Burn It All Down: The Podcast That's Bringing Sports And Feminism Together
If you like sport and you're female, you'll likely notice that there's seldom room left for women to get involved. Then again, you probably don't have to even like sport to know that. Men's sports are larger affairs, with higher salaries and grander status, and sports journalism is predominantly, if you excuse the pun, a man's game.
Amongst the Top 50 sports podcasts on iTunes US, only three of them are hosted by women. The newest addition that's working to take sports media by storm is Burn It All Down, a weekly podcast that discusses sports and feminism.
Burn It All Down is hosted by six women - Lindsay Gibbs, Jessica Luther, Shireen Ahmed, Julie DiCaro, Brenda Elsey and Stacy May Fowles - and debuted in May. The idea to start a podcast started as a joke, stemming from a private Twitter group between the women in which they spoke about issues where sport and feminism intersected.
Co-host Julie DiCaro said: “About six months ago, we started to say routinely, just joking around, ‘When we start our podcast …,’ and eventually we just decided to do it.” The sportswriter and radio host continued, “We feel, especially on issues of social justice in sports, that women’s voices just are not heard the way that we would like them to be.”
The podcast's iTunes rating sits at a sturdy four stars, with distribution generally splitting between five-star and one-star ratings. One of DiCaro's followers aptly tweeted that Burn It All Down was making 'the right people mad', referring to the number of butt-hurt men that slate the podcast. Trolls aside, DiCaro said the team recognises the genuine criticisms surrounding the show and work to improve week after week.
The show includes various segments including: 'The Burn Pile', where they discuss specific news items that are sexist or unfair; 'Badass Woman of the Week', which celebrates women in sport; and 'Listener Mail'. Burn It All Down covers topics ranging from women of colour in sport and the silencing of women in sports media to the overturning of FIBA's headscarf ban, and is creating a wonderful space for women's sport enthusiasts within the sports media landscape.
You can listen to Burn It All Down here:
We love seeing women working together to create platforms, especially in media, that provide other women with a space in places where they wouldn't necessarily feel welcome or represented within mainstream media. We can't wait to see what lies ahead for the ladies behind Burn It All Down!
