The Professionalisation of Women's Sport by Ali Bowes Alex Culvin

Author:Ali Bowes, Alex Culvin [Ali Bowes, Alex Culvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Sociology
ISBN: 9781800431980
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2021-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

Media, New Media and Women's Sport

In the United States, women's sports have remained marginalised in traditional media, including newspapers (Kaiser, 2018; Schmidt, 2016) and television (Billings & Young, 2015; Cooky et al., 2015), amounting to 1–5% of news coverage. Even when media feature women's sport, sexist assumptions and lower production values undermine women's athletic accomplishments (Billings et al., 2002; Greer et al., 2009). There are several reasons for this, including limited investment from sponsors (Lough & Greenhalgh, 2019).

The trivialisation of women's sport might be changing towards an increasingly available and respectful, though certainly not equitable, coverage (Bruce, 2016). Media include and celebrate women's achievements in the context of international competition, such as the Olympics or FIFA World Cup (Billings & Angelini, 2019; Burch et al., 2018). Furthermore, the increased availability of digital media platforms created spaces to, so to speak, ‘host’ women's sports broadcasts and content (such as ESPN+, espnW site, streaming services) and present women as serious competitors (Wolter, 2020). The problem is that these spaces often remain relegated outside of the mainstream. Women's sports events found a home on digital media platforms, but the availability of broadcasts remains inconsistent, unstable and relatively hidden (Phillips & Antunovic, 2019).

Despite the limitations (documented also in several chapters of this edited collection), digital media platforms allow for new types of visibilities for women's sport (LaVoi & Calhoun, 2014). A meta-analysis of studies on women's sports coverage synthesised problematic gender representations, but also suggested that ‘new rules’ are emerging as athletes use their voices on new media platforms (Bruce, 2016, p. 368). Feminist media scholars have observed an articulation of ‘new sporting femininities’ that challenge normative gender assumptions, yet circulate in ways that are entangled with postfeminism to put the responsibility on individual women to create spaces of empowerment (Toffoletti et al., 2018). Without structural support, sportswomen are expected to be entrepreneurial in promoting themselves and their sport. As chapters in this collection illustrate, representations of sportswomen matter in the process of gaining credibility, securing sponsors and changing funding structures. Indeed, Lough and Greenhalgh (2019) argue that ‘For women's sports to become established as a viable option for sponsorship investments, visibility must continue to increase’ (p. 448). Visibility, sponsorship and financial investment contribute to the process of professionalisation.

Within the proliferating amount of scholarship on women's sport and the media (e.g., media coverage, constructions of femininity and athleticism, sportswomen's self-presentation), few studies examine how women's leagues use digital media (see Pegoraro et al., 2019). Thus, we still have much to learn about the communication strategies of women's sports leagues/teams on digital media platforms (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, etc.) to promote the sport and how content circulates across platforms and among stakeholders.

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