On June 23,1972, Title IX was enacted. It emphasized equal opportunity for men and women in sports. Today, Dartmouth and most other colleges abide by Title 9.There are 34 varsity sports teams at Dartmouth- 16 female, 16 male, and 2 co-ed. Schools around the country are dedicated to making sure that female and male athletic teams receive equal funding.
Clearly female athletics have progressed significantly since Title 9 was enacted. But in American society today, are male and female athletes viewed as equals?
After doing a bit of research, I realized that a lot of people were wondering the same thing. A Google scholar search provided me with a bunch of different scholarly articles about how female athletes are represented in magazines and other forms of media. I found a really interesting blog: http://nicolemlavoi.com, which is entirely devoted to issues with how the media represents women athlete. I found one of her posts to be particularly interesting, she talked about how in 2007, only 3.6% of the covers of Sports Illustrated featured a female athlete.
The author of the blog then went on to talk about how when females are featured in sports magazines they typically pose in "sexualized positions" that accentuate their femininity. In her post she included a video clip that's pretty interesting and highlights her main points: http://www.kare11.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=65784301001#/Lindsey+Vonn+poses+for+Sports+Illustrated+swimsuit+issue/65784301001.
There have been a lot of academic studies that show that women athletes are underrepresented in newspapers,magazines, and television. One of the articles was: http://irs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/37/3-4/415. The author states that female athletics are barely covered in the media. He thinks that the media is essentially sending a message that woman's sports aren't very important. The lack of media attention leads to lack of financial sponsors because companies typically want to invest in teams that are featured regularly on television and in magazines. An example of the under-representation is,a 1998 study showed that 90.2 percent of sports-related shows on BBC1 covered men’s events. It also found that the average length of coverage of women’s sports on BBC1 was significantly shorter than for men’s sports (17 minutes versus 42 minutes) (2).
Since most of the studies I found were a little bit outdated, I decided to go to the Dartmouth Bookstore to look at Sports Illustrated. I counted the number of males and females featured in this week's issue of the magazine. Here's what I found:
All of the women that were featured only had short paragraphs written about them, and none of them were full length features. All of the photographs of the female athletes portray them in athletic situations and not "sexualized positions".
None of these findings surprised me because I have always been aware that male athletic events have more viewers. Other than the Olympics I have never watched a female sporting event . I also understand that the readership of Sports Illustrated is primarily male, so financially it would make sense for them include females in a more sexual light. But I wonder if this will ever change. What would happen if BBC1 covered more female sporting events? I understand that initially spectators would be angry, and BBC1 would lose money. But would more people eventually begin to tune into female sporting events? If Sports Illustrated featured more female athletes, would it lead to more interest in woman's athletics? If magazines didn't feature sexualized images of female athletes and instead featured photographs of them in athletic situations, would people eventually take female athletes more seriously? I really don't know the answer to any of these questions. But I do know that the media plays a large role in how society views different types of people. I think that the media potentially has the power to make female and male athletics more equal.
Sources
(1)http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/Content/Articles/Issues/Participation/123/27%20Year%20Study%20Shows%20Progression%20of%20Women%20in%20College%20Athletics.aspx
(2)http://irs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/37/3-4/415
Ally you make a good point and present a dilemma: who do we point our finger to for such low participation of female athletes in popular magazines? Indeed, it is difficult to come up with a clear-cut/cause& effect/linear answer. We could consider many potential variables for what we witness in the media: the popularity of male sports, consumer demand, financial maintenance of magazines vs. fostering equality etc.
ReplyDeleteMagazines, for sure, are not to blame. After all, we, as a culture, need to work harder in transcending beyond our biasness and stereotypes. How many times do we hear saying that women's basketball is not "real" basketball, for instance?
Furthermore, when we deal with sports it seems that it is not only gender that becomes an issue. Race is another crucial aspect. I have the feeling that many people do not give deserved credit to white men or white women basketball players, on the one hand, or black men swimmers, on the other hand.
I do think that the media shapes our attitudes regarding just about anything. That we seek to sexualize female athletes confirms the attitude that women are (perhaps primarily) sexual objects rather than tough competitors who can really kick a**.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, though, if some of the attraction to male sports has to do with the sheer physical dominance that men bring to their sports. Women are tough, they are strong, but when you compare the NBA with the WNBA, you see that skill is perhaps more important in the WNBA than brute force is. Perhaps on some level we value brute force over skill. Perhaps we continue to be moved by our more primitive ideas: that men are best when they can crush competitors, that women are best when they are physically alluring. I'm not condoning this idea. I'm not even suggesting that it's correct. I'm just thinking out loud about where our cultural attitudes come from -- instinct, media, or some combination of the two?
Good post.