With an effort to appeal to women interested in women's sports, ESPN designed a unique platform to appeal to this incredibly specific audience.  Many sports reporters have spoken out about covering women's sports, and based on coverage and interest statistic, it's no surprise that media take a generally collective position.

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Why is this the case?

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• Sports Center only gave 2% of air time to women in 2014

• Local sports broadcasters are more likely to talk about non-sports related topics than women's sports

• The ratio of newspaper articles about men's sports to women's sports is 23:1

• Articles about women's sports are roughly 25% shorter than those about men's sports

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Writer Dan Shaughnessy for the Boston Globe said in reference to writing about women's sports, that he wasn't going to do pro-bono work.  The general consensus is that TV ratings and attendance to these sporting events are low, so why bother? There is a legitimate fear that covering women's sports is dangerous to a sports reporter's career.  Often times, successful articles about female athletes and teams are not even about their athletic achievements.

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Is writing about women's sports so undesirable that ESPN had to send these reporters to their own website?  Who said women wanted to read specifically about women's sports?  Why aren't men and women sports all featured together on ESPN's main website?  Is it because viewership and desire to write about these topics are both low?

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Regardless, the concept of a website for just women to read about just women's sports highlights the idea that their representation in sports media is not equal to that of men. ESPNW.com supports the idea that women's sports and athletes are not as important or as good as men's sports.

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