Gender Stereotypes For Women: Gender Discrimination In Sports

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).

Through the movies viewed in this course this semester, we saw women who were able to play against men and still keep their femininity. Nothing is lost when playing sports not traditionally meant for a particular race or gender. Society must become more understanding when it comes to the sports different types of people play and hinder from stereotyping anyone when they participate and perform well in that sport.

Hargreaves, J. (1994). Feminity or ‘masculinity'? Changing images of female's sports. In J. Hargreaves (Ed.), sporting females: critical issues in the history and sociology of women sports. London: Roultledge.

As sports is considered a men’s world, dominant media sports such as men’s football are mainly produced by male journalists for male audiences, representing a particular preferred reading or favourite subject position (Knoppers & Elling, 2004). Peeters, & Elling (2015), argue that, this is both done by presenting male athletes and downgrading female athletes and by sexualising sportswomen. In international competitions such as the Olympics, gender beliefs might be partially “overruled” by nationalism (Wensing & Bruce, 2003). Women’s sports’ lack of coverage and the lack of respectful and serious coverage of women’s sport has been researched for a while and seems to occur in various media platforms such as print and televised news media (Duncan et al, 2005; Adams & Tuggle,

Women who participate in sports are often marginalized for displaying athleticism and demonstrating strength because the false idealization of beauty. Media portrayals within sports focus on women’s beauty and sexuality that helps strengthen and perpetuate the normative gender stereo types between femininity and masculinity that negatively impact the representation of women within sports and society. The representation of women in sports have regressed, there is less coverage and international broadcasts of women in sports than they were twenty years ago (1). “Televised sports reported in the US over a ten-year span, men’s sports received 96.3% of airtime compared to the 1.6% of women sports and to the 2.1% of neutral topics”

Women sports have come a long way, since the days when women were only allowed to watch. “The past three decades have witnessed a steady growth in women 's sports programs in America along with a remarkable increase in the number of women athletes (Daniel Frankl 2)” From an early age women were thought to be “Lady Like”; they are told not to get all sweaty and dirty. Over 200 years later since Maud Watson stepped on the tennis courts of Wimbledon (Sports Media digest 3); women now compete in all types and levels of sports from softball to National racing. Soccer fans saw Mia Hamm become the face of Women’s soccer around the world , Venus and Serena Williams are two of the most popular figures in tennis, and Indy car racing had their first woman racer, Danika Patrick. With all the fame generated by these women in their

Throughout the history of sports, women have struggled to participate in various forms of competition. Discrimination for women in sports can be traced back to as far as Ancient Egypt and Greece. In fact, during the first Olympic Games only men were allowed to take part in the Olympic Games and women were not even allowed to watch the games under threat of death. In Europe, the practice of sports for women was practically non-existent until the 19th century and even then only wealthy women played games such as croquet, golf and tennis (Rostkowska, 2007). For centuries, this type of discrimination for women in sports has continued.

Traditionally, sports and athletics have been limited to males. Recalling as far back as the Grecian Olympics, public sporting events have afforded men both fame and fortune while women have been either completely excluded from play or forced to play under male rules. Until recently, male athletes and the general public have viewed successful female athletes as exceptions to the widespread rule that women cannot and should not compete along side men in traditionally male sports. Females who chose to be athletic were required to follow the examples of male athletes that were already established and accepted by both the sports community. Consequently, female athletes were confined to a narrow and rigid

Women’s participation in sport has historically not been given the same coverage, funding, prize money, sponsorship or respect as men’s.

Argument/Conclusion: The policies concerning female athletics are made to seem fair but at the same time they target only those women who look more masculine than the others and as a result intensify the “gender policies” that plagues women’s sports.

The Internet has drastically increased the opportunity to cover women’s sports. However, 90 percent of sports editors are white males and women make up just 14 percent of the sports staff. Coverage of women in sports remains unequal and often sexist.

Women in sports are portrayed as unskilled if they lose or there is an outside reason for their win, yet this is not the case. This image of women only being good at sports for a physical or outside reason is slowly changing but an extremely slow rate. Today, ladies and gentleman, I will explain to you how the media is slowly starting to properly portray women in sports. Originally this issue was fixed but it slowly becoming fluid as the media is starting to accept the truth about female sports players. My two points of evidence for tonight is an article from the Courier mail and a Samsung phone ad. These two media ads clearly show the slow rate in how accurate female sports players are being portrayed.

Despite the prevalence of the gender binary in our everyday lives, it is reinforced even further by the sports media that acts as a strong social influence. Additionally, sports media depicts gender inequality by creating a discriminatory system that favors men’s sports and regards women’s sports as a “second rate investment.” Lack of funding and lack of coverage have seemingly created a self-fulfilling prophecy for the future of women’s sports. Quantitative evidence from research completed by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles includes a six-week analysis where 264 minutes of sports coverage contained a mere 12 minutes worth of women’s sports coverage as opposed to the 244 minutes of men’s broadcast. Furthermore, the women’s sports coverage tended to be during the ending of the broadcast and female athletes received the lead coverage twice as opposed to the 40 times a male athlete was displayed. (Duncan, Messner, Williams, Jensen) This data, although surprising, is not shocking. The lack of exposure is a product of the relationship between viewer ratings and TV network investment. Men’s sports traditionally generate the majority of revenue and garner the higher ratings among sports media thus making it more likely for sponsors and investment into men’s sports coverage. The large impact of men’s sports is directly correlated with the higher production qualities and exorbitant media coverage. In addition, television networks will tend to cater towards men’s sports

Since the introduction of title 9, women’s involvement in college and professional sports has drastically increased, but the media representation of women’s events is still significantly less than that of men’s, despite women making up more than half the world population. With that

There have been a variety of studies done to try and pin point what methods contribute to the construction of women’s sport. What scholars have been able to find is that multiple reasons can be attributed to the lack of sports media pertained to females, such as, “Low volume of media attention, narrative focus, prominence of placement or scheduling, linguistic choices and visual representation.” (Sherry, Osbourne & Nicholson, 2015). As consequence of women not being bale to have their own media outlets dedicated to just women so sportswomen have to rely on coverage in fractional outlets such as newspaper articles or radio stations. Whether it be sports media, or mass media as a whole, can help shape the audience opinions, and determine what and how information could be shared. Mass media has the power in which reflects and creates the culture in