Women in Sport

As today is International Women’s Day, and we have celebrated Women in Sport week last week, I wanted to take the opportunity to write about something that I am passionate about. The role of women in sport, and indeed society, has changed, but there is still a long way to go! The fact that we need to have a day and a week dedicated to women shows that the role of women is largely undervalued. I want to discuss the difference between the way that male and female athletes are treated and portrayed.

Women are more often than not steered towards individual activities such as gymnastics, dance and figure skating, where men commonly participate in aggressive, competitive, physically demanding team sports such as football. The type of coverage also differs greatly for females when compared to that of males in terms of descriptors used and language. Specific descriptors used when talking about athletes vary greatly between genders. Female athletes are commonly referred to by their first names, which presents them as soft and girly, whereas men are identified by their last name, which makes them sound more powerful and imposing.

Language used also makes perceptions of an athlete’s physical ability differ, depending on the words chosen to represent an action. For example, a male athlete would ‘miss-fire’ when taking a shot in basketball whereas a female would just miss. Similarly, if a male were to ‘crash’ against the defence of a tackle, a female would simply ‘move against’ it. Another fault of the type of media coverage female athletes receive is that of task relevance. Achievements are often downplayed, or omitted, which would suggest that the sporting accomplishments of female athletes are of little importance. This issue is further escalated with the addition of images to print media. Images that are chosen to accompany articles are usually very sexualised images, most often with very little to do with the sport itself, and rather just about the attractiveness of the athlete. Images of men are most commonly ones taken during a game, portraying the courageous and strong side to the male, when compared to women’s imagery in the print media is more of the glamour shots, posed to be raunchy rather than action shots. Another discrepancy between male and female athletes in the print media is the display of emotions. Pictures of female athletes crying after a loss or an injury are regularly seen, whereas when a male is seen crying it is seen as a sign of weakness, and he is taunted or called ‘a big girl’. When being talked about in print media, a female may have been ‘crying with disappointment’, whereas a male would only ‘shed a tear’.

And what is lacking in quality is certainly not made up for in quantity. Whilst studies report that there has been an increase of female newspaper coverage by 500% from the late 1980’s, when you look further into the issue, the figures have risen from a mere 2% of newspaper coverage to 10.8%. Disgusting when you think that horse racing alone makes up more percentage of the coverage than all female athletes. So how do we expect to have aspiring Olympic and international female athletes, when they are given no coverage at all, and the ones that are get portrayed in another light?

There is a massive culture change required in society for female athletes to be able to feel comfortable in the sporting arena, and this has to come soon. Why should females be treated any differently to male athletes? Why do we need to have ‘male’ and ‘female’ defined sports? Shouldn’t anyone be able to play any sport they like without being judged and criticised? I am sick and tired of females being under represented and treated unfairly in the sporting arena, and it is time for things to change!