Relevant Literature
Allison, Rachel. 2016. “Business Or Cause? Gendered Institutional Logics in Women’s Professional Soccer.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 40(3):237 https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723515615349
The emergence of the big three professional sports that now dominate American culture, basketball, baseball, and football, have created issues surrounding gender roles in both college and professional sports. The primary problems being faced by women at the college and professional level of sports are that of dominant masculinity both within play of the sport and outside play in fandom and jobs. There are large constraints for women that are leaving them marginalized in the American culture of sports. Through the lens of a professional women’s soccer team, Momentum, Allison looks to understand better how these women are facing gender inequality within their sport on all levels. Allison used the methodology of participant observation over the course of 11 months. There was extensive observation of the staff, team, and fans in a plethora of different settings. Allison also conducted in-depth interviews with 55 members of different teams across the league that Momentum was in. What was found was that women’s professional soccer does exist in the world of U.S. professional sports, but under the umbrella of the big three sports and in a male dominated professional setting. There is such dominant pressure from external forces such as staff and mass media that breaking these barriers of gender inequalities is a trying task.
In this article, researchers are looking at the 2014 olympic games. They were curious to see how media coverage captured the special olympics and how gender plays a role in the already unique circumstances of these games. Researchers analyzed 54 texts in addition to evaluating photos and video clips. They got most of their data from basic internet search engines such as google. They wanted to gather information on how many times things like gender and mention of disabilities were discussed. They realized that newspapers often cover these games with a narrative and a story, sometimes throwing off the equilibrium of the real story. What they found was that the coverage of the special olympics takes a different tone than other games. The main message here is to preach equality and inclusion of anyone and everyone, despite things like disabilities or gender. The coverage of the games makes it appear as though this bubble creates a space where all athletes are truly accepted, no matter race, gender, or disability. However, this is just a narrative and inside the “bubble” proves tough for athletes as they often have to overcome many obstacles in relation to their gender, disability, and other contributing factors.
Bruce, Toni. 2016. “New Rules for New Times: Sportswomen and Media Representation in the Third Wave.” Sex Roles 74(7-8):361-376 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1007/s11199-015-0497-6
This article touches upon how women are represented in sports media over the past decade. The authors note how women are often ignored completely or sexualized within their role in sports. The researcher here is looking to dive deeper into how and why women are represented this way in mass media. By analyzing things such as traditional media coverage, modern day liberal feminism, and the different rules surrounding women in sports leads Bruce to the conclusion that women’s are being portrayed in a very traditional sense in the media. There needs to be a shift in the portrayal of femininity to strong and tough women, not just beautiful females that happened to be involved in athletics. Bruce also mentions the need for greater intersectionality amongst females in sports as it will challenge the inequalities currently surrounding women in the sports workforce.
Claringbould, Inge, Annelies Knoppers and Agnes Elling. 2004. “Exclusionary Practices in Sport Journalism.” Sex Roles 51(11-12):709-718 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1007/s11199-004-0720-3
In this article, researchers are looking at the seemingly exclusive tone towards women in sports journalism. Researchers analyzed four different topics that they thought could be causing issues for women in sports journalism; division of labor, images, interaction, and work identity. The study took place over four years and used the methodology of interviews with sports journalists. In the interviews, the participants explained their role in the department of sports and why they thought there was an underrepresentation of women in sports. The results yielded very interesting results. It was seen that although the processes of hiring for journalism positions seemed to be neutral, there were obvious patterns of maybe subconscious distinctions of how men and women will be perceived in a journalism position.
Hall, Ruth L., and Carole A. Oglesby. 2016. “Stepping through the Looking Glass: The Future for Women in Sport.” Sex Roles 74(7-8):271-274 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1007/s11199-015-0572-z
This article looks specifically on how women can advance and find their role in sports beyond title IX. Not only are their restrictive chains on women in specific sports alone, such as “throwing like a girl” in softball, but this is true in other areas as well. In mass media, job opportunities, and places in sports organizations, women’s abilities in athletics is still being questioned. The authors observe these disparities in women’s sports by dissecting women’s portrayal in sports illustrated, the lack of coverage in women’s sports, olympic coverage of women’s sports, and monetary differences in large sporting events. Finding that there’s need to be a lot of changes to be made for women in sports, Hall and Carole suggest new directions of a new way to represent women in mass media, work in the NCAA to care for female athletes more attentively, and overall deflating the idea that women are restricted to certain sports and roles within athletics.
These researchers were interested in analyzing the coverages of men’s and women’s olympic events, noting that past research shows how women are often underrepresented in this area. They also note how this coverage reproduces gender differences in sports.
The researchers analyzed a Polish newspaper that is considered to be the most popular daily sports paper. They specifically looked at newspaper publications that were published the day before the opening ceremony of the 2014 winter games and the day after the closing ceremony. They wanted to look closely at the front pages of these newspapers and at the photographs being published on the games.
They found interesting results here. The most important things the newspaper was printing on the front page was the results of the games from the day before and attaching a photo of the event as well. This did not directly result in under-resperanting female athletes as they were not focused on gender, just results.
This article looked at both the 1996 and 1998 U.S. women’s olympic gold medal events. The sports covered were basketball, soccer, hockey, and softball. Researchers were interested in seeing how descriptions of female athletes in print coverage affected gender beliefs in society. The researchers analyzed over 700 passages of print media in order to examine two things; task relevance as well as use of gender stereotypes. The passages were drawn from over 6 different newspapers, including “USA today, The LA Times, The NY Times, The Boston globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Washington Post” (Jones et al. 1999:185). The content drawn was coded for task relevance and depictions of gender by two different people.
What the researchers found was that female athletes are covered in ways that reflect gender beliefs in society. There was a large amount of commentary that was found to be very stereotypical. There was also a great deal of comparison between male and female athletes although the coverage was specifically looking at the women’s winning gold medal events. In addition, there was a large amount of coverage about the female athletes in regard to things like their personality and qualities rather than their skill level and execution of the event.
Klomsten, Anne T., Herb W. Marsh and Einar M. Skaalvik. 2005. “Adolescents’ Perceptions of Masculine and Feminine Values in Sport and Physical Education: A Study of Gender Differences.” Sex Roles 52(9-10):625-636 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1007/s11199-005-3730-x
In this study, researchers were looking to see how middle schoolers perceived and valued both masculine and feminine characteristics within sports and physical education. They also looked at how these perceptions and values affected the participation in certain sports. The methods in this study were to have the participants fill out questionnaires about the desired questions the researchers were asking. What they found was that girls and boys valued different characteristics in sports. Boys valued things like strength and endurance, where girls valued slenderness and facial appearance. Similarly, the boys were participating in more traditionally masculine sports and girls in more traditionally feminine sports.
Klomsten, Anne T., Einar M. Skaalvik and Geir A. Espnes. 2004. “Physical Self-Concept and Sports: Do Gender Differences Still Exist?” Sex Roles 50(1-2):119-127 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1023/B:SERS.0000011077.10040.9a
This article deals with one’s idea of physical appearance and its relation to sports. The researchers had secondary students fill out questionnaires in relation to physical descriptions of themselves. What they found was that boys rated higher in self esteem, self concept, and physical self awareness than girls. They found that increasing age also has a large impact on one’s rating of physical appearance in areas like body fat, sports competence, and strength.
Knoppers, Annelies, and Mary Mcdonald. 2010. “Scholarship on Gender and Sport in Sex Roles and Beyond.” Sex Roles 63(5-6):311-323 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1007/s11199-010-9841-z
In this study, two populations of highschool students and college students were analyzed. They looked at these different populations through the lens of a sport context, like athletics and sport administrators. They found that a lot of literature dealt with specifically gender and sport, focusing mostly on females.
In this article, researchers are uncovering the gender stereotyping that takes place in media coverage of amateur and professional athletics. For their methods, the researchers selected a random Saturday or Sunday each week for a year to videotape sports news broadcastings. This resulted in thousands of minutes of taped footage of sports coverage. They looked into how much air time was devoted to men’s or women’s athletics. They covered the gendering labels of athletics, such as predominantly female, male, or gender neutral sports. They inspected interviews of male and female athletes in regard to the percentage of time covered. They looked for the gendered languages of sports such as “mens” golf or “women’s” soccer. They also analyzed grammar in distinct differences in the way men’s and women’s athletics were discussed in media coverage, often favoring and more heavily representing male athletics.
Lee, Woojun, and George B. Cunningham. 2016. “Gender, Sexism, Sexual Prejudice, and Identification with U.S. Football and Men’s Figure Skating.” Sex Roles 74(9-10):464-471 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1007/s11199-016-0598-x
This article focuses more specifically on the gender inequality athletes are facing with their identities within specific sports. The researchers wanted to answer the question of whether or not there were certain patterns of prejudice amongst different sports. Through the use of questionnaire data, from both men and women, Lee and Cunningham look to unpack social stigmas, sexual prejudices, and gender identity battles athletes are facing within football and men’s figure skating. The participants were 34.7% female and 65.3% male with racial diversity amongst the group. The questionnaire consisted of topics including issues surrounding sexism and prejudice as well as asking them to state whether they were fans of mens football or ice skating. The results showed that sexual prejudice was positively associated with sexism and gender identity in men’s football but negatively associated with men’s figure skating. What this showed researchers was that there is most likely a strong link between one’s idea of traditional masculinity and their sexual prejudices.
After recognizing that women’s tennis in comparison to women’s basketball was highly televised, researchers decided to compare coverage of women’s and men’s sports; tennis and basketball. The researchers specifically analyzed the NCAA final four tournament for both men’s and women’s basketball. In addition, they analyzed the 1989 U.S. open men’s and women’s tennis tournament. They asked three main questions. First was whether or not commentators sexualize women in their sports? Second, do commentators cover the men’s and women’s sports differently and are there specific gender marks? Last, do the commentators specifically talk about men and women differently, such as “girl vs boy” or “man vs woman”? They watched the three games each and the final four and analyzed commentary. They found that women were not overtly sexualized by commentators, however camera angles sometimes did this. They also found that there was in fact gender marking and a “hierarchy of naming” by gender.
In this article, researchers are analyzing the media coverage in regard to gender of the 2004 summer olympic games. They looked specifically at details from The NYT and The LA times. The researchers explored details within the columns discussing the games, placements of articles, focus on more female or male athletes, as well as how the media regarded both the male and female athletes. In their methods, they were so specific in detail they even used a ruler to measure the inches of columns that were addressing the games. Their goal was to see how big or small certain images were in relation to gender. They looked at whether or not men vs women were placed on the front cover or not and so on. What they found was that these column inches did in fact favor male athletics, article placement based on gender favored the male athletes (placing the women on the inside sports sections), and articles that discussed males tended to have more direct quotes from the male athletes than articles discussing females.
This article looks specifically at college level basketball and the potential gender problems behind playing time. The researchers here look specifically at online coverage of women’s sports. They recognize the great increase in participation from female athletes since title IX, but note how there has not been as great of increase in coverage since that time.
For their methods, researchers look at ESPN coverage of the NCAA women’s and men’s athletes and coaches during the 2007 basketball tournaments. They chose college basketball as their sample because it’s really the only collegiate sport where media attention makes it possible to look at men’s and women’s games. They analyzed things like the featured stories, spotlights, pictures, headlines, trailers, videos, and more.
What they found was that there was in fact a difference in how men’s and women’s basketball was covered. First, ESPN had a distinct section on their website for men’s and women’s coverage. For example, for the men it was just “college basketball” and for the women’s it was “women’s basketball.” The label places the women’s athletics at a lesser value. The number of featured articles and pictures were more often than not of men’s basketball. They also saw a similarity in the video clips, as not a single women’s team had its own unique “pre tournament” clip like the men.
In this article, Shugart addresses how the contemporary media often contains gender stereotypes in their coverage of men’s and women’s and sports. In particular, women are often sexualized and objectified in mainstream media coverage. Although the rapidly increasing number of female athletes is a positive trend, the coverage of these athletes is far less impressive. Through analysis of the 1999 US women’s soccer team, the researcher looks to argue that athletics are heavily gendered by media coverage through different strategies.
Through heavy analysis of media coverage, such as magazines like Sports Illustrated, Shugart found that female athletes are in fact covered in a hegemonic way. Shugart found evidence of “passive objectification, sexualization of performance, and vigilant heterosexuality” (Shugart 2003:27).
This article looks at the 1996 olympic games but analyzes two sports that are no longer a part of the olympic games, softball and baseball. In this study, researchers compare the coverage of women’s softball and men’s baseball before, during, and after the pulling of the event. From the years 2004 to 2011, researchers pulled 73 articles from media outlets such as ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and more. Through content analysis and textual analysis, the researchers looked specifically at how gender was framed in relation to the event no longer being included in the games and how much coverage time each sport received surrounding the news.
Interestingly, the coverage of women’s and men’s sports did not follow traditional gender roles when it came to time in the media. The women’s softball team was more verbally discussed, but not necessarily for good reason. They received more attention for a few reasons, one being that there was now very little global competition for the sport of softball. Another reason the sport gained attention was because they were being described as too dominant of a sport and baseball was then being framed as not dominant enough. These findings are very interesting.
Toffoletti, Kim, and Holly Thorpe. 2018. “Female Athletes’ Self-Representation on Social Media: A Feminist Analysis of Neoliberal Marketing Strategies in “economies of Visibility”.” Feminism & Psychology 28(1):11-31 http://dx.doi.org.ezpro.cc.gettysburg.edu:2048/10.1177/0959353517726705
In this study, researchers dive deeper into how female athletes are using social media to represent their images. They looked at Ronda Rousey, Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams, Dancia Patrick, and Alana Blanchard. They analyzed these 5 female athletes on social media and gained more information on how these women market and represent themselves as professional athletes. They looked for posts about self love, empowerment, and femininity. What they found is that these female athletes do in fact use their platforms on social media to promote self love and empowerment within this wave of feminism we are seeing.
This article looks specifically at how NBC covered female athletics and women’s athletic events in the 1996 olympic games. These researchers excluded team sports from their coverage; Rather, they focused on individual sports such as gymnastics, swimming, and diving. From July to August of 1996, researchers analyzed prime time video of NBC coverage of olympic coverage. They analyzed over 70 hours of video coverage. They then coded the media coverage for things like “length of the segment, type of presentation, the sex of the participants, live or edited, whether the competition involved physical power or unpenalized hard body contact, whether medals were at stake, and the focus of the commentary” (Tuggle et al. 1999:175).
The results showed that the coverage of men’s and women’s events was relatively even, but women’s events would tend to receive more attention under particular circumstances, such as competing in “socially acceptable” sports (Tuggle et al 199:178). Commentary was also found to be different in coverage of the sporting events. In addition, the circumstances of medals was also a factor that impacted coverage for women’s sports. Overall, although women’s sports received a fair amount of coverage, the perception of these women was under the control of men.
In this article, the 1996 olympic games are evaluated for gender biases in both men’s and women’s basketball, gymnastics, swimming, and diving and the impacts on audience perception. Often, coverage of sports tended to be more heavily viewed by a male audience. Due to this skewed viewing, the media coverage and sports program tend to be catered to a more male dominant audience. The method of this study included 217 participants between the ages of 18 and women. Of the 217 participants, 124 were males and 93 were females. The participants then filled out an Audience Perception Questionnaire about the 1996 olympic games. This questionnaire looked to develop a better understanding of how a male and female audience view sports coverage. The questionnaire addressed things like gender marking, stereotyping, visual framing, hierarchy issues, and commentary. The results yielded that men did in fact report more hours per week spent watching sports as well as deeming themselves knowledgeable in sports. On the contrary, women did not as heavily consider themselves knowledgeable in sports. Due to the media representation of certain sports, such as gymnastics, lead the audience to describe certain events differently. Women’s gymnastics was often described as “aesthetically pleasing” and men’s volleyball was described as “powerful” (Wieller et al. 2004:15).
Data Sources
Anon. 1996. “Olympic Football Tournaments 1996 – Men – Atlanta, 1996” Fifa. https://www.fifa.com/mensolympic/archive/atlanta1996/
Ahmed, Murad, Joe Leahy, and Samantha Pearson. 2016. “Rio Olympics 2016: Brazil Football Redemption.” Ft.com.
https://www.ft.com/content/b67a8a3e-674d-11e6-ae5b-a7cc5dd5a28c
Bruce, Toni. 2016. “New Rules for New Times: Sportswomen and Media Representation in the Third Wave.” Sex Roles 74(7-8):361-376 https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690203384001
Egbejule, Eromo. 2016. “‘We Ran Out Of Beer’: The Night Nigeria Won Olympic Football Gold Against Argentina.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/04/olympics-football-1996-nigeria-argentina-rio
Farber, Michael. 1996. “Score One For Women.” Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com. Retrieved April 28, 2021
https://vault.si.com/vault/1996/08/12/uswnt-1996-olympics-gold-medal-china-atlanta
Feeney, N. 2014. “A Brief History of Sexism in TV Coverage of the Olympics.” The Atlantic. Guillory, L. 2019. “Soccer in Sanford: The 1996 Olympics introduced Athens to another kind of football.” The Red & Black.
Gildea, William. 1996. “U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Wins Gold.” The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/olympics/daily/soccer/aug/02/socw2.htm
Longman, Jere. 1996. “How The Women Won.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/23/magazine/how-the-women-won.html
Royer, Tate. 2019. “A History Of The USWNT.” Sport in American History.
Wilbon, Michael. 1996. “Women Enjoy A Breakthrough.” Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-08-04-ss-31357-story.html
Vecsey, George. 1996. “Women’s Soccer: 76,481 Fans, 1 U.S. Gold.” The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/02/sports/women-s-soccer-76481-fans-1-us-gold.html
