Slaying the Trolls! Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong About Women and Sports
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2024
Pages: 426
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2024
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Women’s sports are exploding. Attendance records are being set in soccer around the world. College stars like Caitlin Clark have people waiting in lines for hours to see her play. And the WNBA - where league revenues have reportedly doubled in just four short years - is clearly taking off.
Slaying the Trolls! Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong about Women and Sports provides the arguments and empirical evidence to demonstrate what the trolls are saying is completely inconsistent with reality. This book notes that millions of women are sports fans and the fan base for women’s sports really is exploding. Women are also athletes, and they often are better at sports than men (really!). Men do often draw bigger audiences than women. But that is because men have discriminated against women for decades.
Throughout this book, women within the sports industry and others who support them will find the evidence to fight back against outdated sexism. Slaying the Trolls - written by two academics who have studied women and sports extensively, David Berri and Nefertiti Walker - gives those who love women’s sports all the evidence they need to win the fight against the trolls!
Nefertiti A. Walker is the Deputy Vice President for Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Equity for the University of Massachusetts, serving all four undergraduate University of Massachusetts campuses and the Chan School of Medicine.
Walker is a tenured full professor in the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management, which resides in the Isenberg School of Management. She is a social scientist who studies organizational culture. Specifically, she examines organizational inclusion and exclusion, seeking to understand the experiences of people with marginalized identities, and using those insights to design more inclusive organizational cultures. At the root of her academic inquiry and administrative leadership is leading institutional change.
Dr. Walker is a Research Fellow with the North American Society for Sport Management – signifying the top 10% of researchers in her field. She was awarded the 2017-18 Isenberg School of Management Teaching Excellence Award and the 2018-19 Isenberg School of Management Research Excellence Award. She is also a former NCAA DI basketball player (Georgia Tech & Stetson University), coach, and was inducted into the Stetson University Hall of Fame. Her work has been mentioned on espn.com, espnW.com, TIME Sports, and other sports news outlets. She has also written for the Washington Post.
David Berri is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University who has spent the last two decades researching sports and economics. He is the lead author of "The Wages of Wins" (Stanford Press, 2006), a book that was reviewed by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker and Joe Nocera in the New York Times. In addition, he was the lead author of "Stumbling on Wins" (Financial Times Press, 2010), the sole author of "Sports Economics" (a textbook published in 2018 from Macmillan Publishers), and a co-author of "The Economics of the Super Bowl" (Palgrave, 2020). He has also been part of more than 80 academic papers published on the subject of sports economics. In the past, he has also written on the subject of sports economics for a number of popular media outlets, including the New York Times, the Atlantic.com, Time.com, Vice Sports, and Forbes. In recent years, his work has increasingly focused on gender issues; focusing on such topics as the gender-wage gap in the WNBA, how the sports media treats women's sports, women and coaching sports, attendance and revenue in women's sports, exploitation in women's sports, and Title IX issues.
"Slaying the Trolls is a must-read! Berri and Walker do a tremendous job of documenting the historical marginalization of women in sports. They candidly, humorously, and passionately reveal the truth about women's sports trolls - their persistent discrimination is not rooted in logic! As a lifelong participant in women’s sports, I found the book incredibly validating and empowering."
Cheryl Reeve (Coach of Team USA, coach and president of the Minnesota Lynx, 4-time WNBA champ!)
“Even though they say you shouldn’t “feed the trolls,” David Berri and Nefertiti Walker provide a definitive, informative, entertaining response to the morons who still continue to undermine and disregard women’s sports. Slaying the Trolls certainly isn’t just reactive, but presents a glorious opportunity to celebrate women across sport, while also recognizing a consistent pattern of excellence and growth that destroys old, untrue narratives.”
Jemele Hill (Emmy-winning journalist, producer, author, contributing writer for The Atlantic, host of the Spotify podcast Jill Unbothered, and co-founder of Lodge Freeway Media)
“It can be difficult to move from set ideas, stereotypes and talking points if we aren’t fully educated on how we arrived at them and how things have changed, which is why a book like this is so important. Centuries of societal bias have created heuristics around women’s sports that are not only inaccurate and harmful to female athletes, leagues, and fans of women’s sport, but they also keep people from making a lot of money off a very viable product! In no other business do we reject or refuse to capitalize on multi-million-dollar profits and rocket ship growth. We do that in women’s sports not just due to ignorance, but because of an unequal and unfair system that was actually built with intention. The authors recognize all the ways women’s sports have been held back and they see the incredible growth and profit that could happen if we actually invested, supported, watched and understood the product. This book will not only slay the trolls but educate the masses.”
Sarah Spain (ESPN personality and part owner of the Chicago Red Stars of the NWSL)
"Nefertiti Walker and David Berri have given us the book on women's sports that we've been waiting for. There has never been a better time to take a hard look at how women in sports have been marginalized by outside forces, and no one better to dive into the issues than David Berri and Nefertiti Walker. Powerful and impeccably documented, Slaying the Trolls heralds a new day in the way we view and talk about women's sports."
Julie DiCaro (Peabody award winning journalist and author of Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America)
Women’s sports are exploding. Attendance records are being set in soccer around the world. College stars like Caitlin Clark have people waiting in lines for hours to see her play. And the WNBA - where league revenues have reportedly doubled in just four short years - is clearly taking off.
Slaying the Trolls! Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong about Women and Sports provides the arguments and empirical evidence to demonstrate what the trolls are saying is completely inconsistent with reality. This book notes that millions of women are sports fans and the fan base for women’s sports really is exploding. Women are also athletes, and they often are better at sports than men (really!). Men do often draw bigger audiences than women. But that is because men have discriminated against women for decades.
Throughout this book, women within the sports industry and others who support them will find the evidence to fight back against outdated sexism. Slaying the Trolls - written by two academics who have studied women and sports extensively, David Berri and Nefertiti Walker - gives those who love women’s sports all the evidence they need to win the fight against the trolls!
Nefertiti A. Walker is the Deputy Vice President for Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Equity for the University of Massachusetts, serving all four undergraduate University of Massachusetts campuses and the Chan School of Medicine.
Walker is a tenured full professor in the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management, which resides in the Isenberg School of Management. She is a social scientist who studies organizational culture. Specifically, she examines organizational inclusion and exclusion, seeking to understand the experiences of people with marginalized identities, and using those insights to design more inclusive organizational cultures. At the root of her academic inquiry and administrative leadership is leading institutional change.
Dr. Walker is a Research Fellow with the North American Society for Sport Management – signifying the top 10% of researchers in her field. She was awarded the 2017-18 Isenberg School of Management Teaching Excellence Award and the 2018-19 Isenberg School of Management Research Excellence Award. She is also a former NCAA DI basketball player (Georgia Tech & Stetson University), coach, and was inducted into the Stetson University Hall of Fame. Her work has been mentioned on espn.com, espnW.com, TIME Sports, and other sports news outlets. She has also written for the Washington Post.
David Berri is a professor of economics at Southern Utah University who has spent the last two decades researching sports and economics. He is the lead author of "The Wages of Wins" (Stanford Press, 2006), a book that was reviewed by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker and Joe Nocera in the New York Times. In addition, he was the lead author of "Stumbling on Wins" (Financial Times Press, 2010), the sole author of "Sports Economics" (a textbook published in 2018 from Macmillan Publishers), and a co-author of "The Economics of the Super Bowl" (Palgrave, 2020). He has also been part of more than 80 academic papers published on the subject of sports economics. In the past, he has also written on the subject of sports economics for a number of popular media outlets, including the New York Times, the Atlantic.com, Time.com, Vice Sports, and Forbes. In recent years, his work has increasingly focused on gender issues; focusing on such topics as the gender-wage gap in the WNBA, how the sports media treats women's sports, women and coaching sports, attendance and revenue in women's sports, exploitation in women's sports, and Title IX issues.
"Slaying the Trolls is a must-read! Berri and Walker do a tremendous job of documenting the historical marginalization of women in sports. They candidly, humorously, and passionately reveal the truth about women's sports trolls - their persistent discrimination is not rooted in logic! As a lifelong participant in women’s sports, I found the book incredibly validating and empowering."
Cheryl Reeve (Coach of Team USA, coach and president of the Minnesota Lynx, 4-time WNBA champ!)
“Even though they say you shouldn’t “feed the trolls,” David Berri and Nefertiti Walker provide a definitive, informative, entertaining response to the morons who still continue to undermine and disregard women’s sports. Slaying the Trolls certainly isn’t just reactive, but presents a glorious opportunity to celebrate women across sport, while also recognizing a consistent pattern of excellence and growth that destroys old, untrue narratives.”
Jemele Hill (Emmy-winning journalist, producer, author, contributing writer for The Atlantic, host of the Spotify podcast Jill Unbothered, and co-founder of Lodge Freeway Media)
“It can be difficult to move from set ideas, stereotypes and talking points if we aren’t fully educated on how we arrived at them and how things have changed, which is why a book like this is so important. Centuries of societal bias have created heuristics around women’s sports that are not only inaccurate and harmful to female athletes, leagues, and fans of women’s sport, but they also keep people from making a lot of money off a very viable product! In no other business do we reject or refuse to capitalize on multi-million-dollar profits and rocket ship growth. We do that in women’s sports not just due to ignorance, but because of an unequal and unfair system that was actually built with intention. The authors recognize all the ways women’s sports have been held back and they see the incredible growth and profit that could happen if we actually invested, supported, watched and understood the product. This book will not only slay the trolls but educate the masses.”
Sarah Spain (ESPN personality and part owner of the Chicago Red Stars of the NWSL)
"Nefertiti Walker and David Berri have given us the book on women's sports that we've been waiting for. There has never been a better time to take a hard look at how women in sports have been marginalized by outside forces, and no one better to dive into the issues than David Berri and Nefertiti Walker. Powerful and impeccably documented, Slaying the Trolls heralds a new day in the way we view and talk about women's sports."
Julie DiCaro (Peabody award winning journalist and author of Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America)