Gender Inequalities In Sports

Words: 1080
Pages: 5

Gender inequalities are very apparent in today’s society as illustrated in sports and media. In current society today as shown in the media, women athletes are more seen more objectively with her body versus her athletic skills where men are automatically perceived with direct masculinity, strength and skills. Gender can be considered to be an element of a master status in which it describes a geared proclaimed status of an individual. In this society gender plays a major role that gives immediate perceptions that is directly correlated as a component of an individual’s identity and the sport that they participate in. As stated within the text book, gender is classified as “social not biological characteristic”. This can be seen with gender …show more content…
Even with the positive social movements on gender- women’s sports coverage is still minimal and even diminished over time. In an article “It’s Dude Time : A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows” conducts a deep analysis on many factors and variables regarding sports coverage of men and women. In one factor that was being analyzed- they asserted that women’s media coverage represented that only 3.2% of media coverage was dedicated to women. The staggering information was compared to the years of 1989 (5% of women’s coverage), 1999(8.7% of women’s coverage), 2004(6.3% of women’s coverage) and 2009 (1.6% of women’s coverage). This information best indicates women’s sport coverage still remains and doesn’t suggest a hopeful improvement over time. The author of this study also analyzed calculating the number of lead stories that was apparent in media coverage. In a broadcast a lead story is chosen as the hook and critical and important story of the day. What he had found was that there was Zero lead stories that began with a woman sports. (Cooky, Messner, Musto, …show more content…
With these women athletes do not get the necessary coverage until they sell themselves in a sexual matter. A good example would be the 2007 World Cup- the Australian National team posed naked in a men’s magazine. The following World Cup in 2011, the German National team appeared in the Playboy magazine naked According to the German National team, the women did so in order to promote themselves and the World Cup. Women have to sexually objectify themselves in order to get media attention. Some of these women sports sexually exploit women in men’s magazines and other media outlets to promote the sport and interest. (Trolan,