What comes to your mind when we say the word sports? Of the many people I have asked, most of them have replies such as ‘soccer’, ‘rugby’ and ‘basketball’. Can you see the similarity between those sports? Those few are the most broadcasted sports in the world. Also, we cannot fail to realize that they are male-dominated. I will now discuss the fact that female sport has been given less airtime than male sports.
Sports, media and stereotypes (SMS) – women and men in sports and media, was a project title given by 5 countries; Austria, Lithuania, Norway, Italy and Iceland. The purpose of this project was to contribute to the knowledge of representation of women and men in the sports media. One of the shocking founding’s was that female athletes were given tremendously less airtime compared to male athletes.
As we can see from the above diagram that women are given the least broadcast in sports.
Above are some statistics that shows the number of stories that are broadcasted for female athletes compared to male athletes in different sports. From these statistics we can conclude that female athletes are given much lesser airtime compared to male athletes.
It seems that in this globalised world the sports media has fallen behind. According to www.dictionary.com, sports is defined as ‘an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a 'competitive nature’. The key phrases here are ‘physical prowess’ and ‘competitive nature’. The only reason why the media has failed to broadcast more female sports is simply because they believe that women do not have the physical prowess and many other attributes as compared to men. Why else would it happen? The media has an undeniable ability to alter the thought of masses of people, almost like hypnotising them. Despite that, they still fail to even attempt changing the mindset of the public of women in sports.
“Margaret Carlisle Duncan and Michael Messner studied sports coverage on three network affiliates in Los Angeles. They report that only 9% of airtime was devoted to women’s sports, in contrast to the 88% devoted to male athletes. Female athletes fared even worse on ESPN’s national sports show Sports Centre, where they occupied just over 2% of airtime.” Please click here for more info.
The statistics I have shown so far clearly prove that female sports have been given much less airtime than male sports. Even so, how has that airtime been portrayed? In my other two blog posts I will be talking about how the media has portrayed female sports athletes and its comparison to male athletes.
References
Sports, Media and Stereotypes - Women and Men in Sports and Media, (2006), Retriever March 7, 2012, from http://www.mujerydeporte.org/documentos/docs/sms_summary_report.pdf
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