Bias in Womens Sports Essay

The domain of sports is strictly dominated by a priapic hegemonic structure, which is not exactly welcoming to the thought or idea of sharing this love of sports with the opposite fire. The term hegemony is defined as the dominance of one secern or group of various(prenominal)s over the others. Although wo hands adopt shown a passionate interest for sports, their ability to join this culturally powerful organization as respected professionals has not been completely accomplished.They have been given opportunities to participate in athletic areas that are not the most culturally popular venues within Ameri butt joint culture (i. e. golf, gymnastics, swimming, and tennis), notwithstanding their inception and respected entrance into the American conglome come outs of the sports world (i. e. hoops, baseball, and football game) have been preferably denied. manpower suffocating treasure their superior domination of this cultural superstructure and fear the idea of allowing the opposite sex entrance into their precious stratum.work forces ultimate trepidation is sports not being lonesome(prenominal) their secret possession. Wo hands have passionately fought to rotate themselves as strong bounteous, knowledgeable enough, and tough enough to survive in the historically constructed system hands have carved out the association of sports and the manner in which it operates. Although their desperate attempts have allowed them to chip through the first few layers of this concrete barrier in which they are faced with, their attempts to delve deeper to ultimately make water the core of its existence has been a disappointing failure.Despite the make up in womanish athletes participating in sports at a college and professional level, the use of egg-producing(prenominal) athletes as product endorsers has been limited. Some female readers wish my wife has suggested that there may be an obvious media bias against female athletes and other problems related to how womens lack of being feminine is portrayed to the public. I feel that women athletes dont get enough recognition compared to male athletes in the media, and how they dont appear as profitable product endorsers in magazines or commercials as men.Only five percent of media cover uping is devoted to womens sports (Adams angstrom unit Tuggle, twain hundred4). The 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 reportage of team up up sports for men, while womens sports coverage ordinarily is focused on individual sports. In some(prenominal) articles, the media defends its biases claiming that it is what the public wants, and not all viewers are interested in womens sports.I feel the number of women playing professional sports has drastically change magnitude over the past decad e, more(prenominal)over the medias news coverage of womens sports has not increased with this gallery of women in sports. On ESPN Live news radio, they have mentioned over the last ten years, there has been closely no change in the percentage of national airtime that was designated for womens sports. Only about one in ten sports articles and TV sports stories include women while eighty-two percent of telecasting sports stories cover mens sports.Women make the cover of magazines or sports pages less than fifteen times a year (Huffman, Tuggle, amp Rosengard, 2004). harmonize to Adams and Tuggle (2004), in 1995, the length of mens television sports stories were a little over a minute, where stories cover charge womens sports were only about forty seconds. With two professional sports leagues, it was assumed that the coverage of womens sports would increase, but this is not reality. The coverage of womens sports on the television show, ESPNs Sports Center, has actually decreased. In 1995, Sports Center visionary about 730 stories on men and only about 30 on women.The ratio was 251. In 2002, 780 stories cover mens sports. Only 16 stories were about women and the ratio was more than 481. ESPN did return a weekend to women in sports. During this time, Sports Center only aired three stories that included a womanhood the other 60 were about men. Kian, Vincent, and Mondello (2008), found that about s level(p)ty-five percent of the New York Times and ground forces Todays articles covered mens basketball game. Less than one percent of the articles included twain men and women, and twenty-four percent focused on retributory womens basketball.Huffman, Tuggle, and Rosengard (2004) analyzed several universities coverage of womens sports. Though forty-one percent of the college athletes are female, seventy-three percent of the sports newspaper articles focused on male college students. Eighty-two percent of television sports stories were dedicated to male athlete s. In both newspaper articles and television stories, baseball was covered the most. Mens basketball was twice as similarly 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 capacious example of The Elaboration Likelihood Model. It asserts 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 viewing womens sports, and it would be a good investment. In these modern times, women are more successful and looking for role models of strength and beauty, want 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 becharmms to favor womens individual sports compared to womens team sports. Out of 16 Sports Center stories 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 aforementioned(prenominal) genre. In 1996, 36 years later, NBC announced that womans team sports would be emerging. charge with this salient announcement, NBC only aired a few minutes of a womens soccer team winning the gold medal over China. They did not even have a reporter on tap(predicate) at the womens gold medal winning softball game. 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 Magazine in the course of five years. Female athletes in individual sports are twice more likely to be in magaz ines than as those who play on team sports.In several related magazines like Sports Illustrated for Women, females models are dressed as athletes preferably than real athletes and being pictured posing with props like soccer balls, to add more sex appeal to the magazine. Some journalists joint 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 budget goes to mens basketball and football.For every dollar 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 paid more than female coaches (Huffman, Tuggle, and Rosengard, 2004). Women athletes are given much fewer multimillion dollar endorsement contracts than a male athlete. In 1 998, 200 female athletes from many sports signed various endorsement contracts. The NFL alone had 250 players that signed deals with Nike. Over 400 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 profits 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 Vice President and Manager of editing, wherefore does ESPN not report more on women athletes and womens sports? I can concoct David Shaw turning 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 interested in.He leaned forward and reiterated that their goal as a sports broadcast network was to get the highest rating possible, and they must air the sports news the public wants and pull up stakes watch . Mr. Shaw also 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 cool to cheer for womens sports, its not as exciting or fast paced as mens sports.The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to thin dissonance by altering existing cognitions or adding new ones to create a coherent picture 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 might 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 highli ghts. Christina Brenamen, a commentator for ESPN, said that she feels the network doesnt care and not to expect 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 unbroken womens sports.They also suggest that some female athletes are too masculine and therefore do not have sex appeal. Angelini (2008) surveyed many individuals asking views about observance mens sports vs. womens sports. He wanted to uncover the stereotypes that individuals have on sports. Most of the musicians believed that womens sports were not as stimulate 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. After the clips were watched they were asked to answer recognition questions about what they had seen.Both male and females scored high 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 arousal 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 research determined there are really no major differences. Since Universities viewed basketball as too masculine for women to play, and did not want to represent the women athletes of their school. The NCAA did not moderate a womens Division 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 web sites, during the 2006 NCAA and womens sports tournaments, five main themes seemed to emerge from all of them. One, womens basketball players were often 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 large 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 take compared to the articles than mens sports. I n every article mens basketball was reported in the beginning 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, strange 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 parliamentary procedure 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 fif ty 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 out front 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 interested 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 Example would be the potential threat of social exclusion often sways us towards the latter, even though it may cause significant inner dissonance.Take for example, if I would approach my fantasy football team and said can we create a team in womens sports, that would really stolon some conflict within my group dynamic? I feel more research postulate 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 political orientation that teaches and defends this innovative idea of gender quality throughout the educational process. The ultimate goal being that the trigger of sports promotes and abides by the system of gender equality at the professional level of womens sports.