Bias in Womens Sports Essay

The valet de chambre of sports is strictly dominated by a male hegemonic structure, which is non exactly welcoming to the thought or thought process of sharing this kip down of sports with the opposite sex. The term hegemony is defined as the dominance of mavin nar mark or group of individuals over the otherwises. Although wowork force drop shown a passionate by-line for sports, their ability to join this culturally powerful organization as prise masters has non been completely accomplished.They claim been given opportunities to participate in acrobatic argonas that argon not the most culturally popular venues within Ameri freighter culture (i. e. golf, gymnastics, swimming, and tennis), but their inception and respected entrance into the American conglome identifys of the sports world (i. e. hoops, baseball, and football) have been optably denied. Men suffocating treasure their superior control of this cultural superstructure and fear the estimate of allowing the o pposite sex entrance into their wanted stratum.Mens ultimate trepidation is sports not cosmos more thanover their secret possession. Wo manpower have passionately fought to prove themselves as strong enough, erudite enough, and tough enough to survive in the historically constructed system custody have carved out the association of sports and the manner in which it operates. Although their hope little attempts have allowed them to chip through the first few layers of this concrete barrier in which they ar faced with, their attempts to delve deeper to ultimately reach the message of its existence has been a disappointing failure.Despite the increase in feminine athletes participating in sports at a college and professional level, the use of effeminate athletes as product endorsers has been limited. Some womanly readers standardized my wife has suggested that thither may be an obvious media bias against female athletes and other problems colligate to how wo manpowers la ck of universe feminine is portrayed to the general. I thumb that women athletes dont get enough recognition compargond to male athletes in the media, and how they dont appear as profitable product endorsers in magazines or commercials as men. plainly if five part of media reportage is dedicate to womens sports (Adams angstrom Tuggle, 2004). The clock time media spends to publish these articles of women athletes are significantly less compared to their male athlete. Many companies choose not to endorse women athletes (Grau, Roselli, and Taylor, 2007). Mens sports journalists tend to focus on coverage of police squad sports for men, plot of ground womens sports coverage usually is focused on individual sports. In some(prenominal) articles, the media defends its biases claiming that it is what the popular wants, and not all viewers are concerned in womens sports.I tactual sensation the number of women unraveling professional sports has drastically increase over the past decade, but the medias news coverage of womens sports has not increased with this movement of women in sports. On ESPN lie in news radio, they have mentioned over the last ten socio-economic classs, there has been approximately no commute in the pctage of national airtime that was designated for womens sports. Only more or less one in ten sports articles and TV sports stories include women while eighty-two percent of idiot box sports stories cover mens sports.Women sterilise the cover of magazines or sports pages less than fifteen times a year (Huffman, Tuggle, amp Rosengard, 2004). According to Adams and Tuggle (2004), in 1995, the length of mens television sports stories were a little over a minute, where stories covering womens sports were merely intimately forty seconds. With two professional sports leagues, it was take for grantedd that the coverage of womens sports would increase, but this is not reality. The coverage of womens sports on the television show, ESPNs Sports stub, has actually decreased. In 1995, Sports concentre aired about 730 stories on men and only about 30 on women.The dimension was 251. In 2002, 780 stories cover mens sports. Only 16 stories were about women and the ratio was more than 481. ESPN did dedicate a weekend to women in sports. During this time, Sports Center only aired three stories that included a woman the other 60 were about men. Kian, Vincent, and Mondello (2008), found that about s dismantlety-five percent of the young York Times and USA Todays articles covered mens hoops game. Less than one percent of the articles included both men and women, and two dozen percent focused on just womens basketball.Huffman, Tuggle, and Rosengard (2004) analyzed several(prenominal) universities coverage of womens sports. though forty-one percent of the college athletes are female, 73 percent of the sports newspaper articles focused on male college students. Eighty-two percent of television sports stories were dedicate d to male athletes. In both newspaper articles and television stories, baseball was covered the most. Mens basketball was twice as likely as womens softball to be covered. Less time has been devoted to womens sports coverage, and when it is, it is usually an individual sport compared to womens team sports.This is a large(p) example of The Elaboration Likelihood Model. It states that there are two routes through which persuasive messages are processed. My central route would be to provide and give examples of the statistical analysis increase in audiences exhibit womens sports, and it would be a good investment. In these modern times, women are more successful and reckoning for role models of strength and beauty, like a successful empowering female athlete. Celebrity women athletes can be positive catalysts in selling apparel and have great news worthiness.In my opinion, the media seems to favor womens individual sports compared to womens team sports. Out of 16 Sports Center storie s that covered womens sports, 12 were individual sports. Only two were about womens basketball, though it was almost the end of the WNBA season (Adams amp Tuggle, 2004). In the 1960s, there were less articles on womens Olympic sporting events compared to articles published in the 1990s of the same genre. In 1996, 36 years later, NBC proclaimed that womans team sports would be emerging.Even with this rangy announcement, NBC only aired a few minutes of a womens association football team winning the lucky medal over China. They did not even have a reporter available at the womens gold medal winning softball plot. Over half of the womens Olympics sports covered were individual sports. These sports included swimming, diving, and gymnastics. Serena Williams, a tennis player and Marian Jones, a track athlete, are the only females that have been on the cover of ESPN pickup in the course of five years. Female athletes in individual sports are twice more likely to be in magazines than as those who play on team sports.In several related magazines like Sports Illustrated for Women, females models are dressed as athletes rather than real athletes and cosmos pictured posing with props like soccer balls, to add more sex appeal to the magazine. Some journalists say this is because womens individual sports are considered more feminine than the team sports like basketball and soccer where women look frazzled and sweaty (Grau, Roselli, and Taylor, 2007). Mens sports are still the ones that bring in the big bucks for ticket sales and popularity. Seventy percent of the NCAA division athletic figure goes to mens basketball and football.For e genuinely buck that is spent on womens sports, three dollars of the same budget is spent on mens. For example, male coaches in almost every instance are gainful more than female coaches (Huffman, Tuggle, and Rosengard, 2004). Women athletes are given much less multimillion dollar endorsement contracts than a male athlete. In 1998, 2 00 female athletes from some sports signed various endorsement contracts. The NFL alone had 250 players that signed deals with Nike. Over cd male athletes from football, basketball, and soccer had endorsement contracts with Reebok that same year (Grau, Roselli, amp Taylor, 2007).If the viewers wanted to see more of womens sports, then the network would great fully air what the viewing audience would like to see. During an ESPN television show, town Meeting, a female viewer in the audience asked the Senior wrong President and Manager of editing, why does ESPN not report more on women athletes and womens sports? I can remember David Shaw crook to look at her directly in the face and saying ESPNs job is to report and cover the news and sports that our viewers are posted in.He leaned forward and reiterated that their goal as a sports syllabus network was to get the highest rating possible, and they must air the sports news the public wants and will watch. Mr. Shaw in like manner mentioned that the network cannot generate interest in womens sports without solid data of interest, and if that is what they want to see they need to make this interest known. I feel some diehard male sports fans have a sense of Cognitive Dissonance theory. They think that its not chill to cheer for womens sports, its not as exciting or fast paced as mens sports.The theory of cognitive divergence in companionable psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions or adding new ones to create a unvarying belief system. An example of this would be the conflict between wanting to watch womens sports and knowing that media doesnt have interest a person may try to change their feelings about the odds that they will actually suffer the consequences, or they efficiency add the constant element that sticking to your guns is worth short term benefits.The network does air WNBA games on ESPN and ESPN2, but they seldom air high lights. Christina Brenamen, a commentator for ESPN, said that she feels the network doesnt care and not to carry any changes anytime soon (Adams amp Tuggle, 2004). Grau, Roselli, and Taylor (2007) found that many companies do not use female athletes as endorsers of their products, because they think that the average female consumer does not identify with female athlete, like males do with men athletes. Some of the companies assume that the average female consumer do not fallow womens sports.They also suggest that some female athletes are too masculine and then do not have sex appeal. Angelini (2008) surveyed many individuals asking views about ceremony mens sports vs. womens sports. He wanted to display the stereotypes that individuals have on sports. Most of the actors believed that womens sports were not as stir or exciting to watch as mens sports. Those who participated in the study were asked to watch several sports clips while their heart rate was analyzed. afterward the clips were watched they were asked to answer recognition questions about what they had seen.Both male and females scored higher on the recognition questions after viewing female athletes. If the heart rate increased while the participant was watching the sport, it was determined that their stimulation was high. If their heart rate was stable or deceased while watching the clip, it was determined that the participant was not aroused. Though most participants said that they were more aroused when watching the mens sports, their heart rate actually determined that their arousal rate when watching womens sports was the same as mens at the beginning of the clip.Toward the end of the clips of mens sports the arousal rate actually decreased. Angelini (2008) determined that because of the way the media depicts female athletes, the public thinks that mens sports are going to be more exciting, through with extensive physiological look into determined there are really no major differences . Since Universities viewed basketball as too masculine for women to play, and did not want to award the women athletes of their school. The NCAA did not hold a womens partitioning 1 tournament until 1982.In 2004, a womens Division 1 championship game received the highest national television rating of any womens or mens basketball game that had ever been on a cable channel, up to that point. After analyzing two national newspapers and two sports blade sites, during the 2006 NCAA and womens sports tournaments, five main themes seemed to emerge from all of them. One, womens basketball players were oft compared to men. Two, men were never compared to women. Three, the female athletes were often said to be experienced players because most of them had grown up playing against boys.Four, the fathers of the athletes were interviewed more often than the mothers, because of their athletic ability. Finally, gender was mentioned as a main topic compared to the articles than mens sports. I n every article mens basketball was reported before womens. I would assume that there would be fewer gender biased remarks from the writers, but this was not the case. Even though writers have a little more time to evaluate on what is being written, unlike live television commentary, biases often still emerged (Kian, Vincent, amp Mondello, 2008).Though the number of women playing sports has drastically increased, the media coverage has not kept up. The womens sports covered typically are more feminine and individual like swimming, gymnastics, tennis and golf. Those sports activities are viewed as more masculine, like basketball, soccer, and softball, received significantly less media coverage. The media blames society and society blames the media for the differences in gender bias of sports (Grau, Roselli, amp Taylor, 2007). It is unknown if television networks such as ESPN actually do research on what people would like to watch.They do not know that litre percent of women say they watch television sports regularly and forty-six percent of men say that watch some womens sports (Adams, amp Tuggle, 2004). The 2004 NCAA Division 1 womens basketball championships received the highest rating of all college basketball before then. One would think that after this evidence of interest, womens basketball would receive greater attention.This is a great example of Evaluation dimension in which our inner systems (beliefs, attitudes, values, etc. all support one another(prenominal) and when these are also supported by external evidence, and then we have a comfortable state of affairs. We also have a very strong need to believe we are being consistent with social norms. Like in the case of following other sports fans that are arouse in womens sports. When there is conflict between behaviors that are consistent with inner systems and behaviors that are consistent with social norms. A fitting poser would be the potential threat of social exclusion often sways us towards th e latter, even though it may cause significant inner dissonance. manoeuver for example, if I would approach my fantasy football team and said can we create a team in womens sports, that would really conk some conflict within my group dynamic? I feel more research needs to be conducted to determine if it is really the public that is biased, or is the media just fallowing the same trend that they always have, and they just choose to report sports in the same standardized way. If we start to challenge the idea that masculinity defines sports at the cultural level. I believe that we will one day be able to develop an ideology that teaches and defends this innovative idea of gender quality throughout the educational process. The ultimate goal being that the foundation of sports promotes and abides by the system of gender equality at the professional level of womens sports.