Why Do Women's Sport And Female Athletes Get In Sport?

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.

On all four of the news broadcasts I watched, men dominated the broadcasting. With the exception of the Merril Lynch Celebrity Ski Classic Cup, which had two male broadcasters and two female reporters, the broadcasts were either male dominated (with one woman reporter) or only contained men. I found that sports such as skiing or running exhibit more gender equality than male dominated sports like football, baseball or basketball.

Gender stereotyping in sports media is something we see everyday in magazines and on TV. Since sports were invented, males have dominated one of Canada’s largest pastimes. Reasons for this being physicality and strength, but as time progressed women began to become more involved in the culture of sport. Today there is almost an equal amount of women participating in sports as man, yet women are still not being represented with the same approach as men. About a month ago I found a video online that followed a sports reporter who was trying to make a point about gender stereotyping within sports media. He would interview professional male athletes but rather than ask them the typical interview questions we see in male sports, such as “has your workout routine changed since…” but rather asked them questions that are typically related to female athlete interviews such as one that was asked to swimmer Michael Phelps “Shaving your body hair gives you an edge in the pool, but how about your love life”, or “any comments about reports about your girlish figure”. At the end of the video they show real women athletes being asked these types of questions in real interviews. The men’s reactions of embarrassment to disgust vs. the women’s reactions of showing no surprise to being asked these derogatory questions, says it all. It is no surprise that the sexualization of female athletes is something all too common in sports media. We’ll be looking into the idea of sexualisation in

We see that women do not have a participation rate that we have now. Competitive sport was really a male orientated event and women by society would support the men because of their 'lack of skill' or right to be up on the stage competing but now it has all changed women are encouraged to participate. With the increased participation of women comes the need to cover and record the achievements in daily news bulletins or broadcasts sadly still these broadcasts are still male orientated. What drives women to be as successful as they are is that some women are required to uphold a high media profile to attract sponsorship and coverage, Whereas the men are saved a spot in headlines and do not require a wining streak for media attention.

The Australian Government recognises the importance and achievements of Aus-tralian sportswomen and promoting them as role models to women and girls in par-ticular. Their promotion is an important factor to motivate women and girls to follow a career in sport or start playing sports. The Australian Sports Commission delivers media training for Australian Institute of Sport’s athletes to guarantee that Australia’s elite athletes make the most of media coverage. Furthermore, to contribute in the broadcast of the 2012 Paralympic Games, the Australian Government gave $1 mil-lion to the Australian Paralympic Committee (Australian Sports Commission, 2014). Towards a Level Playing Field: Sport and Gender in Australian Media, the Australian Government commissioned research in 2008/09, confirmed that female and male sport receive unequal amounts of coverage on television, regardless of the continu-ing success and participation levels of women in sport (Wensing & Bruce, 2003). This research evaluated the amount of media coverage and the representation of women and sport, it used empirical data of the media coverage of female athletes to benchmark future research in this area. Women’s sports coverage

People might still say that the segregation of genders in sports are making gender equality impossible, but the separation of genders in sports is not because one gender is better than the other. It is to ensure the fairness and equality. Women and men are naturally built differently and they both are both truly strong but in different ways. In order to keep sports fair, just and equal, the best thing to do is to keep sports separated by

The inequalities do not stop with aspects that directly affect the team but continue into the media with respect to air coverage time of women’s athletics. A twenty five year long study of gender in sports news determined a decrease in women’s coverage despite the indisputable gain in participation. For example, research showed that just 2% of ESPN’s SportsCenter airtime was utilized for women’s coverage in 2014. A Los Angeles news program was also studied and its airtime dedicated to women’s athletics has actually decreased since 1999 and remains at just 3.2% (4). Furthermore, the documentary Media Coverage and Female Athletes claims that, “forty percent of all athletes are women, but only 4% are represented in the media — and too often how

Before the birth of Title IX, there were 3 million boys playing sports and about 290,000 girls that participated in interscholastic sport. Once ten years passed the number jumped from 3.5 million boys and 1.2 million girls now participating. And bring that to present day, 2.8 million of 6 million participants are girls. Girls now participate in over 29 high school sports, few of them are, basketball, volleyball, track and field, soccer, and softball. aside from the improvements and the largely increased population of girls’ increased participation in sports, there are financial constraints. The budget for boys’ sports are larger than the girls’ sports activities. But an unfortunate side is that the significant cuts on both sides of the

Sexism in sports journalism occasionally deals with the media or male athletes making rude and sexist remarks about a female reporters and athletes. According to the article Media Coverage of Women Athletes (1992), “The media reinforce this stereotype by portraying female athletes as over glamorized, over feminized, and too emotional to deal with success and failure on the playing field (pg. 74).” This quote talks about how the media portrays female athletes as too feminine and emotion to deal with success. This source was not the only source found that thinks sexism in sports journalism is a controversial topic. According to Ponterotto (2012), “The sports media often convey the idea that female attractiveness and sexual desirability are more important than athletic ability (p.15).”

Everyday male and female athletes go through the same routine- waking up early, working out, watching what they eat, and traveling; all while trying to keep up their grades. So why are men favored over women sports. Boys and girls sports should become more equal, boys get way more tv time than girls and always get better treatment, and there is always a bigger student section at the boys games. Boys get way more TV time than girls, not only that but in school they also get recognized more. It’s always hard to find a girls game in any sport on TV, but it shouldn’t be that way.

Over the last twenty years the respect for female athletes has increased but why is it not shown in the media coverage? Mass media has become one of the most powerful institutional forces that communicated information and helps shape the values that are apart of the modern culture. Media coverage of sports is one of the most popular news coverage, having many television stations, articles, magazines and news reports. The media coverage of sports is primarily a male-dominated institution that lacks coverage and representation of women. The relation of women in sports points out main issues that are the amount of coverage that they receive and how they are represented as athletes.

Ever since I was a little girl I remember hearing people say “boys are better than girls at sports”. Of course I always denied it and tried to say we were better but no one ever listened. I started wondering, why were guys apparently so better at sports than girls are. Because their stronger? Because their more “athletic”? Or is it because society just says they are. I feel like its option C. Girls never really had a shot to prove how good they are at sports because guys always took the spotlight.

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.

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.

Thousands of women fought for the same rights as men for hundreds of years in the United States (Pruitt 2016). They fought for rights such as the right to vote and the right to play or participate in the same Olympic sports as men. When women gain the right to participate in Olympic sports, it was a big step forward for women rights. In the 1900’s, for the first-time women could compete in the Olympic games in Paris ("Women at the Olympic games"). London 2012 Olympics marked the first time in history when women won more medals than men (Flynn 2016). In 2016, the United States sent two hundred ninety-two women to the Rio Olympics, the most women ever sent to the Olympics to compete in an Olympic sport by a country (Flynn 2016). Two years in