Published: 25 March 2013
Region: UK
Alison Kervin has been appointed the first woman sports editor of a national newspaper in Britain after the Mail on Sunday chose her for the post.
She will replace Malcolm Vallerius, who was the sports editor of the Mail on Sunday for 12 years and one of the longest serving sports editors in the UK national press.
Her career has been strongly tied to sports media. She was the Times chief sports feature writer, the Daily Telegraph chief sports interviewer, and editor of the London 2012 Official Olympic Souvenir Programme.
Rugby is one her expertise fields, writing not only articles but books on the subject such as the biography of the World Cup winning Rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward. She also became the first woman to referee a rugby match at Twickenham in 1991.
The Mail on Sunday editor, Geordie Greig, described Alison as “a hugely impressive figure in the sports world with a sporting pedigree few sports editors can rival” and added that “it really doesn’t matter whether The Mail on Sunday’s sports editor is a man or a woman, but I can think of no better candidate to break the mould than Alison”.
Although, Alison is the first woman to be appointed sports editor of a national newspaper in the country, few media have reported on it. The Guardian, Press Gazette and the Sports Journalist Association have been the only ones to cover the news.
The women presence in the media sector tends to be a glass-ceiling as 73% of top management jobs in news media across the world are held by men, according to The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media by the International Women’s Media Foundation.
The disparity between men and women is not only registered on who makes the news but on what the media report. Despite one half of the world’s population is at least female, only 24% of women were presented in the news stories while 76% were men, the organisation states in Who Makes the News? Global Media Monitoring Project 2010. This report documents the deep denial of women’s voices in the world’s news media.