Women in sport activist, Tsoseletso Magang says it is important to empower women so that they could compete equally in the world of sport.
Speaking at her monthly open discussion under the theme: Tell their story, leveraging media to advocate for women in sport,” Magang said men appeared more experienced than women in sports because the playing field was not level.
“We are not coming with a gender card, but we are simply saying we want men and women to compete equally and be given equal opportunities,” she said.
She said she was of the view that women were doing a lot and giving their best when playing sport, and that they also deserved to be covered by the media.
“We know that the physical ability of a male is not the same as that of a female. However, we have instances where women perform better than men in the same sport code. ‘We are saying tell their story,'” she said.
Magang said there were a lot of women in sport who were doing well, but that people did not know about them because the media did not give them enough coverage.
Yarona FM station manager, Kelly Ramputswa said currently they had one female sport presenter, adding that she was also of the view that more sports editors were needed who could deal with women in sport and sport overall.
“We have more sport male editors, but hopefully it will change with time in all different mediums, whether its radio or print,” she said.
“It’s truly amazing how sport makes careers and we always try to profile those people. I wish we could be able to have a weekly profile of sports women, not only athletes but the people in and around the sports fraternity,” she said.
Botswana Television reporter, Ntebogang Sebetlela said currently there were few women sport journalists in the industry, hence there were a few women in sport coverage.
She said in sport journalism it has historically been a challenge for women to be taken seriously because it was male dominated.
“However, we have established women sport reporters in the likes of Anastacia Sibanda and Cabino Kokole, and we grew up following them and we wanted to be like them,” she said.
Sebetlela said women sport journalists were faced with a myriad of challenges as there was a lot of hostility which at times resulted in them not being granted interviews to fully execute their duty.