Over the course of a week, I monitored the cover stories on ESPN's website. The coverage was heavily tilted towards men's basketball (both college and pro), and the Olympics as well, which was represented by both men and women (mostly men). In viewing these photos, it became apparent that the majority of the men were represented in "action" shots, which showed them displaying their athletic prowess. In contrast, the women were almost always posing in some form. In this way, males were typically represented as assertive through their athletic actions, and women were portrayed as more passive. The gender stereotypes that pervade our society are fully applicable within the world of sports, and it is fairly obvious that this creates idealistic images of males and females. Additionally, the amount of coverage of male-dominated sports is vastly disproportional to female sports. As I mentioned previously, I only noticed a couple female images on ESPN compared to hundreds of male images throughout the week. While sports have come a long way by allowing women opportunities to participate in them, it remains to be seen if we will ever see true equality with regards to the media coverage between male and female athletes. Additionally, there are still several barriers to cross with regards to what sports females are permitted to participate in. There have been a few stories of females on high school football teams, but they are usually at positions like the punter or field goal kicker as opposed to more athletic positions like receiver or runner. It will be interesting to see if the sports media will continue to portray women as passive and athletically inferior to men, because this has a vast influence on public perception on what athletes are capable of.
References: Espn.com
This post was very interesting to me because I looked at the 2013 cover photos for sports illustrated. There were 102 total and only 3 contained women. Similar to ESPN, the women seemed like they were posing rather than in an action shot like the men. Do you ever think this objectification of women will ever change?
ReplyDeletethe above comment was written by Tyler Martin
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that women are not showcased in the media as much. Even with the olympics on, and many medals going to women, it is mostly men that are being talked about in the media. I still don't understand why, in 2014, this is still happening.
ReplyDelete-Wesley Morton