Introduction

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In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed Title IX, a piece of legislation designed to promote equal opportunity across genders, into law (McCutcheon). Forty-four years later, scholars, reporters and athletes still debate whether the full ideals of Title IX have been achieved. The 2016 Rio Olympics served as the second summer games where more women competed for the United States than men, and, six months earlier, Sports Illustrated chose a woman for its annual “Sportsperson of the Year” award for only the third time in history (Myre, Soong). Women are now represented in every sport in the Olympic Games, and they earned more medals than the men in Rio (Myre, Women in the Olympic Movement). While the narrative of female success dominated the Olympic coverage in 2012 and 2016 and more women are competing in sports at all levels than ever before, another, less positive theme has emerged in the media for female athletes: sexism.

 

The discouragement of women in athletics has been seen throughout history, both in sports themselves and in the media, and this problem is not contained to the United States. Scottish Women in Sports founder Maureen McGonigle said she sees a disparity in the treatment of Scottish women and men in sports, and the inequality influences a woman's confidence and enthusiasm towards sports.

 

 “Young athletes struggle to see a pathway to the top of their profession because of the lack of investment and coverage of sport for women,” McGonigle said.  “A lack of self-belief and confidence can take many young women out of sport, and for many parents it doesn’t seem as important to them that their daughter plays sport as much as their son.  Therefore it is not seen to be as important. Our culture needs to change[,] and we need to ensure that we recognize and reward our female athletes and encourage, understand and work to resolve the issues our young female athletes are facing” (McGonigle).

 

Missy Franklin, a 2012 gold medal-winning swimmer and former University of California-Berkeley student-athlete, said that she has seen the media play a role influencing the way young athletes view themselves and others of their same gender identity (Franklin). Franklin expressed a more positive view of the media, however, and she added that stories about women in athletics help encourage the idea that women are tough, athletic and able to compete at a high level.

 

“I think media coverage of women’s sports helps keeps women’s sports alive and thriving. Stories about female athletes help remind us that women are strong individuals. They’re competitive and strong[,] and they go after what they want. They're daughters, sisters, mothers and friends,” Franklin wrote in an email.  “I remember hearing and reading about other female athletes when I was growing up[,] and I wanted to be like them. I wanted to go after my dreams[,] and I hope that the continued coverage of female athletics will help inspire generations to come.”

 

In December 2015, ESPNW columnist, Columbia University professor and radio show host Jane McManus wrote a column calling 2015 “The Year of the Women.” Reflecting on twelve months of sports, McManus wrote that Ronda Rousey and her success in women’s Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) combined with the World Cup for women’s soccer put female athletes in the spotlight in a new way and brought increased respect for women’s athletics in the media and in society (McManus). WNBA star Layshia Clarendon echoed McManus’s thoughts, and she also credited Rousey, the women’s national soccer team and tennis star Serena Williams for elevating women “in ways we haven’t seen before” ( Clarendon). The combined athletic achievements from women in 2015 and 2016, along with the changing media landscape and the recent sexism seen in the 2016 Olympics make the assessment of how women athletes are covered in sports media both timely and relevant.  

 

Sports not only creates business markets, bring in revenue and provides entertainment, but the act of competing and watching these events teaches the public about gender roles, character values and toughness. With a country often divided by political and social beliefs, sports serves as a way to bring these conversations to light, but equality must be seen between males and females in sports in order to understand these issues in their full scope. David Leonard, a professor of Critical Culture, Gender and Race at Washington State University, said he believes that sports have become a vehicle for addressing dominant ideas of gender, particularly masculinity, and that the stereotypes perpetuated in gender can prove exceptionally damaging to women and other minorities (Leonard).

 

“Sports are a primary teacher in our society; they teach us about race, gender, nation, and so much more,” Leonard said. “Sports mirror society yet they also contribute to the organization and ideologies within every institution, so as we work towards greater justice and equality, we must not lose sight of the role of sports.”

 

Across national lines and across party lines, sports have the power to unite, and sports media coverage serves a way to share that unity. Yet, coverage remains gendered. Women are winning national championships, earning gold medals and serving as role models for young athletes because of their athletic achievements,  but the expectations and assumptions that the media make about this group of people continues to drive actions, determine decisions and influence attitudes that often lead to sexism. Issues concerning women in sports extend beyond media, but this paper focuses solely on how women in sports media has changed and continues to change. This paper intends to assess the current state of the coverage of women in sports media forty years after Title IX, to outline the factors that have led to the inequality of coverage and to offer solutions to solve the disparity in media attention given to female athletes.

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Methodology

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This paper is based on qualitative data collected from 25 different interviews with reporters, editors, athletes, and scholars from around the country. Subjects were selected by the author and often appeared quoted in newspaper articles, radio shows or in scholarly articles. Most interviews were conducted from August through November 2016 via phone, while some, most notably those done with subjects overseas, were done via email. Most interviewees were asked at least five questions, and in some cases more than five questions, regarding the state of women in sports media. Interviews typically lasted between 15 and 45 minutes. Scholarly work previously done on women and sports media, particularly work conducted by interview subjects, is also addressed throughout this paper. Specific interview dates are noted on the Works Cited page.

 

Results

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Lag Time Theory: Difference Between Race and Gender in Sports

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In June 1997, the New York Liberty and the Los Angeles Sparks took the court in Los Angeles for the first official Women’s National Basketball Association professional game (“WNBA History/Timeline”). The development of the new league produced mixed feelings from sports fans, and Yahoo sports writer Eric Freeman commented that men expressed active annoyance towards the league because they thought it said “they were having an undesirable product forced down their throats through various partnerships and TV advertisements” (1). Nineteen years later, at the end of the 2016 season, WNBA numbers are rising. Richard Deitsch, a sports media columnist at Sports Illustrated tweeted in September that the “combined ESPN and ESPN2 viewership for the WNBA was up 11% this season over last year” (Deitsch). In 2015, the average per game viewership came in at 202,000, Deitsch wrote, but in 2016, the numbers averaged out at 224,000 (Deitsch). The growth of women’s basketball has produced new professional opportunities for women and become a topic of interest for major sports scholars. The WNBA blossomed from a small league to an organization that now draws hundreds of thousands of fans (Deitsch). Although scholars and writers continue to argue over the popularity of the WNBA, the sport serves as a literal representation of the lag time theory. Encouraging women’s sports and giving them time to develop will result in more interest and excitement.

 

John Molina, a women’s basketball historian, argues that women’s basketball is continuing to gain popularity, particularly in areas of the country with successful women’s college teams like the University of Connecticut, and the increase in popularity is leading to a change in the media coverage.

 

“I live 20 miles from UConn,” Molina said. “My local paper covers women's basketball I believe better than most areas of the country. It exploded in the [19]94-[19]95 season here. High school is covered pretty equal to boys.”

 

The 1995-1996 UConn team referenced by Molina inspired him to write his recent book, Barnstorming America, where he looks at how the pioneers of women’s basketball shaped the game today. Women’s basketball, according to Molina, took off in that 1995 season, just two years before the start of the WNBA and 23 years after the passage of Title IX (Molina). Molina notes that progress has been made in terms of promoting women’s sports, but he thinks that with more education and more appreciation for the sport, popularity can continue to grow. The time necessary for this change to happen, however, will be the unknown variable.

 

Robert Deaner, a professor at Grand Valley State University and a scholar of human psychology, however, argues that women’s basketball will never reach the level of men’s basketball, in terms of media coverage or national interest, no matter how much lag time passes. Men are biologically programmed to like sports more than women, according to Deaner, and cultural capital exists surrounding men’s sports that give them a level of importance and value not seen in women’s athletics (Deaner). He said that men and women like to watch men play because men’s sports are popular, and those who watch them feel as though they can have informed sports discussions with others.

 

“Something about watching women doesn’t capture that same interest,” Deaner said. Being able to be able to talk about things into the world plays into it because you can talk about sports. For example, people are going to talk about the Golden State Warriors.”

 

The Golden State Warriors made the NBA finals in 2016, and the Los Angeles Sparks, the women’s professional team in California, also made the finals, but Deaner made no references to the Sparks.

 

Sociology of sport scholar Scott Brooks put forth a theory in a personal interview that the necessary ingredient for a change in culture and coverage of women’s sports is “lag time” between the passage of Title IX, the growth of women’s sports and the increase in women reporting on sports. Brooks argues that this lag time influences both the athletes on the field and those in the newsroom. For example, when USA Today Sports columnist Christine Brennan started working in sports, she was one of the first women to cover athletics for a major media outlet. She worked under George Solomon at The Washington Post and covered over a dozen Olympic Games (Brennan). Yet, when she first started in the business, she was not allowed to enter the men’s locker room to interview players like her male counterparts (Brennan). Brennan said in her autobiography that she would miss out on stories if she did not have a male co-worker go into the locker room for her or arrange to meet one of the players outside of the locker room (119-122). Brooks said that progression and societal acceptance of women in sports takes time, but the more women like Brennan, who break barriers in their reporting, the more women who will become editors and consequently make decisions for media outlets that could bring diversity and gender equity to the front pages. The number of female sports reporters has increased slowly, and the number of women participating in sports is also increasing, yet neither of these changes are immediately leading to more coverage of women’s sports (O’Neill, Frank, 12-20).

 

Brooks believes that “lag time” is needed “to see if we can move women and folks of color into leadership” and develop leaders who value diversity (Brooks). Lag time, Brooks said, is the long-term solution to a present day problem, but the process of putting women and minorities in leadership has already begun (Brooks).  Brooks cited ESPN’s The Undefeated as an example of a website that emphasizes the importance of leadership for people of color, and he thinks “boutique situations” like The Undefeated serve as a starting point. ESPN began The Undefeated in 2016 to tell stories in sports related to race, culture and HBCU’s that are “not conventional” and “never boring,” and articles range from long form pieces to daily updates on sporting news (“About”). The site has since taken off, producing daily content and hosting national events including Town Hall discussions with the President of the United States. The Undefeated is led by Kevin Merida, a former managing editor of The Washington Post and a widely-respected journalist in the field, according to Richard Deitsch, a sports media columnist for Sports Illustrated (1). The diversity of leadership shown at The Undefeated gives Brooks hope, but he still wants to see more women and people of color making decisions, something that he says will take time.

 

“We have it wait it out,” Brooks said. “We haven’t had enough time. Timing is a factor and who is in power still matters. The more people from diverse backgrounds, teaching, we get more complicated storylines, nuanced ideas.”

 

Nancy Armour, a sports columnist for USA Today agrees with Brooks, and she said that as time passes, more women will gain the confidence and support needed to pursue upper-level media positions (Armour).

 

“I think your generation is going to have a different view of things than mine,” Armour said. “You have grown up in a time that women can do anything they want.”

 

Armour explained that she has seen the media cover race and gender in very different ways because “for the most part, we have gotten beyond the question of race within sports because there has been such a long history of integrated teams.” Gender equality, on the other hand, will still take time. “We are only 40 years removed from Title IX, so I think maybe it’s a couple years behind [racial equality], but I’m hopeful” (Armour).

 

Leadership, and the demographics of those in leadership, emerged as a theme and point of interest for numerous scholars and writers, both male and female, interviewed about the issue. Rachel Cohen, a sports writer for the Associated Press, echoed Armour’s response, reiterating that “the decision-makers in sports departments are still mostly men. The more women working in sports media, especially in leadership positions, the better things will get” (Cohen).

 

International and British scholars also agree that the lag time theory is at play, but they differ when describing the degree to which the lag time is still needed to achieve equality. Helen Grant, the former minister for sport and tourism in Britain, believes that the “lag time” necessary to see a development of women in media has already passed because momentum has been achieved for women’s rights and coverage in sports. However, she hopes to see respect for female athletes continue to grow (Grant).

 

“In the UK, there has been a shift change in women’s sport through new professional sponsorship deals, an increase in media coverage and more female presenters on screen,” Grant said. “It is still a work in progress but there is definitely movement. For wider change we need more people, both enlightened men and strong women, in more walks of life raising the profile of women’s issues continuously.  Real equality, be it gender, race, or any other factor, will only be tackled brick by brick, nation by nation, and the enabling force usually comes from the very top.”

 

Media leadership, in the United States, in the UK and across the world, determines who has the opportunity to report on sports, and the lag time theory suggests if men continue to hire men, and women lack the resources or support to advance, their views and ideas will likely be less represented. However, the culture, particularly at networks like the BBC, is changing, according to University of Huddersfield (Britain) journalism and media professor Deirdre O'Neill.

 

“Twenty years ago there was probably only one female broadcaster, and she was confined to tennis,” O’Neill said, noting that such a stark contrast in the numbers is not as common today, particularly at the BBC. “The BBC should be applauded for this, but we should not be complacent. There is clearly an issue about the number of female sports reporters too, and if there were more there would probably be better sports coverage of women’s sports. There are very few press reporters who are female.”

 

The question remains: how long will it take for more women to enter sports journalism, and how long will it take for more coverage of women’s athletics to appear?

 

O’Neill published a report on women in sports journalism in 2015 as part of the Women’s Media Center annual publication, and, despite her optimism regarding the BCC, O’Neill and her co-author Suzanne Frank still expressed worry about the number of women covering sport and the state of women in sports media. Their report suggests that the stereotypes and bias against women in the media often prevents them from entering the industry (O’Neill, Frank).

 

“Surveys in the U.S. reinforce the same lack of female sports editors and reporters and indicate that there is still some prejudice faced by those women who do become sports journalists” (O’Neill, Frank, 13).

 

Without more women in sports and in positions of leadership, the inequality in coverage is unlikely to change.

 

Carole Oglesby, a co-chair of the International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG) and an executive board member of Women’s Sport International, said the lack of coverage of women in sports is “puzzling and disheartening” considering the rise of both participation and success of female athletes but she partially attributes this disparity to the history of sexism in sports (Oglesby).

 

 “Patriarchy is here and real, and it colors your thinking even when people are not conscious of it,” Oglesby said. “What women do is nice but not impressive to the millions of people that are not interested. The gals covering the game, they see it. Why doesn’t it seep into their world view about what is worth publicizing?”

 

The history of sexism in athletics dates back to the start of organized sports, and the prejudice against women seen in the media stems from the prejudice against women on the playing field. In 1912, Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, approved a report stating that “An Olympiad with females would be impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper” ( Boulongne). His mindset of excluding women because of their physical appearance, although unacceptable under the legality of Title IX, can still be seen in today’s media.

 

Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and an author of a 2016 book on sports, society and fandom, said that Title IX was a turning point in women’s athletics but equality in coverage likely will not appear until more time passes, leadership changes and women have more of a voice in editorial decisions.

 

 “It’s who’s in charge of sports, college or international, or professional. It's still dominated by older white men. So from that sense, the changes that have occurred, yes they are notable, we should applaud them, but they are thin,” Pielke said.

 

The trend of sexist coverage against women also became a point of interest for Huffington Post Trends Editor Lee Moran, whose August 2016 article “The Media Are Saying And Doing A Bunch Of Sexist Stuff During The Olympics,” listed numerous examples of how the media showed women’s accomplishments only in context to the men who helped coach them or were married to them. Moran noted how NBC commentator Dan Hicks credited the victory of Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu’s to her husband, Shane Tusup, calling him “the man responsible” for her win (Moran, “The Media Are Saying And Doing A Bunch Of Sexist Stuff During The Olympics”). Hicks defended his comments by saying that he wished he had said things differently but believed that Hosszu’s story included her husband because of his coaching influence. Moran, in a personal interview, said he thinks sports continues to be a male-dominated and the gender stereotypes serve as a primary factor for the quality disparities in coverage.

 

“I fear that the ingrained attitudes of some of the old-school sportscasters will be hard to completely eradicate in the near future,” Moran said.

 

If change happens, as Brooks predicts, it may be slow, but as “lag time” occurs, perhaps the next generation of media consumers will see signs of greater equality for women in sports media.

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2012 Olympics

 

The 2012 Olympics marked a historic time for women in sports as the Games represented the first time that women competed in all the same sports as men, and the first time in U.S. history that more women outnumbered men in participation (Myre). The increase of women in the Games and their consistent success led to more media coverage, so much more in fact that in the 2012 Games, women received more than half of the primetime coverage for the first time in scholarly history. (Laskow)

 

This change, according to some researchers including University of Alabama sports communication professor Andrew Billings, led to a shift in media coverage. Billings said that while the change may not have been noticeable to the general public right away, people started to expect consistent coverage of women's sports during the Games after 2012.

 

“I don’t think people fully realized the tilt was fully completed there, but I think it officially became the case that people tune into the Olympics expecting to see women and men in equal measure within equal importance being placed on their performance,” Billings said. “Without question, the Olympics leads the way towards gender equality in sports media.”

 

The 2012 Games gave women a chance to compete in all of the same events as men, and the media showed less gender bias during the two weeks of Olympic coverage. The Columbia Journalism Review revealed that in 2012, women received more primetime coverage than me (Laskow). Cheryl Cooky, who, along with Michael Messner and Michela Musto conducted research for “It’s Dude Time: A Quarter Century of Excluding Women's Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows,” a report on gender and sports coverage, told The Columbia Journalism Review that she suspects the greater amount of coverage for women in the Olympics is a result of nationalism, and Billings, in a personal interview, agreed (Laskow, Billings). He said that the culture and traditional of the Olympics allows fans to “root for the national flag regardless of gender, and that blunts gender stereotypes that emerge in other sports” (Billings).

 

Rachel Axon, a USA Today Sports Investigative reporter, said she doesn’t think that 2012 changed the landscape of women’s sports in quite the same dramatic way, but she does agree that the Olympics produces a rise in interest of women’s sports and helps promote positive stereotypes of female athletes.

 

“Turning point implies that we are making broad changes and going around a corner,” Axon said. “We haven’t reach the point where we have made complete progress.”

 

Four years later, the 2016 Olympic Games continued to move women’s sports in the right direction, Axon added, despite the prolific examples of sexism in the media coverage of the Rio Olympic Games. Change may not come all at once, but the slow signs of progress are visible, and Axon said that her own personal experience at the Games showed her that  the nation does love celebrating the accomplishments of its female athletes.

 

“I was there, and if you think about the U.S. athletes, the women's basketball team won another gold medal and Simone Biles was the start of the show, as well as Katie Ledecky, Simone Manuel, and others,” Axon said. “They not only won more, but their accomplishments were proportionally celebrated.”

 

The “turning point” in women’s athletics has been debated for decades, with some citing Title IX as the biggest change, others pointing to the 1996 and 1999 women’s World Cup, some agreeing that 2012 changed the landscape, and a final group of those in the industry saying, like Axon, that the turning point has not come yet. Marie Hardin, the dean of communication at Penn State University, said that no single event makes a long-term difference. “It’s the way these things all add up,” Hardin said. She cited the 1996 World Cup as an example of an event that people thought would change the landscape of women’s sports but said that it  “wasn’t the watershed moment we all expected,” even though it “moved things forward” (Hardin).

 

Billings, who said he supports the idea that 2012 was a turning point, acknowledged in his research that NBC, the broadcast rights holder to the Games, cited 1996 as the “Olympics of the women,” a title now used by media outlets to describe the 2012 and the 2016 Games. Although scholars and journalists argue about which Olympics is universally the “women’s games” or the major turning point for female Olympic athletes, Billings’ research and his comments in a personal interview suggested that regardless of the turning point, media coverage and the acceptance  of female athletes is growing (Billings, A. C., J. R. Angelini, P. J. Macarthur, K. Bissell, and L. R. Smith).

 

The first Olympic Games in history occurred in 1896, but women were not permitted to participate in this historic international event (Women in the Olympic Movement). Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, the same man who said that “An Olympiad with females would be impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper” also said that the only Olympic hero “. . . is the individual adult male” (Boulongne) His statements and viewpoints on the Games make 2012, and the primetime media attention given to women during these Games, even more monumental (Billings, A. C., J. R. Angelini, P. J. Macarthur, K. Bissell, and L. R. Smith). Billings and his team of researchers, however, still show that much of the media attention is concentrated in a few sports during the Olympics, most notably gymnastics and beach volleyball, two sports where women received significantly more air time than their male counterparts, but also two sports that “carry their own gender baggage” and fit into “sex-appropriate” boundaries (Billings, A. C., J. R. Angelini, P. J. Macarthur, K. Bissell, and L. R. Smith). While Billings accepts that gender roles and feminine identity could play a role in NBC’s decision to broadcast these sports, he does not believe that these are the only two elements contributing to the percentage of coverage.

 

“The heavy emphasis on women in these two sports may not be the result of one single gender-based factor, but rather a collection of factors that include the sport’s overall appeal to viewers, the gender appropriateness of the sport, the gender-based predicted success of U.S. athletes in the sport, pre-Olympic Games publicity, celebrity, and overall Team USA performance” (Billings, A. C., J. R. Angelini, P. J. Macarthur, K. Bissell, and L. R. Smith).

 

In a personal interview, Billings said that regardless of the sport, women’s athletics, both in terms of participation and media coverage has improved, but society is still fighting an uphill battle to remove sexism (Billings).

 

“I’m not saying the language we apply to women athletes is perfect, but it’s certainly improved,” Billings said. “There’s a general sense that sexist language will no longer be tolerated and a general sense that women athletes have far more in common with men athletes than many previous generations thought.”

 

The United States was not the only country in the world to experience a shift in the acceptance of women in sport and women in sports media as a result of the London Games. The 2012 Olympics also earned recognition in British media for “ushering in a golden age of sporting equality,” as women won approximately 33 percent of Great Britain's medals (Keslo, Martinson). English Olympic superstars Jessica Ennis-Hill and Nicola Adams made headlines for their success in heptathlon and boxing, respectively, and Telegraph journalist Paul Keslo wrote in 2012 that the success of women would encourage the government to provide more funding opportunities to female athletes (Shergold).

 

“Ensuring women can shine is a wise policy given the shift of the Olympic movement towards making the equality of which it always talks a reality,” Keslo wrote. “It is getting closer, thanks in part to pressure from London.”

 

However, a study completed by Dr. Claire Packer of Birmingham University suggests that the legacy of 2012 left much to be desired ( Martinson). Six British newspapers reported less women’s sports stories a year after the Games than they did one year before the Games (Martinson). If 2012 started a trend of more equitable coverage, the trend did not show itself until over a year after the Games.

 

The type of coverage given to women also emerged as a problem in the 2012 Olympics, even as quality increased. According to a report from Jessica Giuggioli at East Tennessee State, of the coverage that occurred during the Games itself, 53.8 percent of the print news coverage included sexism against women, while news articles about men only used sexist themes 15.2% of the time (33, 38). Giuggioli noted in her conclusion that coverage from 2012 showed that “the fight for women’s equality is still an open battle” because of the continued sexism, even though additional research shows that improvements have been made (43).

 

London was a step in the right direction, many scholars note, and some even credit 2012 as the “equality games ( "London 2012: Was This the Women’s Olympics?").” While the Games brought positive change to countries around the world, even equal participation and more media coverage couldn’t solve the gender bias problem or remove sexism from sports media.

 

Maureen McGonigle, whose nonprofit aims to inspire women in Scotland to pursue sport, said in a personal interview that she did see a change in women’s sports media after the Olympics, and that the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow also helped bring attention to topics in sports that had not been heavily discussed in media before (McGonigle).

 

“Since the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014, there is much more awareness of the issues that surround women in sport,” McGonigle said.

 

Awareness and education serve as two critical elements of improved coverage of women, and continued sexist coverage in the 2016 Olympics showed that while progress has been made, discriminatory coverage continues. More time needs to pass in order to fully evaluate the effect that the 2012 Olympics had on women in sports and women in sports media.

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Quality v. Quantity

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Since the passage of Title IX, sports media scholars have studied and analyzed the way women’s sports media coverage changed in relation to the new equality mandate. In 1996, University of Minnesota researcher Mary Jo Kane assessed the media coverage of women and the representation of the female gender in a study entitled “The Post-Title IX female athlete” that became published in the Duke Journal of Gender, Law and Policy. Sport, Kane wrote, is a “potent medium through which biological and physical differences interact with traditional expectations regarding gender” (96). She cited research from 1994 study done by Linda Williams that showed that Sports Illustrated, a brand that reached 7.91 million readers online alone in 2015, put women on the cover in only 114 of their 1835 covers from 1954 to 1989 (Kane, 105, "Number of Sports Illustrated Readers in March 2015, by Platform (in Thousands)"). From 1954 to 1978, a study of Sports Illustrated covers showed that women represented less than 5% of media coverage, and from 1954 to 1987, women represented only 9% of the feature article content (Creedon, 34).

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In a 2015 Ted Talk, University of Alabama Sports Communication program director Andrew Billings expanded on these statistics and analyzed them from a more modern perspective (“Sports can start meaningful conversations”). Sports Illustrated, he said, typically devotes approximately one cover a year to a women (“Sports can start meaningful conversations”). In 2016, the only female athletes to grace the cover were Caitlin Jenner, who won the 1976 men’s decathlon gold medalist, Brenna Stewart, Katie Ledecky, who twice shared the cover with Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, who shared the cover with Phelps and Ledecky, and Allyson Felix, who also joined Phelps and Ledecky in a cover photo ( "2016 Sports Illustrated Covers.”). This phenomenon is not new. Countless research studies in addition to Billings and Kane’s, have pointed out the flaws in SI’s media coverage of women, but the continued sexism does not excuse the magazine from being criticized again, nor is the magazine the only example of a publication producing content that could be deemed sexist.

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According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, “Women athletes are actually covered less in media now than they were in 1989 ( "FAQ - Women's Sports Foundation."). In 2014, “only 3.2% of network television coverage was given to women's sports; SportsCenter only gave women 2% of coverage” (Cooky, Messner and Musto, 5-6). The same trend has also been found in print media. A 2013 study of women in sports media in The New York Times showed that “coverage of women decreased significantly in comparison to coverage of men between 1999-2003 and 2004-2008” ( Schmidt, 281).  These numbers also showed how, even in the peak of women’s sports coverage in 1999, The New York Times still only allocated 9.8 percent of coverage to women (Schmidt).

 

Yet, the amount of coverage is not only issue facing female athletes; quality also remains a concern. Women’s sports stories are shown in less complex ways, simplifying their accomplishments and framing them in ways that do not focus on athleticism (Brooks). The gendered language and societal norms of the United States influence sports media and perpetuate a stereotype of women as less athletic than men. Editors, particularly in Olympic coverage, have been shown to choose words to emphasize women in relation to traditional gender norms, rather than in athletic context (Grieves).

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Sarah Grieves, a linguist at Cambridge University Press, studied the language used by media outlets during the Olympics and found a general trend of acceptance toward male athletes and an emphasis on appearance, marital status and femininity among female athletes.

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“I was surprised by the scale, I wasn’t surprised that there was a difference,” Grieves said.  “When you start looking at gender and langue, it was interesting to see the number of times that women and men were used.”

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Grieves said that, as a linguist, she focuses solely on words, rather than the reason that they are chosen and their societal implications; yet, she said that the response that she has received because of her work has prompted her to consider continuing the study (Grieves). Grieves thinks improvements are occurring in regards to the language used to describe women’s sport, but words sexualizing and objectifying women are still being used.

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For example, on August 29, 2016, People Magazine promoted the “Final Five” U.S. women’s gymnastics team on the cover with the headline, “America’s Sweethearts,” a term that University of California Riverside Sociology Professor Scott Brooks said “deemphasizes their strengths ("AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS! THE FINAL FIVE,” Brooks).  Brooks said that there is no male equivalent for the term “sweethearts,” and he finds the use of the word ironic because “gymnasts are fit and strong and what they do is crazy” (Brooks). One month prior to the cover of People magazine, Sports Illustrated senior writer S.L. Price wrote a feature story on two American swimmers Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky, arguing that in the Olympics, “America needs a sweetheart, and America will have a sweetheart (1).”

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Grieves said that the use of the word sweetheart is “interesting” and not something that her team “picked up on,” but may have been a term used by magazines looking for a more “informal, spoken” voice, rather than a newspaper voice.

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Price went on to describe Franklin as a 2012 co-sweetheart with gymnast Gabby Douglas but said that the two athletes likely wouldn’t be the nation’s favorite women in 2016 because “America's Sweetheart never serves back-to-back terms. Bodies wear down. Rainbows fade” (Price, 1).

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In a personal interview after the Games, Franklin said that saying focused on competing with all of the media attention on Olympic athletes in the lead up to the Games can be challenging. The media creates pressure, Franklin said, and she has spent time working and speaking to young athletes on the importance of keeping attention on the sport, rather than the news (Franklin).

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“I think we all still deal with the pressure that we feel from others as well as ourselves,” Franklin said. “The mental aspect of athletics is a huge part of what we do[,] and I think it should be something that we talk to girls about. Playing sports should be about having fun and feeling good about yourself. It can be hard not let outside pressure impact what you do[,] but I think parents, coaches and friends can help be supportive in this area.” 

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In terms of equality in coverage, Franklin did not share any personal examples of her own experience with the media, but she did add that she hopes the reporters work to treat men and women equally, something that has shown to not occur in media thus far, according to recent research by Messner and Billings.

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“As an athlete, you expect men and women to be asked the same type of questions[,] but that’s not always the case. I think it ultimately comes down to education and awareness for the general public, the media, and athletes,” Franklin said. “Women’s sports have come a long way in a short time but, to some extent, they’re still in their infancy. There’s still a lot of room for growth and I’d like to think in my lifetime, there will be many positive changes made in the world of women’s sports.”

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            Franklin’s comments carried a positive tone, but scholars remains skeptical that improvement in education and promotion is occurring. In 2015, media scholars Cheryl Cooky, Michael Messner and Michela Musto published a study called “It’s Dude Time: A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows” that focused primarily on broadcast news to show that women’s sports coverage has actually decreased in the last two decades. Cooky, Messner and Musto’s research looks at television coverage, particularly EPSN and SportsCenter, and they concluded that “the slight increase to 3.2% in our 2014 findings indicate that the news shows’ coverage of women’s sports remains substantially lower than its coverage 10, 15, 20, and 25 years ago. Sports Center’s coverage, over the 4 time periods it was included in our study which spans 15 years (1999-2014), has remained remarkably flat, never rising about 2.5%” (6-7).

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Billings also agreed that the amount of attention given to women’s sports on television represents a problem. “Thirty years ago, women’s sports received about 10% of the television sports focus; now, news shows like SportsCenter and FOX Sports Live focus on women’s sports less than 2% of the time,” he said (Billings).

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In a personal interview, Messner clarified that women’s sports media coverage has not decreased overall, as play-by-play coverage and online coverage has increased, but coverage in sports news and highlight shows “has been flat, or has even dropped in some ways. Ditto for print coverage” (Messner). Messner’s research led him to conclude that the “sports media landscape is very uneven, with some notable increases and improvements, and some areas with little to no change.”

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Liz Clarke, the Washington football team beat reporter for The Washington Post, editorialized on women’s sports and women’s sports media coverage in June 2015, and she particularly called out the work of Messner and his team, arguing that the low numbers found in the study for women’s sports correlate with its popularity (Clarke).

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“For media outlets, decisions about what to cover are market-driven,” Clarke wrote in her column called “Five Myths about Women’s Sports”. “And the clamor for more coverage of women’s team sports doesn’t appear to be a clamor at all.”

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The number of women in sports has increased, said Marie Hardin, the dean of the College of Communication at Penn State University, who has a long background in sports media research. In 2016, she traveled to Rio de Janiero to attend the Paralympics as a spectator. Hardin said that throughout her career in sports hasn’t changed a great deal but has instead evolved, impacted mostly by the emergence of digital technologies” (Hardin). The amount of coverage for women’s sports has increased, Hardin said, but the proportion has not increased. Her observation raised the issue of why, despite an increase of women in athletics and women in sports media, women’s sports coverage continues to lag.

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Conclusion

 

As generations change, the current climate of women in sports media has the opportunity to change with time as well. New media can work to be more equal and to celebrate and criticize women for their athletic achievements, rather than the way they look on the field or their marital status. Sociologist Scott Brooks suspects that with lag time equality can become more of a reality, but statistics show that the quality and quantity of women’s sports still pales in comparison to men’s coverage.  London 2012 offered a chance for reporters to follow participation and success trends of female athletes and devote equal coverage, and while many chalk 2012 up as a turning point, research shows that the legacy of the London Olympics hasn’t played out in the years following the games. Is more education the answer? Brooks proposed that change could come from a “system of checks and balances” and increased opportunities for students to learn new ideas about sports in school. Brooks believes in a traditional approach to education, students in a classroom. Lee Moran, the Trends Editor at the Huffington Post, proposes education as a solution in a broad sense, by simply sharing information and informing others in the newsroom, in general conversation and through media.

 

“In some cases, it may be more down to naivety on the subject rather than an actual intention for them to go out and offend,” Moran said. “But I think continual highlighting of the issues, and what is and what isn't acceptable to say, may help it speed up the process.”

 

Education leads to research, which, according to Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies and a member of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder, could lead to change. Pielke suggested in a personal interview that schools need to offer research opportunities for students to study the media and learn more about the impact of sports on the national and global society. He advocates for a sports major to give students the chance to study, research and learn about the institution of athletics and open their minds to some of the social and legal issues facing the major sporting organizations today.

 

“Academics are pesky, and they study everything from global trade to human rights. They have a discussion and they shed light on how things are working,” Pielke said. “Sport hasn’t had that except for a very small group of people, if there was this parallel world of analysis, debate, discussion about sports, how it’s being run, it would create another stopping point to open up discussion. Academics don’t always know the answer[,] but they can shed light. They need more good ideas, and with academics you might get 95 bad ideas and five good ideas, but the fact that you can have a process where ideas are shared is good.”

 

Yet, even among researchers, opinions of the importance of change and equality for women’s sports differ. Robert Deaner, whose research focuses on the biological and psychological tendencies of humans, believes that the physical makeup and genetic tendencies of women will naturally make them less interesting to watch, and he doesn’t see this trend changing.

“I don’t think it’s a cultural thing, it’s a biological thing,” Deaner said. “Women will still not jump as high, giving people a reason not to watch [them].

 

The cry for education and research however, can be seen in Europe as well as among some U.S. researchers, and Dierdre O’Neill, a professor of Media at the University of Huddersfield expressed a similar sentiment to Pielke. Research is necessary, she said, but demand and diversity also play a role (O’Neill). Women must step up and support other women, call out sexist coverage and sexist reporters, and fight for equality.

 

“Even some of the women sports reporters I interviewed said there was not a demand for more women’s sports coverage,” O’Neill said. “I’m not sure I buy this, so as consumers we need to start asking for more. And more female sports reporters.”

 

A Gallup Poll conducted in June 2015 suggested that while men are more likely to be sports fans than women, over half of women still consider themselves to be sports fans (Jones). Gallup reported that 51 percent of women identify as sports fans, while 66 percent of men identify as sports fans (Jones). The poll also showed that “a majority of U.S. adults in each major demographic subgroup say they are sports fans,” and that six in 10 Americans consider themselves to be sports fans (Jones). With over half of women considering themselves to be fans of athletics, the numbers beg the question, is this population satisfied with the sports coverage they consume?

 

ESPN, “one of the most diverse sports media companies,” has been working to change their messaging and appeal to attract a wider audience, particularly among the female demographic (Ottaway). In 2011, ESPN launched ESPNW, a branch of the major sports company focused on promoting women’s sports and bringing sports into the lives of women in a new, unique way (McBride). The new site came nine years after Sports Illustrated’s new product, Sports Illustrated for Women, ended its short three year run.  At the start of ESPNW, Kelly McBride, the vice president of academic programs at the Poynter Institute, expressed confidence that ESPNW would be successful because it allows the company to be more than a men’s brand, more than a brand for husbands and brothers. ESPNW normalizes sports for women, something that is missing from society, according to McBride.

 

 “For men, understanding and watching sports validates their status as men,” McBride wrote. “For women, the reverse is true: In spite of how much they know, women must constantly prove they are real sports fans.”

 

McBride said that in her years with Poynter, she has seen hundreds of complaints about the media, but she has never heard anyone complain about ESPN’s support for women’s sports fans and women’s sports. Yet, the market for women’s sports coverage remained untapped in 2011, and ESPNW capitalized on the new opportunity. They led the charge for women’s sports coverage, and other companies have since followed. In February 2016, Exelle Sports, a website that markets itself for “the athletes and coaches who live in the vast, passionate world that is women’s sports” began, and the company now produces content on a daily basis (“Our Story”).

 

Excelle launched almost exactly 52 years after the first swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, a product that generates millions of dollars for the sports magazine, and more time will need to pass to assess the success and profit of Excelle Sports. Rachel Cohen, a sports reporter for the Associated Press commented that many media members are carefully watching sites like ESPNW and Excelle to see if they can cover women’s sports in a way that brings in a profit. Does covering something make it popular? Can more women’s sports coverage increase national popularity and spur more media coverage. Cohen isn’t sure, but she said when major media groups like ESPN sponsor the subsites or work with the women’s sports media groups, success is more likely.

 

“We’re all in the industry wondering the same thing about sites like ESPNW, they can’t survive on their own per se, but if the umbrella site is committed, there are intangible benefits, things change so quickly,” Cohen said. “That’s where some growth is, so much about of it is looking for a niche audience. If people are more interested, then there is a more distinct demographic, but people are scared, these might be the first places that people are cutting.”

 

John Molina, a historian and preservationist of women’s basketball, said he has watched interest grow in women’s sports as a result of these new outlets, but he still wants to see more attention given to these athletes.   “I want to see more communication companies dedicating resources to women's sports like ESPN,” Molina said.  “I want to be able to turn on a sports channel and have the same chance of seeing a women's basketball game on in prime time as a men's game.” Interest in women’s sports should not be divided along gender lines, Molina said, but he has noticed such a trend. However, the trend is not heading in the direction  that people might think.

 

“Most of the people that have come up to me and began talking about the history of women's basketball has been overwhelmingly male,” Molina said. “I have never been able to determine why.  I don't have any statistics, only observation. Yet if research was done to find out if this is true and why, maybe there's a new piece of the puzzle to help increase interest and coverage in all women's sports.”

Deaner suspects that the reason men inquire more about women’s basketball than women goes back to the Gallup poll, men are just more likely to be sports fans.

“Women may want to play [sports], but many of them don’t care about watching sports,” Deaner said. “If they do care, it’s about watching men, I don’t see that changing no matter how they package it .”

 

Deaner believes that women’s sports will never achieve the same popularity as men’s sports, and even among the most popular women’s sports such as soccer, the primary audience is men, he said.

However, if women are to see growth in the next decade, they will need support from media editors, which, as statistics show, are 90.9 percent male (Morrison). Women need to support women’s sports to produce change, but among those trying to break into the sports media industry, showing support for women’s sports isn’t always the path they follow. Jenny Dial Creech, the assistant sports editor for the Houston Chronicle, has worked her way up in the newspaper, starting out as sports writer, then a high school sports editor, and then an NBA beat writer. She said women been surprised to hear that she is a women in sports media not covering women, but she said doesn’t feel that obligation (Creech).

 

“I think that it’s unfair that just to say that if women play a sport, women should be covering it,” Creech said. “It’s the same as any kind of entertainment. Should men not listen to Taylor Swift because she is a female? The same should go for sports.”

 

Creech is not alone in her belief that the most popular sports should be covered. Dana Solunen, the sports editor of the Opelika-Auburn News, said women’s sports team in Auburn play well and draw interest, but other national sports, such as women’s professional basketball, aren’t always worth allocating the resources necessary to covering all the games.

 

“I think there is a different view, the WNBA is always going to be a laughingstock,” Solunen said. “I don’t know if it’s not an exciting product, I feel like they are still fighting an uphill battle.”

 

Solunen did qualify her answer, however, saying that she thinks women’s sports have become more mainstream, but they will only reach the height of men’s sports popularity if the teams perform well.

 

Change is difficult and change is challenging, but change can happen. Michael Messner, who has conducted extensive research on women in sports media and co-wrote “It’s Dude Time: A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows,” said both the consumers and the producers need to demand more equity.

 

“Change needs to come from outside--increased demand for good coverage by women’s sports fans, and stepped up pressure on media for fair and equitable coverage--and from inside--better education of reporters and commentators, hiring of commentators who are informed and genuinely like women’s sports,” Messner said.

Researchers remain conflicted on if and when women’s sports media coverage will increase and inch closer to equity, but statistics show that such a change is far overdue.