The journalist and broadcaster Natalia Maderna, the first woman to report World Cup matches in the 85-year history of Radio Nacional, considers that the fact that women are beginning to gain space in the sports agenda is due “to militancy feminist”.
During an interview with Télam, Maderna postulates that together with his colleagues “we have to have faith, optimism, perseverance, but above all things, continue with the collective militancy so that we are more and more”.
With 36 years of age and an extensive radio career that is currently expressed on the microphones of Nacional, Futurock and Radio con Vos, the rapporteur began that professional facet by broadcasting matches of the women’s soccer league on the Depor TV screen and, little by little, He was joining the public radio sports team.
In that process, she commented on matches of the Women’s Soccer World Cup that was played in France in 2019, reported a friendly for the Women’s National Team against Brazil through Nacional Rock and began to make history when she was the first woman to narrate a match through the AM of the station with the match in which the national women’s team played – and got – the pass to the semifinals of the Copa América 2022 that was played in Colombia.
In addition, he told the country through the state broadcaster about the final of the women’s Copa Libertadores that last October in Quito (Ecuador) featured Boca Juniors, who lost the definition 4-1 against Palmeiras from Brazil.
However, another important professional step awaited her. in the current World Cup Qatar 2022 where Natalia was the voice of two matches of the highest planetary soccer event: Poland-Saudi Arabia for the group stage and Japan-Croatia for the round of 16.
In this last match, in addition, the entire broadcast team was made up of women since Viviana Vila accompanied her commenting, Martu Cartañá and Fabiola Natalio (from Radio Nacional Bahía Blanca) doing “playing field”), the commercial voiceover was by Mariana Gil Laborde and Natalia Lliubaroff were in the technical operation.
“This of entering the history of public radio as the first rapporteur, is a lot but it is also interesting to understand it collectively. I believe that from there is where the struggles and achievements begin to take on a much more beautiful meaning,” reflects Maderna.
In this sense, it underlines the historical presences of Viviana Vila, with 12 years in sports broadcasting, and Ángela Lerena, with a decade on the playing field”.
“But also – he adds – Morena Beltrán is a plus value, Luciana Rubinska is a plus value and Lola del Carril (who in a duo with Lerena led a couple of Qatar 2022 matches on Public TV) is a plus value, but they are only part of a large number of women who are in the profession and do not have a place because they are not granted it in the media beyond a certain practice of meeting a kind of minimum quota”.
-Telam: Without losing sight of the transforming power of feminisms in the social sphere, do you feel that you and your colleagues bear the responsibilityResponsibility to do a good job to push to a greater opening?
-Natalia Maderna: It is very difficult and that is why it is also so important to train as I did with Néstor Centra because we did not dream of being soccer players or of being soccer reporters, but because it was not an option and the same thing happens with the players today They are in the first division who began to play and began to understand the game and the tactical and technical issues very large.
It is difficult to determine if we are doing it well or badly because that rod is male and we will always be 15 steps below, but that will also change over time and for that we need those who manage the media to give us space and help to change a paradigm in a long process that includes the deconstruction of male sports journalists who have always done this work among men.
For us it is double work because it implies military and insisting that things change and we can do it because we know that we are not as alone as Viviana Vila was 12 years ago or as Ángela Lerena was 10 years ago. I believe that a containment network has also been set up that encourages us and motivates us to occupy spaces and it seems to me that we are on that path.
-T: What do you say to the person who listens to you tell?
.NM: That we must also dismantle the patriarchal listening that we all have because I did not grow up listening to a woman recounting but to Muñoz, Víctor Hugo, Closs, “Pollo” Vignolo, and, for example, I will go with my style doing while walking, in the matches that he is recounting.
-T: A Based on your vast knowledge of the discipline, how do you see the present of women’s football?
.NM: The day women’s football starts to become a show, a lot of things are going to change, but for that to happen it has to be more competitive and for women’s football to be more competitive, the players should be able to dedicate themselves one hundred percent to sport and today that still does not exist even though its professionalization has been decreed.
Many times it is annoying how they play the card that women’s football is professional and they never set foot on the Tita Mattiussi property where Racing plays or when the “Verones” come out (by the former player and leader of Estudiantes de La Plata) saying that women’s football It is not a business and no, of course, what kind of capitalism gives you money before you invest. The only thing we are asking is that the girls can have a decent salary, can go to train with leather balls, have their training clothes and their clothes to play and that they open the stadiums so that people can go see them because the few experiences that were made were very positive but were not repeated.
