Not all harassment is sexual. My story.

After a 30+ year career, I can honestly say I’ve worked in several jobs that were dominated by men: college athletics, economic development, lobbying. My takeaway: while I didn’t deal as much with sexual harassment, I did encounter an almost consistent effort to be undermined and belittled by the men I worked with because they perceived that my gender meant I also had a lack of industry knowledge. Interesting enough, it more often came from my peers than from my supervisors.

It was most prevalent during my years in sports administration – in the early years after Title IX was passed. As a young woman with an interest in sports, I’d worked for four years in Western Kentucky University’s Sports Information Office. I was the first woman to keep official statistics for the Hilltoppers’ men’s football and basketball teams. In those years, women’s sports were strictly club sports so those talented young women didn’t have the opportunity to compete on the intercollegiate level. We worked solely for Western’s men’s sports. Interestingly enough, I didn’t feel any discrimination in those years – it only happened after I entered the field full-time.

When I graduated from WKU, I was fortunate to have guy friends I had worked with (who looked at me as an equal) seeking opportunities for me. When a University of Florida Sports Information position that would work primarily for women sports opened, one of my friends who was at Iowa State at the time recommended me for the job. Coming from what was then a Division I-AA university, working at an SEC school was an amazing opportunity. I was so excited when I got the job and moved to Gainesville.

While I was solely responsible for the women’s teams – basketball; gymnastics; slow-pitch softball; cross country, indoor and outdoor track and field; tennis; and golf – I also worked men’s football and basketball, and handled both the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams. Needless to say, in an office of four full-time professionals (including our administrative assistant), we usually worked 70 to 80 hours a week.

I had a great boss – Norm Carlson – who really supported me as a young woman in a male-dominated world. He pushed me to improve my writing and have more confidence in working with coaches and administrators. My bigger issues were with my peers – young men either early in their careers as sports reporters and administrators or finishing their journalism degrees while working as stringers for the major newspapers in the state. They did their best to make me feel I didn’t belong.

One of my most vivid memories was the time a group of them came to me asking me to rank – one through nine – the difficulty of the major league baseball positions. While I’d worked hard to learn about sports (especially given that no one in my family had any interest), baseball wasn’t a sport I’d worked on at Western or had had the opportunity to learn as a child. I remember trying to come up with my list – and upon turning it in to these guys, listening as they made fun of my selections. Didn’t I know how difficult it was being a catcher? Or a shortstop, third baseman or center fielder?  It was humiliating.

Did I understand it at the time? I don’t think so. I was just working so hard to fit in and do the best I could at the job. For those young women like me who were hired in collegiate sports in the early ‘80s, there were no rules, no “this is how it’s done.”

Do I think these guys deliberately set out to humiliate me? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I think they weren’t sure what to do with young women entering their historically men-only world. Many of them became friends in later years – sadly, I have never told them how they made me feel.  I do hope that if they think about it now – given the climate we’re seeing today (including multiple sports figures being accused of harassing women) – that maybe they’ll recognize their role in the early years of women entering the field. It saddens me to hear today’s stories of women in sports and the fact that so little has changed, but I’m hopeful that maybe what’s happening today will finally change the sports landscape.