Media Coverage Of Women's Sports

When it comes to women's sports and popularity in the 21 century it has been little progress made toward gender equality for woman sports, now in the 21 century more kids and adults know who some of these females athletes are but as far as media coverage goes for female athlete are in the shadows of the male athletes dominance and the tradition that males developed in sport due to what gender establish athletics first, because women sports were brought up years after men athletics had been established.

Even though progress was made in the appreciation of women’s sport and the crowds women’s sports brought In which mean a rise in ticket sells for women’s sport, but the media coverage is still treating women sports as if we were still in the

19th and 20th century not televising the big moment in women’s sport and displaying the high moment in female athletic letting outsiders who don’t know much about the will be able to see what female athletes are capable of or what they have accomplished.
Today in the 21st-century women’s sport is still ignored even with the rise in ticket sales for example, in the article published by sports writer Nathan Keil told the story on how;
“Head coach Kim Mulkey and the Lady Bears are 24-2 overall, 13-1 in Big 12 play, and sit one game behind Texas for the conference lead. They have been ranked in the top 10 the entire season and have an average attendance of 6,088 at the Ferrell Center. The men average about 800 more people per contest, but, more people showed up to watch the Lady Bears set a NCAA record for margin of victory with a 140-32 win over Winthrop on Dec. 15 that showed up when the men’s team upset No. 4 Oregon on Nov. 15.
The Lady Bears also drew a larger crowd in their home opener against Houston Baptist University than the men did against Oral Roberts University. And yet there is a great disparity between the numbers of women’s games on TV compared to the number of men’s games on TV.
The Lady Bears have played 10 games this season against ranked opponents. Only two of them, at Tennessee and a home game against Oklahoma, have been broadcast on the ESPN family of networks. Another three games, both games against West Virginia and a home game against Texas, which saw both teams enter with a combined 37-game winning streak, made it on Fox Sports networks. ”
Female athletes in the 21st century never were as popular as men sports. but over the years female athletes has gained some of the respect and recognition for their performances in their sport glorifying those female athlete for their accomplishments in their sport, same how we put male athlete on this pedestal, and to allow female athletes to use their sport as a platform to be a model for the kids who have aspirations of being a professional athlete. But as female athlete search for sponsors or endorsements, the media gets females athletes to pose for these photos that female athletes agree too, contradict the image the female athlete has a player.
The media coverage for female athlete do receive doesn’t typically promote anything close to and action shots where the female athlete is fully clothes and focus on coming out victorious in their sport, instead, the media tend to show female athlete in another perspective media tends to sexualize female athlete mainly focusing on how the athletes look.
For example how Sports Illustrated often portray female athletes completely nude holding equipment pertaining to the sport of the athlete or partially nude wearing bathing suits in sexual provoking poses that portray that sex is more important than portraying the athletic woman image on the cover of magazines to make sell but
Totally undermining the advancement of female athletic ability with miscellaneous information about the female athlete personal life that has nothing to do with her career milestones, upcoming game, season stats the information given from reporters and the questions asked at the interview which never really pertains much to the competition without much built-in room for the athlete to talk about her performance questions are more so about what she's wearing "or “why did she pick that outfit to wear", comments by commentators doesn't always speak for the females athlete when making athletes which has been a trend set from prior centuries where women were nothing more than eye candy.
Even if the wanted to participant in a sport it would have to be very lightly active movement because of the assumption that females couldn’t endure regress activities without fainting because of their poor fitness level, which ultimately caused people to think less of female athletics overall and that female athletics isn't worth watching and that attitude trickled it to the 21st century and more of what she look like
In the 21st century with the media coverage being the biggest influences on people perception of a giving topic, female sports media coverage wasn’t portraying the image of a female athlete being a strong woman or positive role model for kids to look up to, or even the image of being an elite athlete or competitor.

female athlete was still considered to be passive and weak, some would say women’s sports is a waste of time because women aren’t supposed to be playing sports because of the original stereotypes that woman are too feminine and too easy going to actually be a dominate figure in their sport.

Some people may blame the lack of coverage of women's sport is because not enough people like the game to push to get more broadcast games. While reading an article written by Nathan Keil, he raised a point I found very interesting as to what will help lead to women’s sport earning television rights, starts with money. According to the article, Nathan Keil said; “Money will go to women’s sports as soon as an audience wants to watch women, so the best way to support these women athletes is by attending women’s

sports”
I believe the low coverage numbers is due to a number of ratings and the amount of revenue women sports bring to the television station broadcasting.

All sports can be broadcasted continuously like men sports because typically sports news television so for women sports to get more media coverage they would have to take time away from the major 3 sports Baseball, Basketball, Football when combined the revenue of those three sports is somewhere around nine-hundred-and- three million dollars in revenue. Those kinds of numbers come from entertainment comparing women's to men the games aren’t as exciting to watch instead of looking at women's sports the same reason people watch men sports to see competition and

chemistry.
Which those kinds of stereotypes are constructed because of what is portrayed by the media, the stereotypes women athlete have to face and decide if she should conform to the stereotype and become whatever society has set for women or become her own individual, either it be becoming an athlete or not but, not letting the media and those in society dictate what female become.
As the numbers grow in female athletes it seems to be a decrease in media coverage all women’s sports gets about 4% of media coverage on television which isn’t a lot because of that 4% split between all levels of sport in female athletics. which isn’t the case for the men sports some men sport have their own channels that for example, NFL Network is a channel where every second is pertains to football and on that one channel is 100% male coverage, in which there is multiple channels that broadcast football but specifically that one channel is dedicated to one gender and one sport.
In an article on womenssportsfoundation.org states;
“Even the ESPN Ticker gives women the short shrift 96.4 percent of the information scrolling along the bottom of the screen was dedicated to only men’s sports”
Leaving 4% of the ESPN ticker for all women sports to share and have their information scroll at the bottom of the screen like the men sports updating fans and
While on the other hand, female sports have to split a television station with other television shows or games will even be partially aired to allow the channel to cover other games or flip between the two. which may be understood if the game run over its original time overlapping the next game but the media never broadcast full regular season games unless it a lot riding on the game for example Championship or rivalry games is more likely to be aired entirely.
Wasn’t until later in the 21st century where woman’s sport to a huge jump in the popularity ranks and the numbers of female participant is over 500%. Female athlete took a step in popularity and participants. sports media coverage is still at an all-time low even more so now then back in the late 1900s, females sports media coverage will be a little close to nothing, around the end of 2011.
According to the article online written by a Jane Martinson it somehow the female media sports coverage took a fall after the 2012 Olympics after having a historical Olympic season for both men and women. After having a historic season it would be expected for the newspaper to follow up on everyone who participated in the victories. but in this article it speaks about how combining the six national newspapers and counting up the stories over three weekend coming up with a total of 876 stories including male and female but only 4.5% of the stories were dedicated to women’s sport that’s roughly about 40 stories out of that entire 876 stories between the months February and March.