Unsporting bias

Re: Another female hockey official feels stonewalled, Jan. 10

It’s painfully obvious that in most televised sports, employment in both officiating and broadcasting remain largely male bastions. There is currently only female NFL official, which is one more than hockey and baseball can boast. How many female boxing or MMA referees have you heard of ? And the NBA is far from being equal opportunity either. Being promoted to an official in any of these professional sports should be determined largely on competency and knowledge of the sport but the small percentage of women present indicates other factors are at play.

Aside from Suzy Kolber, who heads the Monday Night Football pregame show, there is only one woman (Beth Mowins) who handles the televised play-by-play call during games. There are a number of female “sideline analysts” working NFL telecasts but these are largely cameo roles where the person may speak two to three times during the three-hour contest. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that all on-air women in the NFL are attractive, which suggests different hiring yardsticks are used for women than men.

I’m not suggesting any of the above sports engage in the mass hiring of women (able or not) just to satisfy a quota. However, having better representation would bring sports in line with mainstream society and might actually draw more female fans to the games. Hopefully the biases hindering women in these fields can be eliminated once and for all. John Winegarden, Scarborough, Ont.

Beth Mowins