Sports journalism is less sexist than it was – but there’s still a long way to go

In the depths of a Scottish winter last year, a group of female journalists – myself included – huddled in front of our laptops to discuss our annual mentoring scheme for up-and-coming female talent.

To address the fact that so few sports writers applied previously, we decided to ringfence five places for them. But we ran into a problem: it was impossible to find enough journalists to fill the slots.

Our organisation, Women in Journalism Scotland (WiJS), which campaigns for equality in the sector, spent the next few months investigating what we believed to be a diversity issue. We discovered that only three of 95 staff writers in print Scottish sports media were women.

Then we found ourselves preoccupied by two questions: what barriers were faced by female journalists in the industry, and what could we do to resolve them?

The answer was to work with two gender studies research students at the University of Strathclyde, who interviewed the few female journalists who do work in print sports media, both in freelance and staff jobs. It is important to differentiate print from broadcast, where the representation of female journalists covering sport is much better.

The same week as their report was published, the Scottish Football Writers’ Association hosted its annual awards. This year it celebrated for the first time the achievements of women in sport, and yet I was one a handful of guests who walked out in protest at sexist comments made by the after-dinner speaker, Bill Copeland. A tweet I posted in solidarity with the broadcaster Eilidh Barbour, who also walked out, led to a stream of press attention.

In a serendipitous twist, two impressive young women who are masters’ students on the university’s applied gender studies