Gender Stereotyping in Televised Media Sport Coverage

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

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Some trends were detected between the two sampling periods. The percentage of coverage time on sports and athletes increased. The lower percentage for the 1995/96 sample is largely a result of the reporting on the Olympic Summer Games of 1996 (concerning preparations, security, transportation, etc.) and the Swedish application to host the Olympic Summer Games of 2004. The increase of coverage on sports and athletes between 1995/96 and 1998 was most apparent for sports categorized as gender-neutral, and the increase of coverage of women in gender-neutral sports affected only individual sports. In contrast, the coverage of women in team sports decreased between 1995/96 and 1998. The coverage of women participating in team sports only amounted to a small proportion of the total coverage of women's sports, and this ratio was found to be smaller than for men. One interpretation is that women participating in team sports are even less acceptable than women in individual sports. This may be explained by the fact th at team sports often are categorized as masculine (Koivula, 1995; Matteo, 1986). Participation in certain forms of competition which includes body contact, face-to-face opposition, or moving heavy objects is incongruent to the female stereotype (Metheny, 1965). It has further been claimed that sport constitutes elements of achievement and competition, and that the two are neither identical nor necessarily balanced (Birrell, 1983). Athletes measure themselves, particularly in many individuals sports, against an inanimate standard of excellence and they are mainly motivated by achievement concerns. In team sports, the athletes directly compete against one another in attempts to outmatch or overpower their opponents. These athletes are more motivated by a need for power. By excluding women from team sports and in the reporting of team sports in the media, Birrell (1983) suggests that women are denied the opportunity to exert power in the sporting world.

The data also showed that the proportion of the coverage interviews of male athletes was larger in sports categorized as feminine than it was for gender-neutral and masculine sports. Also, women participating in gender-neutral and masculine sports were interviewed more extensively than women participating in feminine sports. This could indicate that there is a readiness to use interviews to control and limit the time in which men and women are shown actively participating in sports categorized as gender-inappropriate.

An analysis of language exposes stereotypes, inequalities, and how language reflects, reinforces, and reconstructs traditional gender boundaries and gender inequalities. In sports media the gendered language reflects values related to both how men and women in sports are appraised and also how they are differentiated into separate spheres (Eitzen & Zinn, 1989; Halbert & Latimer, 1994; Kane & Parks, 1992). In the present study, one area of difference in the use of language in referring to sports with men and women participants was in the verbal and on-screen graphic gender markings of sports and teams. Sports with women participants were gender-marked to a higher degree than sports with men. In those instances when men's sports were gender-marked, it was in almost every case because it was in connection with women participants of the same sport. After a coverage of women golfers ("ladies golf"), the reporter announced "and now to the men's golf." As a result of the more extensive gender marking of women's spo rts, it could be interpreted that men's sports are presented as the normal and the universal and women in sports as an anomaly.