Gender Stereotyping in the Mediated Sports

Mediated sports are reaching millions of viewers all over the world. With such range, there is a great power to make us accept the reflection of the world around, even thought if it is false reflection. They way how are these broadcastings created and presented are reflecting attitudes and beliefs of our society. In this essay, I would like to examine and compare differences in how are male and female athletes represented in the media, point out the differences and suggest solution if necessary.

Most of the facts which will be presented here are coming from article by Anita L. DeFrantz, the leader of the project examining gender stereotyping in the U.S.A sports media.

Coverage of men vs. women. According to DeFrantz, in a six week sample study women were underreported and underrepresented in comparison to men. Out of total air time (100%), 3% was dedicated to gender- neutral sports, 92% to men’s sports and only 5% to women’s sports. Considering there is actually more women than men in U.S.A society (51%), this is showing alarming imbalance.

Verbal Infantilization. Female athletes were verbally infantilized. Interestingly, some male color athletes were sharing this kind of this infantilization. For example, as LeFrantz asserts, female athletes were refered to as “girls”or young “ladies”. In contrast, male athletes were refered to as “men”, “young men” or young “fellas.” But never as “boys.” Furthermore, gender was graphically, visually and verbally marked (for example The Women’s National Basketball Championship). This has never occurred during the men’s play (commentators simply refered to as The National Basketball Championship). Another interesting fact is that female athletes were called by their first names (especially in tennis -52,7% of the time) much more frequently than males 7,8% of the time). Similar situation was in the basketball, with one difference however. First names were also used when discussing men of color. First name was never used when discussing male of white color.

Women as the sexual objects. LeFrantz wrote that “The television sports news did focus regularly on women, but rarely on women athletes. More common were portrayals of women as comical targets of the newscasters' jokes and/or as sexual objects (e.g., women spectators in bikinis).” It can be assumed that particularly this feature might be the most tricky and dangerous. If the media will be treating women as sexual objects, they could change and complicate viewer’s attitudes towards women in negative way and undermine women’s position in the society, which is strongly undesirable.

Suggested solutions: Balance in gender representation should be established, ideally is greater coverage with existing women sports. Commentators should avoid of referring to women athletes as to ‘girls’, because in some cases it might be unfair and offensive. Also, commentators should learn to equally name athletes by theirs first names and make no (even unconscious) difference in gender or skin color. And at the last point, treating women as sexual objects should be completely eradicated, since there is no doubt this trend is socially dangerous and inadmissible.

Note: Although these statistics showed that sport media are clearly more unfair against women, it should be noted that there exist little sexist language, sexualization and devaluation of female athletes than existed in the past. There is no doubt that there is conscious effort of some sport commentators to report sport events and news in proper, non- sexist way.

Works Cited:
DeFrantz, Anita. Gender Stereotyping in Televised Sports. www.la84foundation.org
http://www.la84foundation.org/9arr/ResearchReports/ResearchReport2.htm