. Other barriers identified more often by
women included exclusion from informal networks, an inhospitable work climate,
and lack of mentoring (Robinson).
These individual barriers point to the fact that, just as the concept of the working day is gendered, so is the workplace itself and the image of the ideal employee
(Acker, 1990). Organizations are gendered in their structure and reproduce commonly held beliefs about femininity and masculinity (Acker). The commonly
held notion of the “ideal” worker is a person who is unencumbered by nonwork
obligations (most notably family) and other distractions (Acker, 1990; Robinson,
2005). The average female worker, however, is not perceived to be free from these
obligations. The “second shift” is well documented, and women with families have
a unique burden of obligations in the workplace and then obligations in the home.
Women in the United States still do four fifths of the childcare and two thirds of
the housework (Williams, 2000). Jobs requiring extensive overtime exclude virtually all mothers; according to U.S. Census data, 93% of mothers work less than 49
hours a week (Williams). These barriers for women with families have been called
the “maternal wall” (Buonocore-Porter, 2006).
Another barrier recognized in glass-ceiling research involves the exclusion
of women from key on-the-job networks. Men receive more help from their peer
networks than women do and are in a better position to create networks of colleagues because of their higher status positions (Gelfand, Nishii, Raver, & Schneider,
2005; McGuire, 2002; Yancey-Martin, 2001). Robinson (2005) points to the “in
speak” of these networks, such as locker-room humor and discriminatory banter,
as exclusionary strategies that reinforce the status of women as outsiders. Women
in public relations have cited exclusion from networks as a primary way they
have been shut out from management (Grunig et al., 2001). This is not to suggest
that men are consciously aware of the ways their behavior can exclude women;
phenomena such as men dominating relationships, helping each other in informal
networks, and outwardly expressing their knowledge and accomplishments is a
way of “doing” masculinity that is often unconscious to the actor (Aldoory, Reber,
Berger, & Toth, 2008; Yancey-Martin, 2001).
Women and Negotiated Resignation
55
The Glass Ceiling in the Media-Related Workplace. Women working in mass
communication face the same barriers as women in other fields, and perhaps more
acutely, according to research. Furthermore, the fact that female journalists are
disproportionately younger than their male counterparts suggests that they often
drop out of their careers because of the difficulties in juggling childcare and work
(Chambers, Steiner, & Fleming 2004). Women in media-related industries may face
more pressure in relation to work–family issues because of media’s 24–7 nature;
they must be available for work at all hours. Robinson (2005, p. 101) points out
that in the culture of journalism, “total availability” is the measure of competence;
total number of hours dedicated to work determines an employee’s worth.
Even factors that are construed as giving women an advantage in media-related
fields may ultimately hurt them. For instance, Fröhlich (2004, pp. 69–70) argues
that the taken-for-granted mythology that “women communicate better” contributes
to the glass ceiling. First, it can be “in contradiction to their personal skills, which
poses a problem.” In other words, when a woman runs contrary to the notion that
she should have a communication style that is collaborative, indirect, and conciliatory, she may be socially ostracized for not being female enough. That leads to
the second issue, the “vicious cycle” that emerges: Women gain entry-level jobs
because, perhaps in part, of their perceived “soft” interpersonal skills, but these
skills do not translate into promotion. Instead, promotions go to those who use
competitive, aggressive, autonomous, and confrontational—tough—communication styles: generally, men (Holmes, 2006). If women exhibit a more masculine
communication style, however, they are punished. Thus, women are caught in what
Fröhlich (2004, p. 67) terms a “friendliness trap.”
Qualitative research with female public relations practitioners suggests that they
are aware of the gender dynamics in the workplace, stating that they feel excluded
from all-male networks, troubled by the difficulty in finding a female senior-level
mentor, and frustrated by outright sexism from senior-level male executives (Grunig
et al., 2001). Furthermore, women may feel constrained by gender stereotypes.
Indeed, another study revealed several female public relations practitioners’ perceptions that they are expected to be “helpers” at work (Wrigley, 2002).
Response to the Glass Ceiling. The concept of negotiated resignation may
explain how women in media-related careers manage their experiences with the
glass ceiling. Wrigley (2002) defines negotiated resignation as the psychological
strategies women use to accept the existence of a glass ceiling. Her research suggests
that women are aware of a glass ceiling, citing instances of denial of equal pay and
promotion, different treatment, and a perception that men feel threatened by their
female colleagues (Wrigley, 2002). In addition, she found through focus groups
and long interviews that women tended to cite empowering strategies to overcome
these barriers—such as articulating gender differences in ways that give women an
advantage, for example, women’s perceived “natural” intuition—which they saw as
ultimately aiding them at their job. Wrigley points out that these women and these
strategies miss the larger issue of why the structure is even in place. Assimilating
to the corporate culture and developing strategies to work within the system do not
change an existing sexist division of labor.
Five major themes that emerged in Wrigley’s study (2002) related to how
women rationalize working under a glass ceiling: denial (denying a glass ceiling
exists, thus denying discrimination against women), gender-role socialization
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(women and men are better at different things at work), historical precedent (good
ol’ boys network, men have always been in charge), women turning against other
women (when a woman achieves high corporate status, she is a “corporate bitch”
and does not help other women), and corporate culture (the ways in which the
culture of the office operates, which can manifest itself into men feeling threatened
by women attempting to change the status quo of the corporate culture.)
Ultimately, many women decide not to rationalize their situations but instead
look for the exit (Chambers et al., 2004; Robinson, 2005). According to a 2002
report by the American Press Institute and the Pew Center for Civic Journalism,
women in journalism were less likely than men to say they wanted a promotion and
to think they could get it. They were more likely than men, however, to predict their
exit from the business (Chambers et al.). Interviews with women in media-related
careers illuminate why they shy away from seeking promotion: They indicate they
are ambivalent about climbing the ladder because of fears that they would lose their
support network and because of observations of harsh criticism aimed at women
who have moved into management (Robinson, 2005).
Method
This study used an online survey and follow-up interviews to analyze the glass
ceiling in the sports information field. The survey was used to answer several
exploratory research questions drawn from the literature about women in public
relations and women in sports.
RQ1: How do women experience gender in the workplace?
RQ2: How do women perceive the glass ceiling?
RQ3: What are the factors considered by women in making decisions about
their career tenure?
Sample
Women were recruited from the national association of SIDs, called the College
Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), to take the online survey. All
women in CoSIDA had an equal opportunity to take the survey, which was posted on
the CoSIDA Web site (www.CoSIDA.com). An e-mail was sent out to the CoSIDA
listserv, which includes 3,000 registered members, approximately 360 of which
we assumed to be women (Acosta & Carpenter, 2006). The instrument was part of
a larger survey available to all CoSIDA members, but male SIDs did not have the
opportunity to view or see the questions used in this specific project (when male
was entered for gender, the survey was programmed to skip the instrument used in
this study). In an effort to remind women in CoSIDA to take the survey, an e-mail
was sent to the FAME listserv (a subset of CoSIDA), which includes approximately
200 women and provided us with a forum that targeted female SIDs. Follow-up
e-mails to the FAME listserv were sent to increase the response rate. The survey was
available for 2 weeks, and 187 total women responded for an approximate response
rate of 62%, using Acosta and Carpenter’s 2006 census of sports information as a
baseline guide. Likert-scale questions were treated as continuous variables in the
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