SEW

2013: Bailey Davis, former New Orleans Saints cheerleader, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission citing a double standard for rules with male and female employees after being fired for a social media policy only applicable to cheerleaders. 

2013: Former NFL cheerleader for the Miami Dolfins, Kristan Ware, files a complaint against the league and team for gender and religious discrimination.

2020: NFL and MLB receive C grades from the Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sports for their gender hiring. 

2021: On Jan 7, 2021, a virtual hearing was held where Washington Football owner, Dan Snyder, and three minority owners have accused each other of leaking negative and confidential information, including information of sexual harassment allegations, to reporters, in violation of a non disparagement agreement. 

2022: In April of 2022, six state attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James, register their “grave concerns” about reports of a workplace culture within the N.F.L. that is “overtly hostile to women.”

2022: Attorneys general in six states threaten to investigate the NFL’s treatment of female employees

1869: Maria “Middy” Morgan begins covering horse racing as a Saratoga Correspondent for the New York Times. Her extensive knowledge of horses and “thundering” stories helped when she applied for the Times’ only opening as a livestock reporter. 

1879: Sallie Van Pelt, editor of the Dubuque Times, covers 60 games for her paper and the Chicago Tribune informs readers the following year calling her the “best authority in Dubuque on the National game.”

1890: Ella Black’s first byline appears in the Sporting Life in March. She is one of the first baseball writers to be nationally distributed while covering the two Pittsburgh teams 1890 baseball season. Black’s column, “A Woman’s View,” appeared before the start of the season and by April her editor gave her a press credential, becoming the first woman in the magazine’s history to do so. Her coverage only appeared in Sporting Life for that one season, but according to historians she made it her mission to prove that women could understand and write about baseball and she did just that in her short tenure.

1894-1897: Sadie Kneller Miller is credited as being the first and only woman with a professional baseball beat. She wrote for the Baltimore Telegram and covered the Baltimore Orioles writing under the byline “SKM” to mask her gender. Miller also took up photojournalism to include photos to accompany her stories.

1905: Ina Eloise Young of the Colorado-based Trinidad Chronicle-News covers her first baseball game when she is asked to sub in for the regular writer. Her first sports story made such an impression on her editors that they began favoring her over the male writers and gave her more sports assignments. She is believed to be the first female sports editor in America with the Chronicle-News. 

1908: Young is nominated as an honorary member of the National Baseball Writers Association by former ball player and Boston Globe reporter Tim Murnane and is voted in. 

1912– Idah McGlone Gibson, a nationally well-known baseball reporter and syndicated columnist, covers the World Series and provides readers with the “woman’s perspective” to discuss player personalities and show them in a light that would make women understand why men idolize them.

1924: Margaret Goss begins “Women in Sport,” the first regularly appearing sports column written by a woman, for the New York Herald Tribune. Her columns often appeared on the same page as legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice. Goss’ coverage focused primarily on female athletes.

1938: Pearl Kroll becomes the first female sports editor at a major American magazine when she earns the job at Time but she is generally not allowed to cover events from men-only press boxes. 

1974: Former sports editor for the Twin Cities Sentinel (Winston-Salem Journal) Mary Garber first gains access to a locker room during the ACC basketball tournament 30 years after she begins her career as a sportswriter. She gained notoriety during the 1950s and ‘60s by covering stories that no one else at the time wanted, most notably Black collegiate and high school sports in the segregated South. 

1976: Lesley Visser becomes the first female NFL beat writer when she is hired by the Boston Globe. 

1977: Melissa Ludtke, a Sports Illustrated reporter, is sent to cover Yankees during the World Series but she is barred from the clubhouse citing the players’ privacy. She filed a civil rights lawsuit against Bowie  Commissioner of Major League Baseball Bowie Kuhn for discrimination. 

Sept. 25, 1978: Ludtke v. Kuhn is decided and female journalists are given equal access to MLB clubhouses. The ruling established a precedent that barring women from access is a violation of the 14th Amendment. 

1978: Jayne Kennedy is the first Black woman to host a network sports television broadcast when she joined The NFL Today on CBS

1981: Christine Brennan is the first woman to be hired as a sports writer at the Miami Herald. 

1983: Claire Smith is the first woman to hold a full-time position as a beat writer in the MLB covering the New York Yankees for the Hartford Courant.

1985: Christine Brennan is the first woman to cover the Washington D.C. NFL team when she joined the Washington Post as the team’s beat writer. She stopps covering the team after their 1988 Super Bowl victory, but during her tenure she endures harassment from general manager Bobby Beathard and sexual harassment at the hands of former owner Jack Kent Cooke and “a married member of the Washington organization.”

1986: Oakland A’s player Dave Kingman sends a live rat with a tag reading “My name is Sue,” to Sacramento Bee beat writer Susan Fornoff, delivered to her in a pink box. He frequently harassed her since she began covering the team in 1985 because he told her women do not belong in the clubhouse. Kingman is fined $3,500 by the A’s. 

1987: Suzyn Waldman of New York’s WFAN radio is screamed at and berated by Toronto Blue Jays outfielder George Bell in English and Spanish when she moves into the group of reporters interviewing him after the team’s win. The entire clubhouse goes silent and as she is attempting to flee the locker room, Toronto right fielder Jesse Barfield courageously calls out to her and asks if she wants to interview him instead.

Gayle Sierens is the first female play-by-play broadcaster on an NFL regular season game. 

The Association for Women in Sports Media is established. Christine Brennan is the first president of the organization.

1989: Several players for the Baltimore Orioles start a vulgar and derogatory chant when Baltimore Evening Sun reporter Melody Simmons walks into the locker room. She doesn’t know what the word means and turns to another player who then screams it in her face. Simmons complained to team President Larry Lucchino and the Morning Sun runs a story. The Orioles chalk it up to a “prank” taken too far and say the word was just a modern-day equivalent to the term “broad.” “I looked up the word in the dictionary of slang,” Simmons said. “It doesn’t mean broad.” Her editor Jack Lemmon is furious that she did not handle it quietly and calls the incident an “embarrassment to the paper” and “very minor.”

1995: Lesley Visser is the first female sportscaster to report from the sidelines of a Super Bowl.

2002: Former award-winning Washington Post sports and feature writer  Jane Leavy publishes her first biography, “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy,” and it instantly becomes a New York Times bestseller.

2005: Sportswriter Mary Garber becomes the first woman to win the Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award for outstanding contributions in sports journalism.

2006: Leseley Visser is the first woman to be recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame when she wins the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award.

2012: San Francisco Chronicle Oakland A’s beat writer Susan Slusser becomes the first president of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. 

2015: Former Stanford softball standout and two-time Olympian Jessica Mendoza becomes the first female analyst to announce a College World Series game, the first woman in the booth for a Major League Baseball game for ESPN and the first woman to call a nationally televised MLB Postseason game.

2017: Beth Mowins becomes the first woman to call a nationally-televised NFL game and the first woman to call an NFL game in 33 years. 

Claire Smith becomes the first woman, and fourth Black writer, to be inducted into the writer’s wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame by winning J.G. Taylor Spink Award, the highest honor for baseball writers

2018: New York Times bestselling author Jane Leavy publishes her third biography, “The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created.” Entertainment Weekly called it “the best novel ever written about baseball.”

2019: Three female reporters, one wearing a purple domestic violence-awareness bracelet, are verbally harassed in the locker room by Houston Astros general manager Brandon Taubman. Taubman turned to the women and yelled multiple times “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so f—— glad we got Osuna!” after an unimpressive showing by closer Roberto Osuna. Osuna allowed a two-run home run, tying the final game of the ALDS at the top of the ninth inning. Stemming from allegations that he assaulted the mother of his child in May 2018, Osuna was acquired by the Astros after being blacklisted by nearly every team in the league. He was traded by the Toronto Blue Jays when Houston agreed to give up their closer and two potential pitchers.

2020: Mendoza becomes the first female MLB analyst to broadcast a World Series game. 

2021: Broadcaster Beth Mowins becomes the first female play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Cubs.