Advocacy group Plan International has found negative comments on broadcasters’ social media pages are three times as common for female athletes as their male counterparts.
Studying posts by broadcasters which received a significant amount of engagement, 27 per cent of comments on articles regarding female athletes, while only 8 per cent on articles regarding males were negative, with comments including remarks such as “stick to netball”.
Head of Victoria’s office for Women in Sport, said, the study comes as no surprise, adding “I think any woman who has any type of online profile, whether that's on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, knows that people are pretty quick to give pretty brutal feedback."