Representation Of Women In Sports Essay

From all corners of the globe, news headlines are becoming much more attentive to the issues surrounding women in sport. Female athletes are gaining more notoriety in the sports’ arena. However, the attention they are receiving, usually pertains to their appearance, rather than their skill. Further, they are continuously being over-sexualized and objectified and for these reasons, there is a need for sweeping change in the representation of female athletes in the media. This paper will discuss the portrayal of female athletes in the media, the coverage that women in sport receive, the current impacts that media has on women in sports, and what measures can be undertaken to curtail the current trend of the media.

While participation of women in sports has increased, the media representation of women in sports remains problematic. Even the most talented elite female athletes like Michelle Kwan and Monica Seles are portrayed in a sexual fashion, as a way of deemphasizing their athleticism and neutralizing any possible threat they might seem to pose to male viewers. Very few male athletes are portrayed in such an objectified manner; they are portrayed as competitors first and foremost, not as personalities. Also, the media coverage of athletes is disproportionately focused on male athletes. The coverage of female athletes tends to stress individualized female sports where women can be sexualized like tennis and figure skating, versus competitive team sports like basketball and soccer.

This article talked about the daunting unequal media coverage in sports of male sports teams in comparison to females.They researched the true differentiations of coverage between men and women sports. The actual percentage difference of coverage of male vs female sports discovered in their research truly is unfathomable. Men’s sports receive 96.3% of the airtime, women’s sports 1.6% and gender neutral topics were 2.1%. When you think back about twenty years ago and the coverage of media people tend to think that America is generally trending positively forward, however that is not the case for the coverage of women's athletics. It has actually gone down since then. Although on the scarce occasion that they are feature in the news, more often than not they are conveyed in the stereotypical way: as wives, girlfriends, or mothers. When media is highlighting these aspects instead of their talent, hard work or success it takes away from their image as an athlete and it demonstrating that it is acceptable to do so in society. However if male athlete achieved equal success and he was a father, that

In today’s world, men’s sports seem to always be in the spotlight while women’s sports do not draw much attention, as if women who play sports are not taken seriously. This happens on all levels of sports, and I have personally experienced it myself through basketball in high school. While the gym would be full for any of the boys’ games, our games had very little support with almost empty bleachers. When it comes to the professional level, when women’s sports do get covered by the media, most people judge female athletes more on their looks rather than their athletic skill, which is negative and unfair.

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.

     Can women's sports establish itself as a topic of on-going media and journalism curiosity?  Currently TV stations do minimal coverage of women's sports, while newspapers and magazines do just a little bit better.  In a recent interview with Gary Webb, a sports writer for The Spectrum, he says that "the people have demonstrated that there is an audience that loves hearing about women athletes.  After all, they are somebody's kids, sisters, and moms".  I learned that these sports writers love to cover women's games, especially girls highschool basketball games.  Gary said that he would rather watch a Parowan-Beaver girls game over the boys anyday.  Karen Winegar, staff writer for the The Star

Various factors may contribute to how the sports media portray female athletes and women’s sports. Within these media portrayals, which are presented to the public through media frames, biased messages may emerge that are spread throughout society. While past research has been conducted on media frames, it has mainly focused on general issues, such as politics, patriotism, national crisis, and activism (Shen, 2004; Moshe, 2004; Neiger & Zandberg, 2004; Reber & Berger, 2005). Female athletes and women’s sports are often under-represented and unfairly framed in the media when compared to their male counterparts, which may be interpreted by the mass audience as a sign that women are inferior in the sports domain. The media’s emphasis on appearance rather than athleticism may cause young women to focus more on looks than

For this section, we will start first of all with this statement from Toft (2011), who claimed that sportswomen were the main focus of only 9% of articles in a recent sur-vey of 80 newspapers in 22 countries (Toft, 2011). To continue we will examine examples from one of the biggest sports nation, the USA. A study in the United States in 2011 found that the main television networks only dedicate 1.6% of airtime to women's sports compared to 6.3% in 2004. In terms of overall sports coverage, female athletics on television and in print media is more or less 8% (Adam, 2011). Cooky

With the rise of feminism, gender inequality has been quite the topic in todays time. With the wanting of equal rights and treatment it has been pointed out as per which all places males have the hegemonic overview and women are the oppressed; one of the areas where its unequal in gender is in sport. This paper will examine and break down the issues regarding sex and gender biases within sports in modern day media and how it can be resolved.

Since the media always broadcasts men playing various sports it explains why, women are not seen. Which is why their ratings do not appear and they struggle for viewers. I believe that gender equality in sport is non-existent and this is not fair. Young female athletes who put in the same amount of hard work and dedication as men, are not as justified since Women’s games are usually shown at non peak viewing times compared to men’s and this discrimination means that they do not have a following or access to true publicity. This year many viewers have witnessed some great women’s sports such as soccer. Australia’s summer sport broadcasted more women’s games, but where

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.

The adverse topic of women in sports stems from society's disregard to viewing women as persons. Women were, and in other parts of the world continue to be viewed as property of men and have no significant role in society. Being allowed into the Olympics was a step in the right direction for women across the world, but it was meager attempt equality. Women were still restricted by what events they were allowed to compete in, how they were trained and coached and even limited as to what they could wear. A woman’s femininity played a large role in the way they were perceived by society; weak. Women were seen as incommensurate to men and it was something that has taken us centuries to reverse. Today, women are given the rights we should have

It shows that the media doesn’t support women sports teams as much as their male equivalents. If they had the same media time they would be more recognized, would have a larger fan support at home games, and they could become bigger role models to young girls all over the country. (TuckerCenter, 2015) This documentary shows how female athletes were treated back in the day and how they are treated today. It may have changed by adding women sports teams in schools, but the media coverage hasn’t changed. If the US National Gymnastics team wins gold medals they will be talked about and on the media for a while but after a few months you don’t know anything about them. The same goes for the UConn Women’s basketball team who won their 100th game the media covered the team for about a week and then they were done. Why not keep up with female athletes and teams to keep them growing and giving them the support they need through media to

During this century women have been able to break out of the traditional female mold. Women have broken the chains that bond them to the home and have emerged into all sorts of male dominated arenas, including sports. Women have become athletes in their own right. In the last ten years there has been validation for the female athlete. The WNBA was created giving women a professional league in a mainstream traditionally male sport for the first time since the All American Girls Professional Baseball League went out of existence in the 1950s. And recently a woman made the cut and participated on the professional golf circuit with the men. Today, we see women athletes in the media regularly. Women's college basketball is given airtime on weekends just as men's is.

Similarly women are receiving less attention and media coverage than men. When someone puts on the television and turns on a sports game, it is most likely going to be a men’s sport. Even when females get their coverage, the commentators are usually talking about their body rather than their skill. In an article, “Examination of Gender Equality and Female Participation in Sport” by Joshua A. Senne, he talks about how women are referred by their appearance rather than their skill. During a study about the media, the commentators mostly talked about the women’s hair, make-up, and body figure, rather than their ability. This also occurred after the 1996 summer Olympics, where there was a lack of promotion for female athletes and the marketing of women’s sports. These athletes were also only recognized by their physical appearance instead of their ability. The tone of these broadcasters was proved in a study that men 's events were the standard in the society rather than the women’s. They would list the event as “other” rather than saying it is a women’s sport. In the study that was conducted, it states that the gender marketing showed that the woman sports were marked as “other” on an average of 27.5 times, but it 's never happened in the men’s sporting events (Senne). There is still coverage of women 's sports, but it rarely covered. The title IX project made a pie chart about the comparison of men’s and women’s sports media coverage on the show SportsCenter on