One of Ghana’s very few sports journalists, Ayishatu Zakaria Ali, has confessed that being a female in a male-dominated field is sometimes stressful because people underrate her intelligence due to her gender.
Interviewed on the award-winning show Girl Vibes which airs on eTV Ghana with host, Mercy Bee the Ekumfi Princess, she disclosed that as a journalist who goes to cover games, she is sometimes pushed to the verge of wanting to give up because it gets frustrating.
“You go for events or assignments, you raise your hand to ask a question and just because you’re a female, people look at you and assume you don’t understand the game so you’re not going to say anything sensible. You just finished watching the game and you want to ask the coach what inspired him to switch player A for player B but nobody wants to call you”, she lamented.
The sports expert continued that, “Being a no-nonsense person, sometimes I walk up to them and I tell them listen, you watched the same thing that I watched and I probably even understand what happened on the field better than you do so stop being judgmental and discriminate”.
Ayisha went on to comment that sometimes, when people see a female reach great lengths as a football journalist, they put out comments about how they probably slept with a big man to gain that opportunity, and many other unscrupulous comments, however this should not be the case because football is not a field designated for men only, thus, any determined woman can easily succeed in the field as well.
By: Maureen Dedei Quaye