Women in Sports
the athletes are male. Women are just not as interested in athletics as men are.
FACT: It is no accident that colleges have more men athletes than women athletes. More money is spent around the country recruiting men athletes. The “institutional average for athletic re- cruitment for Division I schools is $139,000 for men's sports, and only $28,840 for women's sports” (Acosta, Carpenter). If recruitment money were spent equally for women and men, schools would have a much better chance of enrolling an equal number of women and men athletes.
Megan insert Title 9 part right here.
Research shows that sportswomen significantly are underrepresented in the sports pages and on television. Moreover, when they are covered, their achievements are more likely to be trivialized and devalued and their images portrayed as incompetent or uncoordinated. “Men's sports still receive more than 90% of all electronic and media coverage”(Lydon.) Not only is the reporting of women's sports achievements sub-par, advertising using female athlete images is worse. It is not atypical to see ads of women playing sports in which the focus is on scantily clad athletes and shots are more of buttocks and breasts than heads and skilled play.
Our culture has changed, but the media has lagged behind. Most people do not know that:
“Since 1991, women have outspent men in the purchase of athletic shoes and apparel (over 21,000,000,000 per year,) more women participate in sports and fitness than men do, in 1970, one in evry 27 girls participated in high school varsity sports: today that figure is one of three”(Keaton.) Our culture has undergone dramatic changes in the past 25 years with regard to recognition of inappropriate gender stereotyping. Yet, the advertising industry in particular has been slow to reflect these changes. Images of women in general still are unrealistically thin and "twiggy" or reflective of sexual connotations. Female athletes most often are portrayed by models as women without muscles or sports skills. Athlete and non-athlete models are portrayed in sexually provocative or non-athletic poses instead of moving or posing as authentic athletically skilled performers. Despite the phenomenal growth of women's sports in the last 30 years, sports coverage in newspapers and on television and radio largely remains devoted to men's sports. Furthermore, when female athletes are the subject of reports and commentary, they sometimes are referred to in words that treat them differently than men, often in ways which downplay or trivialize their achievements.
So what should the media do? What kind of images would make women athletes happy? The media simply should reflect the reality of women' s diverse sports experiences from grace and beauty, to physical strength, endurance, and power. A balanced and realistic view is what is absent in the media. Young girls and women from all ages, races, and social class backgrounds are breaking down historical barriers to their participation. The media is obligated to reflect and perpetuate that reality, not [next page]