Women In Sports Research Paper

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Sports are important in today’s society, but is it worth playing if an individual can't feel equal with their peers? Women’s professional sports are still on the sidelines. In early years, women had to watch men play sports. Women had to be the a wife, a mother, or a sex object. Now, things have changed and society is starting to see women differently. In her book, Playing With The Boys, Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano went in depth on how women should be considered equal to men. McDonagh and Pappano mention:
Winning is male. Power is male. Money is male. Physical dominance is male (McDonagh and Pappano pg 3).
Athletes should be considered gender-neutral. The media always compares female athletes to male athletes. Society shouldn’t base …show more content…

Title IX is giving women opportunities to play a sport, but they are not getting the respect they deserve. The media is not treating women right. Redmond, Ridinger, and Battenfield did a study on media coverage on sixteen televised basketball games.
They found three themes. First, men’s game was a standard of comparison. Secondly, women’s game was named “Women’s Basketball” and the men’s game was just “Basketball.” The vocabulary used to describe the game was sexist language towards women’s basketball. Lastly, the difference of athleticism and physicality (Redmond, Ridinger, and Battenfield pg 81).
Some of media coverage chooses to focus on female athletes appearance. Most journalists and fans only want to see more of the male athletes. Media coverage ignores female’s abilities. If society wants to treat female athletes equal, then media coverage should be seen the same way as male athletes. The media has a big influence on many people. McDonagh and Pappano states:
The conversation about intersectionality: sexism in sports in general and coercive sex segregation as an underrecognized form of sexism i n particular (McDonagh and Pappano pg

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