After five BlogHer conferences I am proud to announce that BlogHer 10 will be including a panel on women’s sports and as a believer that women like sports just as much as men I hope if you are in New York this weekend you will come out and support us and participate in our panel.
The following post was originally posted on and written for BlogHer.com
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For the first time ever, this year there will be a panel about sports at BlogHer.
I know. It is hard to believe that after six years this is the first time sports will be discussed during a BlogHer conference. Megan Hueter from Women Talk Sports and I have worked really hard to make this a reality and we were thrilled to have our panel on Women and Sports chosen as a Room of Your Own session in the “passions” category.
Megan and I met last year when we had the privilege of helping cover the 2009 WNBA Draft.
We realized there that even though her focus is on women’s sports and mine is on sports in general, we share a lot of the same goals as women who are blogging about sports.
There are so many women out there who love sports. We are playing sports. We are blogging about sports. We are talking about sports. We are coaching. We are playing fantasy sports.
So why is the sports media still male dominated?
Listen, I know we are up against some really interesting panels. We’re up against my friend Pundit Mom talking about radical blogging moms. We’re up against The Bloggess and Julie Marsh talking about storytelling, an amazing photography panel, a problogging panel, a session on becoming a better writer, and a panel about social networking. These sessions will all be amazing, but I still think you should come to ours.
Why? Because major women’s websites, magazines and television stations ignore sports because they still think girls don’t care about sports. Because the NBA easily gets ten times the media coverage that the WNBA gets. Because the winner of the men’s U.S. Open in golf earns $7,500,000 and the winner of the women’s U.S. Open in golf earns $3,250,000.
We want to have a discussion about women’s sports bloggers and women in social media and women covering men’s sports too.
I haven’t even mentioned the coolest part. Kelly Mazzante will be joining us on the panel! Phoenix Mercury guard and two time world champion Kelly Mazzante will be talking to us about what it is like to be a professional athlete in this era of social media and how things are different in the U.S. and abroad.
We want to talk about body image, Title IX, our daughters and equality, and we want you to be there.
Now I’m going to take my daughter to her very first swim meet, but I hope to see you there. Let’s show everyone that women do like sports.
