Assessing Gender Inequity in Local Athletic News Coverage

Abstract

The amount of sports news coverage is generally less for women compared to men. This serves to promote sports as a predominantly male enterprise, hindering female athletics participation and marketing. In addition, it dissuades young women from participating in sports activities, which can lead to many negative mental and physical health outcomes. This study compared athletic news coverage of male and female athletes in a local suburban newspaper and assessed factors that may influence coverage. All articles published in the weekly Lexington Minuteman in 2017 were manually reviewed extracting the sex of the athletes, sport-related factors (e.g., sport played), and publication-related factors (e.g., front-page status). A one-proportion z-test was performed to compare the proportion of articles covering male and female athletes; chi-square and t-test were used to compare factors associated with articles that covered males and females. The study found that 70% of sports-related articles covered male athletes, significantly more than females (p<0.0001). Other factors did not differ significantly by sex, including criteria for accepting articles. Although publication-related factors were similar for articles covering males and females, underrepresentation of female athletes in local newspaper coverage suggests decreased stakeholders’ interest in submitting articles concerning female athletes. This may, in turn, impact female participation and interest in athletics. Improving sports consciousness needs to be addressed more widely by society to encourage female athletic participation in fitness and sports.