The Risk

Brenna Jensen’s ambition to become a sports journalist reflects the real-world challenges that women face in a historically male-dominated industry. The history of women in sports broadcasting is relatively short and marked by hard-won battles for legitimacy. It wasn’t until the 1970s, following the passage of Title IX, that women began to appear in on-air sports roles with any regularity, and even then, they were frequently confined to sideline reporting rather than play-by-play or analyst positions perceived as requiring greater authority. Pioneers like Lesley Visser, the first woman to cover a National Football League beat, and Hannah Storm faced open hostility from male colleagues, athletes, and audiences, and locker-room access for female reporters wasn’t formally guaranteed in Major League Baseball until a 1978 court ruling. The behind-the-scenes landscape—where editorial decisions are made—has been even slower to diversify. A 2021 study on sports media outlets found that “83.3 percent of […] sports editors” and “85.6 percent of the reporters were men” (Lapchick, Richard E. “The 2021 Sports Media Racial and Gender Report Card.” The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, 2021). 

Women who do break into sports broadcasting often report having their expertise questioned and being pigeonholed into “softer” human-interest stories rather than hard analysis. An experiment involving 544 participants watching a basketball debate between male and female sportscasters supported these claims, finding that sexist attitudes and endorsement of gender stereotypes negatively affected the participants (Mudrick, Michael, et al. “Pervasively Offside: An Examination of Sexism, Stereotypes, and Sportscaster Credibility.” Communication & Sport, vol. 5, no. 6, 2017). Online harassment has compounded these pressures, with female broadcasters routinely subjected to misogynistic abuse on social media simply for commenting on men’s sports. A 2022 study illustrated this phenomenon, examining 1,332 tweets following Karen Carney’s commentary on a men’s football match in 2020. The study documented how abuse targeting Carney, a former professional footballer and sports journalist, was explicitly gendered, including challenges to her qualifications and right to work as a pundit (Burch, Lauren M., et al. “‘Get Back to the Kitchen, Cos U Talk S*** On TV’: Gendered Online Abuse and Trigger Events in Sport.” European Sport Management Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 4, 2023, pp. 957-78). 

Kennedy draws on the entrenched gender bias of sports broadcasting to shape Brenna’s professional storyline. Ed Mulder, the HockeyNet executive who interviews Brenna, immediately dismisses her, questioning why a “pretty girl like [her] is applying for a job behind the camera” (30), and discounts her extensive hockey knowledge as “cute.” Mulder’s behavior highlights the trivialization of female expertise, as he openly refuses to put a respected female analyst, Georgia Barnes, on air to cover a domestic-abuse story for fear that she’ll give it a “feminist bullshit spin” (34). The novel also confronts the derogatory “puck bunny” stereotype, a label used to delegitimize female fans by suggesting that their interest in sports is purely directed at the players. Jake’s friend Hazel weaponizes this stereotype, accusing Brenna of being a “puck bunny” intent on sabotaging Jake’s career. Brenna’s struggle for her dream internship dramatizes the sexism that continues to challenge women in sports media.