Gender Stereotyping in Televised Media Sport Coverage

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  Oct, 1999  by Nathalie Koivula

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Nathalie Koivula [1]

Sports spectators usually experience sports through different mass media. To deepen our understanding of the cultural values embedded in sports and to explore current values and power structures regarding men and women, it is necessary to investigate the potential effect that mass media may have in influencing beliefs about gender-appropriate sport behavior. In several cases previous studies have shown biases in the representation and portrayal of athletes, particularly with reference to gender. The present study examined samples of televised sports in Sweden during 1995/96 (1,470 minutes), with a follow-up examination in 1998 (528 minutes). The results indicated gender differences regarding both quantity and type of coverage. For example, less than 10% of the total examined sports news time covered female athletes, and less than 2% of the time was used to cover women athletes in sports categorized as masculine. It seems that televised media sports coverage continues to reinforce constructions of divisions al ong lines of gender and to reproduce traditional expectations regarding femininity and masculinity.

Mass media is a powerful factor which influences our beliefs, attitudes, and the values we have of ourselves and others as well as the world surrounding us. Media does not merely communicate and reflect reality in a more or less truthful way. Instead, media production entails a complex process of negotiation, processing, and reconstruction. It not only offers us something to see, but also shapes the way in which we see by creating' shared perceptual modes. Media messages are used and interpreted by audiences according to their own cultural, social, and individual circumstances. This interpretation is influenced by a variable referred to as special media logic. This entails a way of processing the information of what is mediated, where the main components include the type of content and the grammar of the medium. For example, media logic may include organization and physical characteristics such as camera angles or picture sizes, time structure of the coverage, as well as the use of special images and symbols (e.g., Duncan & Brummet, 1987; Fenton, 1995).

Mass media is perhaps of even greater importance regarding sport because the overwhelming majority of spectators observe athletic events through mass media. For example, in a Swedish study in 1991, it was shown that 63% of the population watched sport on television at least once a week, a majority of them several times a week (Ahlin, 1993). The experience of sport, and the beliefs and values related to sport, are therefore mediated primarily through some special context, interpretation, and structure, typically by television and newspapers, each of which affects the nature of the experience. To study sport in media would increase our understanding of the cultural values embedded in sport, as well as the social structures and values based on and related to gender and perceived gender differences. These studies also illuminate the (potential) power of mass media in influencing views and creating shared ways of living together as a society (e.g., Birrell & Cole, 1994; Creedon, 1994; Duncan & Brummet, 1987; Dunc an, Messner, Williams, & Jensen, 1994; Kane & Greendorfer, 1994; MacNeill, 1994; Theberge & Cronk, 1986).

The role of media, especially the portrayal of men and women with regard to how sport is presented as a socially constructed reality in the ongoing construction of gender, has been discussed in several research papers (Cohen, 1993; Duncan & Brummet, 1987; Kane & Parks, 1992; Klein, 1988; Morgan, 1982; Perloff, Brown, & Miller, 1982; Pirinen, 1997; Rintala & Birrell, 1984; Theberge & Cronk, 1986). The majority of this work has not only shown the dissimilar and unequal ways in which men and women athletes have been pictured, but also considered the possible consequences this may have on (1) social construction of gender and gender difference, (2) the stratification of society by gender, and (3) strengthening of the myth of female passivity and frailty. Another theme involves how the sport and media interaction presents traditional expectations of femininity and masculinity, including the perspective that there exist masculine sports appropriate only for men (e.g., football, ice hockey, soccer) and more feminin e sports appropriate or exclusive to women (e.g., figure skating, gymnastics, synchronized swimming) (Koivula, 1995; Matteo, 1986).

Research has yielded a substantial body of knowledge regarding the ways sport is presented in the mass media. Several differences have been found in the representation and portrayal of men and women athletes. For example, it is well documented that women receive strikingly less coverage than men, even in sports in which women in fact constitute a majority of the participants (e.g., Alexander, 1994; Bryant, 1980; Cohen, 1993; Duncan et al., 1994; Fasting & Tangen, 1983; Klein, 1988; Lee, 1992; Lumpkin & Williams, 1991; McKay & Rowe, 1987; Rintala & Birrell, 1984; Salwen & Wood, 1994; Shifflett & Revelle, 1994). Women participate who participate in sports, especially activities considered as inappropriate for women, are often depicted in a depreciative manner. Women are often marginalized, made invisible, trivialized, infantile, and reduced to sex objects. The language used in media is a powerful tool in the reinforcement of gender distinctions. Descriptors involving sport skill are often absent in description s of women athletes. Instead, references to women athletes more typically employ expressions of aesthetic appeal such as "graceful" and/or focus on femininity or lack of it. Male athletes are generally represented in a favorable vein as manly, strong mentally and physically, and forceful. Women athletes are instead presented according to cultural stereotypes which associate femininity with weakness, dependency, emotion, and submissiveness. Women are also often framed in terms of their social position, for example, as girlfriends, wives, or mothers (Birrell & Cole, 1994; Blinde, Greendorfer, & Shanker, 1991; Bryant, 1980; Bryson, 1990; Cohen, 1993; Creedon, 1994; Duncan & Hasbrook, 1988; Halbert & Latimer, 1994; Hillard, 1984; Kane & Disch, 1993; Kane & Greendorfer, 1994; Kane & Parks, 1992; Lenskyj, 1998; Lumpkin & Williams, 1991; MacNeill, 1994; Messner, 1988; Messner, Duncan, & Jensen, 1993; Pirinen, 1997; Rintala & Birrell, 1984; Salwen & Wood, 1994; Theberge & Cronk, 1986).