Women Athletes Battling Bias in the Media
Since the introduction of the Title IX law on June 23, 1972, women in athletics have made an increasing process both on and off the fields. Even though this increase, these women are by no means at equality with men, from both sides of the camera. The success of female and male athletes are receiving different amount of recognition depending on the gender and as a female athlete myself, I am not a fan of the statistics being made on this topic.
Numbers shows that an episode of ESPN's SportsCenter is covering 98% of men's athletics, meaning they are only showing as little as 2% of women's athletics. Women are 40% of all sport participants, but they only receive 4% of all sports media coverage on a typical episode on ESPN. Digital Commons. As a female athlete seeing these numbers it feels very unfair since the amount of work being put down is the same no matter the gender. There is also not really any difference in the types of success gained by the athletes but yet the men are being brought up more in media.
Looking back in history it is easy to see that women have never had an easy time working themselves into sports. Not only does women have to work hard to become professional athletes, they also have to fight their way to receive respect in sports. And now the female athletes still have to fight to get the recognition they deserve within the sports media. But why is it like this?
The fact that many of women's sports events are not easily accessible means that less people are watching or streaming the games, which leads to less interest to watch it in the media. At the same time sport editors seem to reflect around the truth that women's sports are not getting an audience that are interested to watch them. But viewing it from another perspective, due to the lack of coverage of women's sports, the female fans might seem uninterested when it in reality might be the opposite, they are interested but there is not a lot of women athletes in the media.
They way the media works is that they will respond based off the audience's response. Women are trying to find a way to show that there is an audience interested in women's sports, but women's sports are not receiving enough coverage for the fans to be able to express their interest. Maybe the situation would have looked different if the cable news were including more of the women's athletics in the mix. The men's sports already have a big platform of audiences due to the fact that men's sports have been covered for many years. This means that the media are willing to cover them since they already know the media success by doing so. If women's sports received more consistent coverage, they may also receive more interest from the audience, which would result in them getting more sponsors for media exposure.
One example of the unfairness going on in the sports media is the media coverage of the men's and women's college basketball. During the Final Four tournament in 2017, the women's games sold out several arenas, Mississippi State pulled off the biggest upset in sports that year and during every game the women were making incredible plays. Yet, there were barely any recognition of this compared to how they covered the men's basketball. The same sport and the same tournament for two different genders is being covered. And the differences ends up with the conclusion that women's sports are intentionally disparaged by the sports media.
Kommentarer
Skicka en kommentar