Emerging Trends in Sportswomen’s Visual Representation in Pakistani Newspapers

BackgroundThe proportion of media sports coverage devoted to women is reported at between 1 and 6%. Our survey examines and compares reporting patterns before and after the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.MethodsWe collected data on sports coverage in six national newspapers on 3 weekend days in February and March 2012, and in February 2013; ∼5 months before the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games and 5 months after the closing of the Paralympic Games.ResultsIn 2012, 39 of 876 articles in national newspapers (4.5%) related to women's sports, compared with 22 of 755 (2.9%) in 2013; a non-significant reduction in coverage [difference 1.54%, 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.28 to 3.36). In 2012, 24 of 647 pictures (3.7%) related to women's activities, compared with 10 of 738 (1.4%) in 2013; a significant reduction in coverage (difference 2.35%; 95% CI 0.68–4.03). The median area per article was significantly greater for men in both years.ConclusionsWe found a continuing bias towards men's sport in the media analysed and no evidence of improvement either before or after the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Increased support of women's sport in the print media could benefit individuals and influence the health of the population.

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, participation in women's sports has grown dramatically. But despite the growing level of participation by female athletes at all competition levels and documented fan interest in women's athletics, coverage of women's sports remains inferior to that given male sports across all media. Tuggle's (1997) study showed that two national highlights programs (CNN's Sports Tonight and ESPN's SportsCenter) devoted only 5% of their airtime to women's athletics. This study is a replication of Tuggle's original study to determine whether the existence of two women's professional sports leagues has resulted in increased coverage of female athletics. Results of the 2002 study show that the answer is no. Indeed there was less coverage of women on SportsCenter during the 2002 study than there was during the earlier examination.

Gender inequalities in sports media are well-documented. This study focuses on sports news composition and how gender influences the prominence of sports news stories. The news-factors approach offers a causal explanation for the lower prominence (i.e. newsworthiness) of women's sports in TV sports reporting. Following this theory's perspective, athletes’ gender is supposed to work as a moderating variable on news values of news factors in sports reports. The content analysis of seven German sports news programs reveals whether the same news factors are treated unequally with regard to women's and men's sports in TV news coverage. The results show that women's sports are presented as less newsworthy than men's sports, although news factors do not differ significantly by gender. However, the moderation effect of gender does not cause lower newsworthiness. That means, e.g., sports women's successes are equally emphasized as the success of male athletes in sports news on TV, and gender does not lower the credits female athlete's success receive in any given news stories. Instead, the results suggest that gender works as a news factor of its own, reducing not the news value of certain news factors but the overall newsworthiness of women's sports in TV coverage. Thus, the results demonstrate that gender inequality in sports media does not necessarily come from journalists perceiving female athletes’ performance as inferior but from presenting women's sports less often and in a far less prominent way than men's sports.

This research explores the factors in choices women make about watching sports. The assumption about coverage of women's sports in post-Title IX decades has been that girls who have played will turn into women who watch, encouraging media producers to provide more women's sports programming. Yet that audience has not materialized, and women's sports have languished on the periphery of the sports media landscape. Using focus-group discussions with heterosexual, married women, we argue that sports media consumption is tied to gender roles and related domestic work. That association with emotion labor presents significant barriers to the cultivation of these women as fans of women's sports.

Analysis of all 348 prime-time hours of the 1996—2006 Olympic telecasts (three Summer, three Winter) pinpointed trends in coverage of men's and women's sports. Results indicate that while men athletes and events received the majority of clock time in all six Olympic telecasts, the Summer Olympic telecasts treated women far more equitably than the Winter Olympic telecast. The longitudinal study does not offer any reason to feel that coverage of women's athletics is improving over time, finding that the proportion of clock time devoted to men's and women's sports is relatively the same in 2006 compared to ten years earlier.

PurposeThe purpose of this research was to examine the role of intersectionality (multiple marginalized identities) in narratives used within online media coverage of women's sports. The authors adopted an intersectionality lens and drew from sports media literature to explore the representation of Black athletes in women's sport.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a quantitative content analysis of online articles from ESPN, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated from the 2020 WNBA Season. The authors coded the number of times an athlete was mentioned in an article, the athlete's race, publicly disclosed sexual orientation and gender expression. The authors used hierarchical regression to examine the relationship between an athlete's social identities and frequency of media mentions.FindingsWithin mainstream online sport media, Black WNBA athletes receive less media attention than white WNBA athletes. Black athletes who do not present in traditionally feminine ways receive the least amount of media attention, while white athletes have the freedom to express their gender in a variety of ways and still capture media interest. Within league press releases, however, there is no difference in media mentions based on race, sexual orientation or gender expression.Practical implicationsThe findings in this research are important for sport media professionals who write stories and player-activists who are pursuing racial justice. Outlets should commit to antiracist storytelling practices. Players, player agents and players' associations—all of whom have shown their power to create change for a more equitable industry and society—should also advocate for and organize around practices that create more equitable media coverage.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few empirical investigations of women's professional sport that examines the influence of intersecting social identities.

Recent surveys have suggested that sports media exposure may be linked to adolescents' body perceptions. This study tested this relationship from the perspective of objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) by surveying and experimenting with 426 adolescent females aged 10–19. Sports magazine reading predicted greater body satisfaction among older adolescents, regardless of whether they participated in sports. Self-objectification in adolescents of all ages predicted mental health risks including body shame, disordered eating, and depression. Participants also viewed a video depicting men's sports, women's lean sports, or women's nonlean sports. For White participants, watching lean sports increased self-objectification, whereas for participants of color, watching nonlean sports had the same effect. Discussion focuses on self-objectification in adolescents and how cultural differences in the female body ideal are reflected in portrayals of female athletes.

Scholar Spotlight Samantha N. Sheppard and Jennifer McClearen Feminist media scholar Jennifer McClearen examines the cultural production of difference in contemporary society with an emphasis on the mediation of gender, race, and sexuality in sports media. An assistant professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin, she is currently completing her first book, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC. McClearen's interest in the intersection of sports and media compelled her to help establish the newly formed Sports Media Scholarly Interest Group for SCMS. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jennifer McClearen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin (Marc Speir, 2020). Samantha N. Sheppard: What does it mean for you to study, write, and teach sports in this current cultural moment? Jennifer McClearen: It is a thrilling time to be a media scholar who examines the cultural politics of sports because of the ways sports media can spur national conversations about issues that impact our culture more broadly. Sports media is one gathering space where people of vastly different backgrounds, tastes, and interests come together. It is a space where live TV is still thriving, and time-shifting is far less [End Page 1] common than other forms of media. Sports media is a cultural space where democratic debate still circulates, so athlete activists have the capacity to become particularly meaningful agents of change. Sheppard: How has your research helped you address issues of visibility, representation, industrial practice, and social identity in women's sports? McClearen: My forthcoming book with the University of Illinois Press, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC, is a cautionary tale about our scholarly and activist fascination with making female athletes more visible. I examine a specific sporting context in depth: mixed martial arts (MMA), or more specifically, the world's largest MMA promotion, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Women have been and continue to be largely underrepresented or represented in trivialized ways within sports media. Fighting Visibility argues that the UFC has made women in combat sports more visible than ever before. Yet they do so by exploiting a vulnerable labor force of athletes and brokering unfulfilled promises of women's empowerment and the American Dream. The book urges those invested in women's sports to avoid a categorical assumption that visibility is good for all women in all contexts and instead asks us to consider who benefits and who is harmed when the image of the powerful female athlete becomes marketable in sports media brands. Sheppard: How did you come to your area of research? McClearen: If you had told me ten years ago that I would become an expert in sports media, I would have laughed. Yet hindsight is indeed twenty-twenty when considering my intellectual path here. I started graduate school planning to study the action genre with a specific focus on the representation of female action heroes, which is what my master's thesis focused on. I had been practicing martial arts for several years and always thought of mediated fighting in terms of cinema and television rather than as actual sports. Shortly after completing my master's degree, some Brazilian jujitsu training partners and friends convinced me to watch UFC fights. I skeptically began watching the sport that I had always considered violent, hypermasculine, and sexist. As I watched, I slowly began realizing that despite there being some truth to MMA's stereotype, the UFC was far more compelling than I had ever given it credit. When Ronda Rousey burst onto the scene as the first female UFC fighter, I thought, "This could be an interesting way to explore my interests in women, physical power, feminism, cultural politics, and the body." To my utter joy, I began reading literature in feminist and cultural studies of sports and realized those were the intellectual genealogies that allowed me to engage my most burning research questions. I read Cheryl L. Cole's "Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies of the Body" and sensed that my budding academic research agenda suddenly became legitimate...

The present study aims to illustrate the points of view of various female sports journalists as they relate the unique and defining experiences within their line of work, intending to identify the key elements at play in the shaping of the practice of women in sports journalism and its impact on the coverage of women’s sports. 17 Israeli female sports journalists were interviewed concurrently, alongside a select number of male editors of various sports sections. In addition, a survey regarding readers’ views on the coverage of women’s sports and a content analysis of sport coverage in national newspapers was conducted. The analysis of the study’s findings and, particularly, of the female sports journalists’ experiences, has even revealed similarities between the place of women in sports media and female presence within combative military units.

This chapter discusses gatekeeping and how this concept has been applied to questions about (non)coverage of women's sport. It provides an overview of gatekeeping and also discusses how it has been integrated into research involving sports journalists and newsrooms. The chapter reviews the impact gatekeeping practices have had on how sports news is covered. It suggests ways research might further address sexism in coverage. Sport journalists receive a great deal more information than they ever disseminate to the public, even in the age of social media. D. M. White is widely credited as being the first scholar to apply gatekeeping to mass communications, or more specifically to journalism. Modern sport has been viewed as a place for men to dominate. The mentality is based upon sport being a place for men to demonstrate their masculinity and supposed physical superiority.

With its diverse coverage of topics from a variety of perspectives, the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal is a significant resource for those working toward social change and gender empowerment inside and outside the arena of sport and physical activity. This article is a review of the scholarship contained in the Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal over the last five years (1992-1996). Seven broad themes are used to organize this review, (1) The Meaning of Physical Activity, (2) Female Athletes in the Visual and Print Media, (3)Transforming Sport and Physical Activity, (4) Nutrition, Weight, and Body Image, (5) Scientific Foundations of the Active Female, (6) Historical Perspectives of Women in Sport, and (7) “Others.” Suggestions are offered for future research relative to women’s sport and physical activity based on the shift that has occurred in feminism over the last century.

An analysis of how the pandemic served to highlight neglected weaknesses and inequalities with regard to the structures and supports available to facilitate women's sport in Ireland. A survey conducted in the summer of 2021 with 194 female athletes across the island of Ireland. These athletes were engaged with the sports of camogie, Ladies Gaelic football, hockey, and rugby, and each responded to a 28-question survey. Our findings indicate that the experiences of female athletes during the COVID-19 pandemic raise serious questions regarding equality in sport across gender lines. Concerns expressed by the surveyed athletes, especially in relation to access to facilities, inadequate sponsorship, and funding reveal salient aspects of the experiences of Irish female athletes during the pandemic, and its role as an "exposing force" of inequalities within Irish sport. The COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland has been a challenging and revealing period with regard to sport in Ireland, acting as an "exposing force" of the existing inequitable structures for both the support and coverage of women's sport. Such challenging periods can also offer opportunities to learn, progress and improve and already in the past year there is evidence of positive developments for women's sport in Ireland, developments that we contend were expedited due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland.

Much of the academic research on sport media over the past decades has examined the amount and types of coverage received by female athletes and women's sport when compared with content on men's sport and male athletes. Hundreds of studies have shown that sport media generally devote considerably more space and provide greater emphasis to male athletes regardless of the type of sport, level or age of competitors, form of medium, or host country of the media outlet. To this day research shows that female athletes are given secondary status compared to male athletes. Moreover, even when positive shifts in the volume and type of coverage offered to women's sport are noted, studies have identified the emergence of more subtle ways of undermining female athleticism. Indeed, although in theory, the internet could be the medium that would level the playing field when it comes to coverage of women's sport, evidence suggests that many new media platforms in fact do not offer women's sport more extensive coverage or new ways of covering them. A possible reason for the importance placed on men's sport by the media is a hegemonic masculine cultural and organizational structure that not only permeates most sport organizations and franchises, but is also prevalent within the overall ranks and hierarchy of the sport media outlets that determine which athletes and sports are worthy of coverage in capitalist societies.

Social media is now an integral part of modern sports broadcasting, which combines old and new media into a redefined and multidimensional experience for fans. The popularity of social media has particular implications for professional women's sports due to this convergence, and may be utilised by organisations to address some of the issues women's sports face from a lack of traditional broadcast coverage. This article discusses Twitter activity surrounding the ANZ Championship netball competition and analyses the ways social media can help transcend the structural challenges that “old” media has placed on professional women's sports.

Despite the growing global momentum of women's sports, professional women's sports marketing in Iraq continues to face numerous challenges. These challenges stem not only from cultural and social constraints but also from the lack of targeted marketing strategies and insufficient media attention. This qualitative study aimed to explore the enhancement of professional women's sports marketing in Iraq through a phenomenological approach. The research population included federation managers, professional coaches, national team players, sports journalists, and marketing experts, selected using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Data were collected through 20 semi-structured interviews until theoretical saturation was reached and analyzed using Van Manen’s phenomenological method. The results revealed key barriers such as traditional mindsets, lack of infrastructure, weak media coverage, and financial limitations. However, opportunities were also identified, including increased sponsorship support, the use of digital media, and shifting public attitudes toward women’s sports. Based on the findings, improving sports infrastructure, enhancing media coverage, strengthening women’s managerial skills, and attracting financial support were identified as key strategies for advancing women’s sports marketing. Emphasizing the importance of academic research and collaboration between universities, sports federations, and the private sector, this study highlights the need for comprehensive and sustainable strategies to promote professional women's sports in Iraq. The findings may contribute to fostering a culture of women's sports, improving competitiveness, and increasing the economic return of this sector.