What we get wrong about misogynistic sports commentary

It's not about hating women in sport. It's about putting them back in their place.

February 2025 saw two separate clips of national radio sports commentary go viral that were denounced by social media users and media outlets as “sexist” and “misogynistic”.

It would be easy to dismiss views like these without further thought for being “woman-hating”, “dinosaur” attitudes of a “fringe group” that should not be given airtime.

However, this fundamentally misunderstands the forces at play.

When someone reacts with the hostile smackdown, “no one cares about women’s football”, or “I would rather watch men’s sport than women’s football”, they must be taken very seriously, because, it turns out, such misogyny in sport is rarely about hating women, nor is it disappearing anytime soon.

According to professor of philosophy Kate Manne, writer of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, understanding misogyny requires getting to grips with patriarchy and sexism first.

A patriarchal order or patriarchy is an institution or social structure where women are positioned as subordinate to men based on their gender.

Sexism is the ideology of assumptions, stereotypes and cultural narratives that function to justify or rationalise these patriarchal relations between men and women.

This ideology implies “natural” differences between men and women, regarding their talents, interests or proclivities, making women’s subordination appear a logical state of affairs to support and participate in.

For example, under sexism, men are superior to women in masculine coded domains, such as sports, business, and politics, because they are supposedly natural to them.

Patriarchy does not just rely on this justification though. It also has law enforcement, something to police and enforce these norms and expectations that make women subordinate, and men dominate. This is misogyny.

Rather than involving hatred towards women, misogyny embodies the “anxieties, fears and desires to maintain a patriarchal order, and a commitment to restoring it when it is disrupted” (p. 88).

For Manne, misogyny arises when an individual feels threatened, let down, or ousted by a woman perceived to be resisting or challenging patriarchal norms, resulting in hostile non-violent and violent consequences for the woman, from belittlement, humiliation, shame, to harassment, stalking, and sexual assault.

It is no exaggeration to say that organised sport, especially gender segregated sport, would not be the same without sexism and misogyny.

Academics have gone so far to define sport as “the last bastion of male domination” and “a crucial site for the reproduction of patriarchal structures and values.”

Sport is built on the sexist idea that all men are inherently physically superior to all women. This has allowed men to control sports, design them to promote male power and dominance, and prevent women taking part.

The complex cultural, economic, ideological, historical, and political forces that shaped the alleged gender performance gap are ignored and it is presented as “biological fact” (notice this is a “fact” that only benefits men).

Women in sport and women’s sport are constantly perceived as violating these patriarchal relations by “invading” the “male preserve”.

Today, women have unprecedented access to investment, funding, sponsorship, governance, facilities, equipment, coaching, marketing, and media coverage in the UK (albeit still on very unequal terms).

Some men (and women) feel threatened by this and rely on the hostile smackdown to put women in their place again.

“Women have no place in sport.”

“Stop trying to ram women’s sport down our throats.”

“It’s all woke/PC nonsense.”

So, when a sports commentator, or anyone for that matter, reacts with hostility to women’s sport by saying they would rather watch men’s sport or that no-one watches women’s sport, they are not hating on women.

They probably even have girls and women in their lives who they cherish and enjoy watching play sport.

More accurately, consciously or subconsciously they are performing what Manne calls the “down girl” (p. 68) move by being dismissive and disparaging, with the aim of restoring women’s subordinate position to men.

Stakeholders often mistakenly assume that the advancement of women in sport will lead to sexism and misogyny fizzling out. If anything, it is the opposite. The perception of social progress is exactly what provokes misogynist hostility.

A 2022 study of 1950 men’s football fans in England found that 68% of respondents of all ages exhibited hostile, sexist and misogynistic attitudes in response to increased visibility of women’s sport.

So, the hostile enforcers of patriarchy in sport are not the soon to be gone dinosaurs we hoped they were.

That the only solution is to cancel or sack individual sports commentators suggests that few decision-makers know what is causing misogyny or comprehend the depth of the issue.

And that some commentators continue in their broadcasting or print roles after expressing or platforming allegedly misogynistic attitudes with no consequences points to a refusal to acknowledge the existence of misogyny and/or a willingness to profit from it.

Engaging with academic experts to decide what constitutes sexism and misogyny in sports media would be a start.

This could pave the way for mandatory sexism and misogyny education and training for employees and regular, constructive discussion of these issues in radio, print, TV and social media.

Blaming misogyny on a few “woman-hating”, “dinosaur” individuals from an extreme “minority” has not worked so far and it is time we stopped pretending it ever will.