Essential for the Future of the Field: Leadership and Scholarship by Women in Communication and Sport

Abstract

One primary mantra the lead author of this introduction has reiterated over the years is that if you wish to change how women’s sports are covered, you need to focus on the decision makers. Change the editors deciding what is newsworthy. Change the administrator who does the hiring. Build a network for change to help the voices rise more organically. We advance this special issue focusing exclusively on women academicians in sole or lead author roles to mark progress, but also to stress that the fact this is still noteworthy shows there is considerable work yet to be accomplished. When Lawrence A. Wenner published the 1989 seminal work Media, Sports and Society, on a variety of topics at the communication-sport nexus, just two of the chapters were authored by women. This was not from a lack of interest in advancing women’s voices as much as it was a lack of women working in scholarly sports spaces. By the time Wenner’s MediaSport was published almost a decade later – another compendium of contributions by leading scholars in the early days of communicationand-sport research, women were lead authors on seven of the 17 chapters in the volume. He had more options to elevate women’s voices and, quite wisely, used them, even if complete equity was not attained.