Silenced expertise: testimonial injustice in sport

While women’s participation in sports has grown significantly, their authority as experts remains contested. This credibility gap persists despite women’s growing presence as athletes, coaches, and analysts, and has received comparatively little attention within the philosophical literature on epistemic injustice. This paper examines how male hegemony in sports gives rise to testimonial injustices that systematically exclude women from knowledge-sharing. While Luzzi (2024) has begun to explore testimonial injustice within primary sporting roles, this paper extends the analysis to the full epistemic economy of sport. Through two case studies, I demonstrate how women face both an epistemic barrier to entry (where testimony is undervalued due to identity prejudice) and an epistemic glass ceiling (where assumptions about athletic ability pre-emptively disqualify them from analysing men’s sports). Drawing on Fricker (2007), I argue that these injustices stem from both prejudices regarding women in sport, and the false conflation of physical performance with epistemic authority. The analysis reveals how sports’ epistemic economy—from coaching to commentary—privileges male voices, reinforcing tangible structural inequalities.