Tag Archives: sexism

Sports broadcasters should wake up and smell the sexism

Let me ask you a question: When was the last time you heard a woman do play-by-play for a National Hockey League game?

When was the last time you heard a woman do colour commentary for an NHL game?

When was the last time you saw a woman be asked for her opinion during a pregame, intermission or postgame show of an NHL game in Canada?

Chances are the answer to all these questions is never. Because it doesn’t happen.

Sure, there are women involved in broadcasts, but they’re in the roles of anchors (usually with a man), hosts (asking male analysts questions but rarely answering themselves) or reporters (just the facts, ma’am). Often they’re even physically separated from the men, either rinkside during a game, or in the case of Hockey Night in Canada in an area so far from the main desk they’re practically in a different room.

And it’s not just an NHL thing. Watch any NFL broadcast and you’ll see women on the sidelines instead of in the broadcast booth or at the analysts’ table. This isn’t just a coincidence, it happens so often it’s become a de facto template.

Now I’m not calling for 50-50 parity here. I understand that for sports like pro hockey and football, where former players tend to become analysts, you’re going to have a lot of dudes. And that’s okay. But there are plenty of guys giving their opinions about hockey games that have never played a single minute in the NHL. And don’t pretend there aren’t women out there who have strong, informed opinions about hockey.

Sportsnet, TSN, RDS and TVA Sports, to say nothing of ESPN, NBC, Fox and others in the U.S., need to do more to desegregate their broadcasts along gender lines. Chantal Machabée is great, but if she’s the only female hockey personality on RDS, that’s a problem.

Andi Petrillo recently made history as the first woman to get a full-time job hosting a sports radio show in (English) Canada.* The fact that this took until 2016 is shameful. In Montreal, of the three radio stations that air sports programming regularly, the best we can do so far is an hour a week on TSN 690 Sunday mornings hosted by Robyn Flynn.

We can do better than this. We can do better than pretending it’s not an all-boys club because we have a pretty girl interviewing coaches on the sideline. Especially when you consider all the stuff that pretty girl has to do on a regular basis to ward off anonymous stalkers and potential rapists. The Erin Andrews case alone should give us pause, force us to reflect on the real-world consequences of treating women on TV as sex objects, or putting them in a position where the viewer sees them that way. (Remember that the guy who secretly filmed her through a peephole he created in her hotel room did so not because he was some disturbed pervert but because he figured he could make a lot of money off the footage.)

We can do better than even the few women’s hockey games broadcast on TV being announced by male play-by-play announcers because there are no women qualified to do it. We can do better than all-male analyst panels all of the time, with at best a female moderator.

This isn’t a theoretical hope for some non-existent women. There are real women out there doing hard work who would love an opportunity to be considered for jobs that have, either consciously or unconsciously, been locked out to them.

More women need to be trained in play-by-play, which is a very tough job that doesn’t in any way require the person doing it to be a former player or to have a penis. Put women in these positions at lower levels, calling minor-league games and regional broadcasts before upgrading them to big national ones. Women need to be encouraged to express their opinions on the air rather than always defer to their male colleagues, and they need to be asked what they think. You might be pleasantly surprised by the answer.

Because there are a lot of women out there with opinions worth sharing. Whether it’s Andi Petrillo, or Andie Bennett, or Robyn Flynn, or Katie Nolan, there’s a perspective that we’re sorely missing.

Considering all the crap they have to go through in this business that their male counterparts never even have to think about, I think the absolute least you could do is let them have a voice.

Happy International Women’s Day.

* It’s happened in Quebec. Once. (Thanks Francis for pointing this out.)

UPDATE: If you don’t think sexism exist in sports broadcast media, check out Andi Petrillo’s story.

Guzzo and the unnecessarily sexist “hockey widow” promotion

Last week, I went to see Xavier Dolan’s new film Mommy at one of the Cinémas Guzzo megaplexes. I go there because it’s not far from home, and because it’s inexpensive (at least on Tuesdays), but also to send a bit of a message to Guzzo’s owner that some people do actually want to see arty homegrown films.

Executive VP and public face Vincenzo Guzzo has been repeatedly on record as calling for Quebec films to be more mainstream, more feel-good, more accessible to the general public. He feels that, more than anything else, is what is keeping homegrown cinema from becoming more popular.

And though he could present his ideas with more tact, he’s not wrong on that point.

I like Guzzo because he’s the little guy, a local entrepreneur trying new things in an industry dominated by the Cineplex Odeons and Famous Players of the world, even taking them to court to try to break the oligopoly. And he speaks his mind and is accountable to the public, unlike the heads of those other cinema chains whose names we don’t even know.

But being the little guy also means saying stuff that is foolish, poorly thought out or downright stupid.

Before the screening of Mommy, I saw an ad for a new promotion: Hockey widows, the women left alone while their husbands or boyfriends watch hockey games, could get discounts on tickets at Guzzo.

It seemed like a good idea, though perhaps a bit sexist in its message. Surely there are hockey widowers out there, or other reasons why people might want to go out during a hockey game.

On the website, Guzzo specifies that the deal doesn’t apply Tuesdays or during afternoons (when prices are already discounted). And it says “Ladies only!”

That seemed unnecessary to me. Why impose such a by-definition sexist requirement? What’s the purpose of applying this discount only to women?

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Everything you clearly don’t know about the Islamic veil controversy

The Gazette today began its five-day series Identities about reasonable accomodation, and their timing couldn’t have been better. The Bouchard-Taylor commission is beginning its public consultation tour of the province (Montreal is the last stop on their trip at the end of November), and a pair of conflicting rulings have been issued concerning the rights of Muslim women to wear veils in upcoming provincial and federal by-elections.

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