As the successes of athletes like the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, Simone Biles, and, of course, Serena Williams become more prominent, are women really still "sidelined" in the world of sports? In Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America, sports journalist Julie DiCaro painstakingly proves that even today, "the sports media industry shows us what America might look like if we'd never passed Title VII or the Equal Pay Act.... Sports talk radio is one of the least diverse fields in media... and it's only getting worse." Beyond detailing the egregious pay discrepancies and hiring practices directed at women, DiCaro delves into the degree of harassment women face, whether as athletes or members of the media covering them.
DiCaro starts by going back to the 1970s when Robin Herman became the first woman reporter to enter an NHL locker room and brings this into focus against a 1974 class action lawsuit filed by female reporters against the New York Times for discriminatory hiring practices. She carefully sets up both sports media and professional sports culture itself as exclusionary boys' clubs where women have been only grudgingly accepted. She uses that lens of the boys' club to demonstrate how that perception of who sports are supposed to be for has contributed to today's internet culture where female reporters like DiCaro herself are harassed online and cyberstalked. Through anecdotes, interviews and focused research, she shows the myriad ways these problems are structural and institutional, while highlighting female athletes and reporters who continue to break barriers by refusing to be sidelined. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer