Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Women in sport sociology essay
Women gender equality and sport
The influence of women in sports
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Have you ever heard of Shelly Osborne? If you haven't that's because girls get less recognition than boys in sports. She was the first girl to play college football. A big percentage of both women and men said men are better at sports, with “32% of women feeling that way and 47% of men, the pool found.”
Do you think that it is fair that boys get more recognition than girls? No, girls get less recognition than boys. Mens sports seem to be more exciting with higher production and higher quality coverage. Female athletes are not equal to their male counterpart in terms of physical ability. When you watch woman sports there are fewer cameras angles, fewer instant replays and it will seem like a slower game to watch. I believe that girls do get less recognition in the
…show more content…
“Getting women into the stands is key to winning television coverage and the big salaries that come with that exposure,” said Michael Graber, a sports cinematographer and father of two girls. Mens sports seem to be more exciting with higher production and higher quality coverage. “90% of sport editors are white males,” due to the low involvement of women in media, there seems to be a lower quality of coverage in females sports. The difference in coverage, the Final Four teams for the men's NCAA basketball tournament got front page attention on New York Times. Would the women? The women only received a story without a photo deep in the sports section. “Women's sports in general is not worth watching- Sports Illustrated contributor Andy Benoit on Twitter, 2015. “According to the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, women’s athletics receive only about 4 percent of all sports media
Turn on ESPN, and there are many female sports reporters, and many reports on female athletes. Flip through Sports Illustrated, and female athletes are dotted throughout the magazine. Female athletes star in the commercials. Female athletes are on the cover of newspapers. Millions of books have been sold about hundreds of female athletes. However, this has not always been the case. The number of females playing sports nowadays compared to even twenty years ago is staggering, and the number just keeps rising. All the women athletes of today have people and events from past generations that inspired them, like Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League, Billie Jean King, and the 1999 United States Women’s World
Title IX was passed in 1972 and according to the Women’s Sports Foundation, as of 2011, women make up 38-42 percent of all sport and physical activity participants. Yet, research shows that women receive only 6-8 percent of the total sports coverage. A double standard is defined as a set of principles that allows greater freedom to one person or group than to another. (dictionary.com) In athletics, women are judged more on their appearances and their non-sport related activities, than their male counterparts who are judged primarily on their skills and performances. Female athletes are scrutinized based on their appearances more than their skills and athletic performances in the media.
The discrepancies in media coverage in coverage of female and children athletics have large gaps, but are gaining momentum in sharing equality. Major athletic leagues such as the NBA and FIFA World Cup have wide gaps in marketing and ratings for their male and female athletes. Children are future athletes and superstars, but as funding and coverage in athletics caters to the males, women are breaking the barriers to being in the spotlight of sport. Both genders contribute equally to athletics, and challenge the each other to accept new ideas and change. The sports world that has a single gender dominating the media is unjust.
In 1970 only 1 in 27 girls participated in high school sports, today that ratio is 1 in 3. Sports are a very important part of the American society. Within sports, heroes are made, goals are set and dreams are lived. The media makes all these things possible by creating publicity for the rising stars of today. Within society today, the media has downplayed the role of the woman within sports.
However, the discrepancy in media coverage is getting better with time. There is a realization of the importance of balanced attention with regard to gender in sports programs. Therefore, there are increased efforts to ensure that several sport programs show women participating in games. This will lead to a better perception of sports by girls. Eventually, girls will change their attitude about sports.
Lopiano and Sommers agree that the amount of media coverage female athletes receive compared to male athletes indicates that female athletes are less valid. Lopiano and Sommers both point out that the media tends to highlight female athletes in action only during major events. Fortunately, for the male athletes, the tendency is different because no matter what time of the year it is, male events are always airing on the television. The media only decides to highlight events such as the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) women’s basketball Final Four, Olympics, and World Cup soccer. Since the Olympic games and World Cup occurs every four years, the Final Four also known as the semi-final round are the rare eve...
Women have forever had this label on their back of being too small, too weak, too feminine, and too boring. The traditional gender roles of the female interfere with the extortionate nature of competing in sports. Men are usually the ones to go 100% and give whatever they got, and to show masculinity while doing it. The standard masculinity of being strong, smart, and taking charge over dues the feminine traits of being soft, gentle, and polite. That’s what society has taught us to learn and accept. But the traditional female gender role is diminished when participating in athletics and people may think it’s weird to see females compete at the same level as males do. Men have always had the upper hand in the professional, collegian, and high
Can women's sports establish itself as a topic of on-going media and journalism curiosity? Currently TV stations do minimal coverage of women's sports, while newspapers and magazines do just a little bit better. In a recent interview with Gary Webb, a sports writer for The Spectrum, he says that "the people have demonstrated that there is an audience that loves hearing about women athletes. After all, they are somebody's kids, sisters, and moms". I learned that these sports writers love to cover women's games, especially girls highschool basketball games. Gary said that he would rather watch a Parowan-Beaver girls game over the boys anyday. Karen Winegar, staff writer for the The Star Tribune of Minnesota said., "Portrayal of female athletes is improving, but despite increasing interest and participation, their sports are getting no more coverage than they got five years ago" (1A+). Women's sports participation will surely continue to grow in the future, so the media and journalists better be prepared to increase their coverage accordingly.
Gender in sports has been a controversial issue ever since sports were invented. In the early years, sports were played only by the men, and the women were to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was another area of life exemplifying the sexism of people in which women were not allowed to do something that men could. However, over the last century in particular, things have begun to change.
In summary, Despite opponents argue, fans want to see thunderous dunks and incredible athleticism over the lesser abilities of females, male competitions is more intense and there is more at risk, and male driven associations produce more revenue than female driven associations. It is apparent that male and females are built differently therefore they have different abilities, females go through the same types of events and often have more on the line, and female athletics aren 't given the same recognition or praise. Then, maybe one day female will receive the same amount of pay as their male counterparts. As, Vera Nazarian once implied, “A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.”
For most of human history, athletic competition has been regarded as an exclusively masculine affair. Women weren't aloud to watch most sporting events let alone participate in them. Not till late 19th century did women really begin participating in sporting events. Although women were permitted to participate in many sports, relatively few showed interest, for a variety of social and psychological reasons that are still poorly understood. Title IX declares: "No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid." Therefore sex should not deem females athletic ability as inferior in comparison to men. Women are physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of playing any sport just as men are.
Most people watch some form of sports, whether it be the Olympics or the highlights on ESPN. The NBA and NHL playoffs are underway and theyit seems to be the only news on ESPN. There is almost no coverage of the WNBA playoffs or any female athletics. Tennis isone of the only big sports on ESPN for women. While during the Olympics the coverage seems to be non-stop and close to equal. Women’s participation in sport is at an all-time high and has almost become equal with men’s, however,. sSports media does notfails to show this equality and skews the way we look at these athletes. Through the disciplines of sociology and gender studies, it can be seen that despite the many gains of women in sports since the enactment of Title IX, “traditional” notions of masculinity and femininity still dominate media coverage of males and females in sports, which is observed in Olympic programming and sports news broadcasts.
Female athlete coverage in the media is a complication due to far less coverage than male athletes receive. Statistics show that females already receive less than ten percent of coverage, although this is much more than they received just a short time ago. Shauna Kavanagh said in an article that when she was younger, female sports were never on TV. “All of my sporting heroes were males,” she said. Although strides have been made for female athlete’s, there is still a long ways to go. Kavanagh secondly went on to express that she feels the press does not cover woman athletics imperfectly; they simply don’t publicize them enough. People are still much more interested in ma...
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
It would appear, from the outside, that men's sport will forever have all of the advantages, all of the rewards, all of the prestige, while women's sport is left to perpetual inequality. Yet, not only are there sports that are considered "non-traditional" for both sexes, the obvious majority of these sports are "traditionally" recognized as women's sports. While there may be a very small number of teams of male synchronized swimmers or synchronized ice-skaters, there are virtually no integrated teams. Of the number of sports considered non-traditional for women, among them football and wrestling, women have gradually opened the door into these sports. In most states, girls even have the right to participate on boys' sports teams if there is no girls' team or even a girls' team which plays by the same rules because of the historical limitations on women's sports.