Will women in sport ever be accepted, for good?

After recent progress with the Black Lives Matter protest promoting the No Room for Racism campaign and making their mark on the game with the kneel against racism which in my opinion is absolutely fantastic that they have continued to try and stomp out this horrible disease in itself. But there are many other societal issues that are still waiting to be dealt with, changing the game for the better.

As a young woman like myself trying to make the breakthrough in this male dominated sport is incredibly hard and frustrating. Having to work twice as hard to be equal can be exhausting but if more time and effort went in to helping women grow in men’s football it would bring a whole new side to the game which I believe there is yet to discover.

BT have got a wide range of pundits who sit on a panel and discuss the game male and female which I believe is incredible and a huge step forward in terms of acceptance of women punditry. However, Sky Sports have only got Alex Scott as a female pundit, they have female presenter but they are two completely different jobs. There needs to be more female pundits on Sky Sports because that will be the breakthrough that women like myself are desperate for.

As women’s football as well as other sports are becoming more and more popular as well as being accepted, but women’s commentary and punditry is still a massive issue. Karen Carney has been one effected by the cruelty of social media and how it can really affect you. Karen had an interview aired which was cut and the whole of it was not aired and a comment she made caused a huge backlash but If everyone would have heard the full interview it would have made sense. After many derogatory comments Karen has deleted her twitter account. If a man would have said this I don’t believe the backlash would have been this big, this deeply saddens me.

More support and protection needs to be put in place for situations like this because the derogatory comments are unnecessary and awful to see and as a young female journalists scares me. The expectations hover over 24/7 and causes much distress and this needs to change, for good.