Inequalities In Sports

In sports there is huge gender inequality in the media with women athletes often only receiving attention for having good looks or the best body, rather than their athletic abilities. Men, however, don’t receive this attention and people only focus on their athletic prowess. This report will review and analyse two examples of how the media portrays different genders in accordance with the following question: “How does the media portray men and women in sport?

In February, the third annual Status of Women in the U.S. Media report came out which showed women being vast underrepresented in media making up around 40.3% (only 36.3% for 2013 in newsrooms) of the workforce being women. When they tallied up how many women were staffed at both television and print journalism organizations who were hired as sports journalist, the number falls drastically to a mere 14.6% (Women’s Media Center).

Before I conducted this media analysis about women in sports and sport broadcasting, I hypothesized the obvious - that more male sports would be in the media, and that there would be more male sports broadcasters as well. Through my observations I did find that the sports arena and sports broadcasting sphere are male dominated. However, I also found that although there are not many stories about women, there has been a steady progression and magazines like Sports Illustrated are becoming bold enough to highlight women athletes in a magazine that is targeted towards a male audience. Although women still have a long way to go, they are making some headway into the male-dominated sports arena.

The purpose of this research is to bring attention to the lack of women’s sports coverage in the media and show how male sports have taken priority over women’s sports.

There has been an abundance literature on the subject of the representation of female athletes in the media, from television coverage and newspapers to magazines and websites. From ancient Greece where it was not allowed for women to partake in or even watch the Olympic Games and the power and independence of the Amazonian tribal warrior woman, to present day and the struggles with underrepresentation and misrepresentation of female athletes in sport media (George, Hartley, Paris, 2001; Creedon, 1994; Bernstein, 2002). The mass media is a sociocultural machine that churns out influential images and articles about (sporting) issues that reflect ideologies, values and beliefs that shape societies attitudes towards that issue, such as the

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According to, “The Oppression Of Women’s Sports Recognized”, “This is all because women’s sports only receive five percent of all the airtime on television while men’s sports are receiving ninety-two percent. And the three percent that’s left is designated for the gender neutral sports broadcasting” (Raegenjo3 np). This quotation helps explain the oppression of female athletes and male athletes because it shows how much more men sports are more shown on television compared to the women's sports. If women sports were aired as much as men sports, many more people would know female athletes as much as they know male

New York Times journalist Karen Crouse described this lack of coverage seen for female sports. Crouse said the modern day female athlete feels “as if she is the sum total of her physical assets—or invisible” (LaVoi, 2013, p. 40).

Hasbrook, of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee designed to study both men’s and women’s basketball, surfing, and marathon running. They studied how the television narratives and visuals of women’s competition versus men’s competition. In their findings, they could reveal people had mixed feelings, and contradictory ideas on the reporting of women’s sports, but was complete opposite from what people saw men’s sports as. “This ambivalence consists of conflicting messages about female athletes.” (Duncan and Hasbrook, pg.1). Proving that people viewed women of sports in a way that trivialized or discredit women’s efforts, and could be seen as a way of saying women should be without power.

While significant changes have been made towards equity in athletics, we must still continue to watch and record our progress and make sure that our society’s young women have the rights and opportunities that we all have as human beings. A study shows that high school girls still receive almost 1 million fewer opportunities to play sports than high school as boys do (Andrew 329). The difference between media coverage of males and females has a corresponding effect on the participation of girls in sports activities, it is difficult for girls to have role models as athletes as few are marketed in the mainstream of media.

This article is written by a group of recognized experts in the hope of providing education policy makers and educators help towards achieving the goal of a “democratic and pluralistic society” (Banks, et al., 2001). The findings of the Multicultural Education Consensus Panel all seem to be geared towards guiding practitioners towards the shared goal of increased student achievement through diversity. They offer 12 essential principles which have been divided into 5 separate categories: 1) teacher learning; 2) student learning; 3) intergroup relations; 4) school governance; 5) assessment.

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This study analyzes how female and male athletes are portrayed in media coverage of the Summer Olympic Games. Beliefs about female athletes reflect gender in society. Jones, Murrell, and Jackson (1999) found that female athletes in male sports used frequent male-to-female comparisons and comments that had little to do with sports or the athletes performance. Sports broadcasters become conformed to a central belief that women are not as athletic as their male counterparts, so are often stereotyped as not athletic. Compare to female athletes in female sports focused more on performance, but still reinforcing female stereotypes. Billings, Angelini, and Duke’s (2010) as cited in Sage (1998) argues that organized sport has been a powerful cultural arena for reinforcing the ideology and actuality of male superiority and dominance. Also demonstrating traditions that subordinate women in society.

Female athletes that were in the print articles, if any, were often treated as insignificant by the use of smaller articles or smaller pictures and hiding them deep in the print away from the front page. This article showed these inequalities of coverage in sports print media in a number of ways. They used research from big companies like Sports Illustrated all the way down to local newspapers coverage of high school sports. One of the specific things it talked about was the percentage difference of the number of articles in Sports Illustrated about women vs. those about men. This background of past print media differences was a good set up for the discussion of the internet media’s coverage of NCAA women’s basketball compared to NCAA men’s

From the three network affiliates they studied, they found that 96.3 percent of the coverage was for men’s sports and women only received 1.6 percent (Messner and Cooky 4). When analyzing the coverage of Sports Center, which is arguably the most popular sports show on television, they found that women still only received just 1.4 percent of their coverage (4). This study also found that 100 percent of the Sports Center programs had a lead story that was about men’s sports (4). Even the most renowned and credible sports show, which only shows sports all year long, does not even provide women’s sports with equal attention. Even more shocking than this was that the study also revealed that reporters devoted more coverage to men’s sports that were out of season than they did women’s sports that were actually in season (4). This can be extremely disrespectful to female athletes when their sport is pushed aside and ignored so that a men’s sport that is not even being played can be covered by the media. These women put all their effort into performing their sport at the highest level, but their media attention gets replaced by men who are in their off-season.