Women At ESPN Detailed How They Felt Pressured To Hide Pregnancies And More

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As reports of more powerful men accused of sexual harassment continue to come out in the media, we’re seeing media companies themselves also coming under fire for the issues of how they handle office culture and providing equal opportunities for men and women.

The Boston Globe published a lengthy story on Thursday highlighting a number of problems about the culture at ESPN and the way some women in the company felt extra pressure and as that opportunities were not afforded to them as often as men.

The piece even accuses prominent men at ESPN, including John Buccigross and Matthew Berry, of sexual harassment. But perhaps the most shocking part of the piece is not the outright sexual harassment, but the climate and pressure put on women in their everyday jobs at the network.


The piece has a particularly harrowing segment describing how pregnancies are treated at the network, with women feeling pressured to take short maternity leaves for fear of getting replaced, or worse.

Some women said that the environment at ESPN can be so hostile — and plum positions for female sports journalists so precarious — that they hid pregnancies and felt pressured to take short maternity leaves in order to protect their positions. One anchor even did her scheduled broadcast while she was having a miscarriage to prove her commitment to her job, according to former employees.

Another woman, one of the few solo female anchors on SportsCenter, said she was told her show was moving in another direction and she’d no longer have a job on it weeks before she went on maternity leave last year. She is one of several who said they were given less desirable positions or laid off before, during, or after maternity leave.

Highlighting this is not to point out that these things are somehow worse than overt sexual harassment and abuse, because they are not. But this kind of atmosphere, and this assumed expectation, can be much harder to break away from than simply firing those accused of harassment. The feeling of women that they can’t take their full legally mandated maternity leave for fear of having their position changed or taken away is a systemic failure of a workplace to protect women, and that kind of pressure is felt throughout industries all over the country.

The wave of firings and public shaming of abusers will continue as more women feel empowered to share their stories and punish those who have harmed them, but there’s a deeper, cultural issue that needs to be fixed in order to make even greater progress.

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