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This page highlights the key components from a literature review on media coverage for women in the sports industry. This webpage explores the question of why women have less media coverage than men, looking at all different factors.
To read full literature review, click here.
The Three Theories of Influence
Media coverage continues to send a message that males dominate the sports industry, influencing young kids to perpetuate existing gender-based behaviors and related power structures. This trend of propagating stereotypes has been made worse in the 21st century through the advent and proliferation of social media use, both personally and professionally. While females in sports journalism constitute the key demographic examined, this study also considers related treatments and prejudices to impact female athletes.
Social Identity Theory
Social Identity Theory
Examining how social media can positively impact women in the sports industry can allow more information that hasn’t been found from other scholarly journals. Hull (2017) touched upon Twitter and the unsuccessful impact it had on women in sports. Broadcasting on television, there is limited time to talk about everything, so the time fills up with men’s sports. Twitter does not have these concerns, considering they can tweet as many times as they choose with no time constraint. Hull (2017) issued that based on social identity theory, women should be reporting on women’s sports to show female athletic abilities of their gender, yet this wasn’t the outcome as male sportscasters tweeted more about women in comparison.
Objectification Theory
Objectification Theory
When it comes to comparing males’ and females’ physical appearances, there is a significant emphasis on sports broadcasters and athletes. Harrison and Fredrickson (2003) introduced the objectification theory, which focuses more on females and internalizes others’ perspectives on their physical bodies. The authors researched representations from sports media and the extent to which seeing women on television can influence other women’s perceptions of their appearances. Women continue to struggle with their physical appearance and the constant criticism of how they should look, whereas men do not seem to have this issue from seeing portrayals of men on television.
Social Comparison
Social Comparison
Researchers discussed the impact of one’s race on body image issues, finding women of color are less influenced by such representations overall. Women in the sports industry tend to be a lot harder on themselves regarding body image and look. Bissel and Zhou (2004) talk about how social comparison theory, one-way women look at themselves differently, by comparing themselves to other individuals who may have different skin colors can affect how they view themselves. This study established white women are less satisfied with their bodies than non-white women.
Women have been subordinate when trying to find opportunities to work in the sports industry. Even with laws in full effect, women themselves speak up about what they believe in; there is a clear hierarchy of men in sports.
Due to the degree to which this industry was male-dominated in 1972, a federal civil rights law was passed known as Title IX to protect against sex-based discrimination. With the aid of federal financial assistance in the Department of Education (DoED), programs and activities could obtain money in a non-discriminatory manner (Harvard, 2020). While this law constituted a massive step for females in the profession, sports coverage differences continue to persist for male versus female athletics. Several studies still question the effect of Title XI and the progress being made in the sports industry for women. While they all agree this law took great strides for women’s inclusion in journalism, such steps forward did not necessarily yield immediate media coverage changes. Antunovic (2017) questioned the law and the importance of sports history, considering this isn't an instant topic to showcase in the newsroom. Creedon (1994) emphasized the importance of addressing women in sports journalism and how change needs to continue.
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Compared to sports journalists before and after Title IX was implemented as a law, the media explicitly showed great positivity in the 40th anniversary that changed journalists’ point of view. Schmidt (2013) points out male dominance in the industry continues to yield comparably more coverage of men’s sports by male journalists. However, technology’s proliferation has enabled journalists to build their platforms on social media, where more freedom in coverage exists. That said, limitations in media coverage for women persist, and indeed there are still very few women who work behind the scenes on the journalistic side of things. Influencing what sports are covered and considering men run the sports newsroom, most likely there is going to be more coverage on male sports.
As media becomes more a part of society each day, it’s important to use media to benefit social issues.
Television influence
Looking at the history of television coverage from 1989, only 5% of the tv sports news was for women. Years later, in 2014, there were improvements in women’s stories yet demeaning their sex and insulting them by making sexist comments rather than about their athletic ability. Specifically, Cooky, Messner, & Musto (2015) looked at March Madness compared to women and men in the NCAA tournament in 2014. Examining SportsCenter coverage between men and women, there were only about nine stories or 3 min and 37 seconds of content while the men, on the other hand, had 120 stories of 1 hour and 26 min. It starts with the media making change and having other women's support by seeing them on television, whether they are broadcasting the game or playing in a game.
Social Media influence
As technology advances throughout the years, social media has become a vast platform for broadcasters and athletes. Feminism has taken control of social media and helped to influence others by using examples of athletes themselves. Cooky and Antunovic (2020) focused on WNBA players when they knelt on one knee to protest Black Lives; this became a way of promoting positivity from a female's perspective. Looking at Twitter, surprisingly from Hull’s (2017) research found out female broadcasters tweet less about women’s sports than male commentators. Twitter has become a considerable part of how broadcasters state their opinion or even give updates throughout a game. While all emphasize the importance of social media and the positive effect, there still needs to be more from journalists themselves when they use their platforms. Specifically, athletes and journalists have an influential power to help shape young women.
Women in the sports industry have always been feminized, whether via assumptions about their knowledge of sports or using their physical appearances as a way to put them down. Additionally, sexist comments about race-based prejudices continue to be a constant issue.
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Issues on race
Issues on race
Women of color face additional disadvantages in the sports industry. Specifically, Genovese (2015) found that whites dominated the sports industry. While interviewing seven men and four women in the sports industry, overall, it seemed whites tend to cover more so-called “professional” news. At the same time, bosses assigned reporters of other races less critical stories. It is common knowledge more opportunities exist for white males in the industry. Indeed, Genovese (2015) noted 90.9% of sports editors are white, also dominating the ranks of assistant sports editors (86.7%), columnists (83.9%), and reporters (86.3%). Racial profiling becomes a factor when assigning jobs to people and places minorities at lower chances of filling higher-up positions. While women watch sports media, this can result positively or negatively. In comparison, white women focus much more on their thin-ideal bodies, whereas African American women embrace their curves and love their bodies much more. Both Bissel and Zhou (2004) and Genovese (2015) researched issues that put women of different races many steps behind men in the sports industry, affecting their media coverage and how people view them.
Photo from The Milieux Project, Inc.
Issues on sexism
Issues on sexism
Sports’ masculinized connotations continue to present an issue with achieving gender diversity in sports journalism. With such existing gender connotations and stereotypes, being female still tends to associate a person with roles like wife, mother, or girlfriend rather than an athlete. In terms of sports participation, Bruce (2013) uses the word “appropriate femininity” to emphasize conventional characteristics like being weak, physically incapable, or otherwise non-athletic. Even women who can break into the field feel compelled to cover more men’s sports, participating in what Bruce (2013) refers to as the “male habitus,” evincing the degree to which sexism becomes instilled within female reporters’ psyche, indicating women have to switch to a different gender just to adapt to sports journalists. Sexual harassment constitutes an additional issue in the workplace that disproportionately affected women and their abilities to perform their jobs. Whiteside and Hardin (2015) discussed the “male turf” where men enjoy having power and control in their workplace, leading to women feeling uncomfortable or even making them question their job.
While America struggles with equality in the sports industry, this issue also is prevalent in international countries.
Poland
Poland
Looking at Polish sports and the portrayal of women, Organistsa et al. (2019) data showed only 9% in 2011 were women’s sports. In this research, the fewer women sports journalists, the less coverage of women’s sports. All sports journalists that got interviewed felt similar in the idea of the underrepresentation of the media coverage. Nobody discriminated against women’s sports, but it was clear the male hierarchy in sports dominates. It explicitly considered how females and males wrote many articles, and in the last 30 years, only 10.2% by female sports journalists.
China
China
Like in the US, female athletes always pay attention to their physical appearance (Kane et al., 2013). While there is this focus everywhere else on females but their athletic ability, the irony of Chinese women winning more medals than Chinese male athletes. One difference between the US and China is that soccer in China; men started 30 years before women. The continuous struggle for gaining equal pay and media coverage, and while it’s known China’s women’s soccer team has done tremendous work and done better than the men. Xu et al. (2019) find that people enjoy watching men’s sports because it’s faster and more physical, making it more interesting to watch. As the male hegemony continues to waver over Chinese sports, the question is what will it take for women to gain this respect even after all their outstanding accomplishments.
Australia
Australia
Australia has seen some change yet only regarding certain sports; for example, Sherwood et al. (2016) found netball has been super popular and getting the most coverage for any women’s sports in their country. While this is a step for women, this is only a small percentage of change. Three things come into play: the male domination in sports in the newsroom, stereotypes that people have learned, and the arrangement sports news continuously does. The system has continually favored men in which the norm has always been favoring men’s content. With netball’s help having such a highly engaged audience and making such an established name for them, this has changed some way they work sports production. While this is excellent progress, this still hasn’t changed women entirely in the sports industry.
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The lack of representation of women in the sports industry affects women’s low percentage of media coverage.
White men continue to dominate this industry, controlling what content is being covered and put out. In such ways, women have more at stake when put into a male-dominated industry because men tend to see them as sexual objects and create an uncomfortable environment for them (Cooky et al., 2015). While these issues continue to happen throughout the US, a few other countries deal with the same kind of underrepresentation of media coverage for women. While looking at Poland, China, and Australia, each has their own issues about the sports industry.
Historically women have struggled with equality in the sports industry and still do to this day.
Historically women have struggled with equality in the sports industry and still do to this day.
The challenges women face come from men’s domination in the industry and the stereotypes that influence kids at a young age. Some changes began when the Title IX law passed in 1972, helping with sex-based discrimination. The increase of media coverage for females begins behind the scenes of sports journalism. With more women in this industry, the more positive influence it can have on representing them. As Schmidt (2013) points out, with powerful men who are high up in the sports industry, the more likely male sports will be favored and previewed because of gender bias. With the advancement of technology, media influence becomes a positive change for women in the sports industry, allowing them to create their own platforms and focus on their own opinions on specific topics they feel the need to express. Abisaid and Bo Li’s (2020) research focused on Twitter, and unfortunately, even women themselves tweet more about men’s sports than their gender
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Can social media be the new change for women in the sports industry?
Can social media be the new change for women in the sports industry?
Gathering all results from the research, there continues to be missing information from social media platforms. With the advancement of technology, social media can be an essential tool to change women’s media coverage. More analysis from different platforms will better understand why women’s media coverage is lower than men’s. Other than Twitter, examining Instagram can help gain another perspective other researchers haven’t explored. Investigating sports journalists’ Instagram pages will allow a better understanding of why sports media coverage is geared towards men’s sports.
Due to the gap in the literature, the following hypothesis and research questions will be examined:
RQ1: Are male and female sports journalists more likely to post about personal or sports-related content on Instagram?
RQ2: Do female sports journalists post more content on Instagram than male sports journalists?
RQ3: Do female journalists post more content about women’s sports than men on Instagram?
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