Giving Everyone Permission? Sports Journalists Explain the Miami Marlins' Hiring of Kim Ng as Major League Baseball's First Female General Manager
2023; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/jsm.2023.a919640
ISSN1940-5073
Autores Tópico(s)Sports, Gender, and Society
ResumoAbstract: A textual analysis was conducted of coverage by sportswriters for major print, online, and broadcast outlets of the hiring in November 2020 by Major League Baseball's Miami Marlins of Kim Ng. Ng is the first woman in the four major sports to attain that position. The significance of the hiring was diminished by the tendency of sportswriters to cite those women who blazed a trail for Ng without detailing their activism or appropriately referencing its importance. Ng was not an activist—she worked hard, kept her head down, built on her encyclopedic knowledge of the game, and was a team player at every career stop. Coverage foregrounded the hope that Ng would become a trailblazer for others, that she would empower them to "use their voices and dream big while also creating more of an inclusive atmosphere" (Mackey, 2020). But that hope came without a push for transformational policy and culture change that would put an end to discrimination. Sportswriters lavished praise on Marlins President Derek Jeter for his foresight and bravery in hiring Ng. Major League Baseball officials were lauded for how far they had come. Typical signs of misogyny are nearly absent from the coverage, but so was the feminist impetus to eliminate discrimination. Ng's hiring was neither blessing nor curse; it was allowed in coverage to be operationalized by league officials to tout the still small number of women who had taken positions in baseball and to assist them in forestalling criticism of their dilatory handling of scandal.
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