Gender Gap in Sports MEdia Coverage Emma Mitchum

To preface this project, I focused on the inequalities between the binary genders of male and female. In the current society we are living in, sports are divided in the two sub groups of men’s and women’s. I know and acknowledge that gender is NOT a binary and is on a spectrum. I recognize the perpetuation of this binary is problematic and something that the sports industry needs to change.

During the initial research for this project I started out with the idea to showcase the gendered pay gap within sports. Like many other professions in the world, women athletes get paid less than their male counterparts. In my exploration of this topic I came across this article by Rebekah Box, “The Gender Equality Debate: A Boost for Women in Sports.” In this article she outlined the inequalities in pay among different sports. This article also showcased a lesser known statistic about the disparity of media coverage between men's and women's sports.

“Women make up 40% of sportspeople, however as of 2020 they continue to still only receive 4% of the total sports media coverage in print and broadcast.”

This is a stark inequality in the representation of women in sports media. Media has the power to influence the way that the world views women and women’s sports. It is very telling of our society how little media corporations showcase women athletes. Women have historically been oppressed and marginalized, especially in patriarchal societies. The hobbies, accomplishments, and passions of women are consistently underrepresented and undervalued. This underrepresentation continues in society today, especially in the world of sports. Sports often reflect the society in which they persist and perpetuate the same gender inequalities.

The gender pay gap is widely discussed and debated within sports and other general professions. I wanted to focus on this lesser known statistic to advocate for the coverage of women’s sports in media. The 2021 article, “News media still pressing the mute button on women’s sports” by Jenesse Miller, discusses these statistics is more detail. Miller shows that even with world events such as the 2019 Women’s World Cup in soccer or the Olympics, there is still a drastic disparity in coverage. During these major event the media coverage of women’s sports only slightly elevates to around 5.4%. When confronted with this sexist statistic many channels or corporations will try to defend themselves by saying that they feature more women’s sports in their online or social media content. However, in reality there is only a small increase in women’s sports coverage online. The average of online or social media content featuring women’s sports or athletes is still only at 9%.

My artifact showcases the drastic difference in the amount of coverage that men’s sports gets compared to women’s sports. I have collected 10 different newspapers throughout the semester from a variety of different places and sources. I took the sports sections of these newspapers and cut out everything related to sports and divided them into piles on if they pertained to men or women. Two posters of the same size will show the contrast in coverage. One will be filled with the newspaper articles on women’s sports and one will be filled with the articles covering men’s sports. This will show just how much more attention men’s sports get in this one area of the media. The first step to solving this problem is the acknowledgement of this inequality. The more attention this problem gets the more pressure will be on the media to change the way that they cover sports.

Appreciate