Gender Inequality in Sports: From Title IX to World Titles by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Author:Kirstin Cronn-Mills [Cronn-Mills, Kirstin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Young Adult Nonfiction, Young Adults, trans athletes, gender inequality in athletics, equality versus equity, feminism, prejudice in sports, intersectionality, title ix, equal pay for female athletes, sexism in sports, anti-transgender laws, transgender athletic policies, discrimination in athletics, women's professional sports, sexism, misogyny, female athletes, women athletes, sexual harassment, gender expression, gender identity, nonbinary athletes, women coaches, testosterone levels
ISBN: 9781728455938
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Gera (left) calls a player safe during a Catholic Youth Organization baseball game in 1968.

Equal Exposure

A significant way we could move toward equality in women’s sports would be to promote women’s sports in our media—whether the medium is television, radio, newspapers, magazines, or social media. Most people don’t know women have major sports leagues or organizations in football, basketball, soccer, softball, hockey, roller derby, tennis, bowling, and golf—most people also don’t know women are paid to play their sports in football, softball, ice hockey, basketball, and soccer. Why? Fifty years after the passage of Title IX, it’s still rare to see these games and matches on broadcast or cable television channels.

In fact, TV coverage of women’s sports has declined. Researchers say that the decline could be because some women’s sports were relegated to the “ticker” at the bottom of ESPN channels—the ticker was considered enough inclusion for women’s sports, even though they were literally at the margins of the screen. Researchers also speculated that the decline of coverage has been tied to societal calls for treating women as humans rather than objects. If women athletes couldn’t be a punch line or a sexy photo, networks may have decided they weren’t worth covering.

A common complaint for sports fans is “women’s sports are boring.” Is that complaint popular because fans aren’t exposed to women’s sports? A small study done with college students in 2017 indicates that attitudes can be changed by exposure. After three weeks of exposure, the study found prejudices about women athletes had changed, though participant attitudes didn’t change about women’s sports as a whole. The only way we can judge a flexible concept like “boring” is to compare equal elements of men’s and women’s sports. According to Cheryl Cooky, a gender and sports researcher from Purdue, women’s sports will always be judged more “boring” because of how they’re covered in the media: “Men’s sports are going to seem more exciting. . . . They have higher production values, higher-quality coverage, and higher-quality commentary. . . . When you watch women’s sports, and there are fewer camera angles, fewer cuts to shot, fewer instant replays, yeah, it’s going to seem to be a slower game, it’s going to seem to be less exciting.”

The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota produced a documentary in 2013 about media coverage and female athletes. The center’s research has found, over more than twenty years of studying media coverage, that women’s sports get about 4 percent of media coverage, even though women make up 40 percent of the country’s athletes. In those same longitudinal studies, the portrayal of women athletes has appeared in three primary ways: away from their playing field, out of their sports uniform, and in suggestive or sexual poses. Those three primary ways are, of course, not representative of women actually playing sports and showcasing their athletic strengths and talents. The documentary also notes that generating interest in women’s sports and providing media

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.