Media Coverage of Women in Sport

The primary purpose of this exploratory study was to determine if gender-specific descriptors regularly found in television and newspaper sport coverage were present in two popular online sites from the emerging medium of Internet sport journalism. Descriptors given to players and coaches during the 2006 NCAA Division I women’s and men’s basketball tournaments by ESPN Internet and CBS SportsLine were examined. Results contradicted gender-specific descriptors found in previous studies on sport media coverage that scholars have argued help uphold hegemonic masculinity in sport.

In late 1933, L'Osservatore Romano fuelled an argument against Il Littoriale, mouthpiece of the Fascist sport policy, about women’s sport: the Vatican Italian-speaking newspaper was against the public women’s athletic meetings, and the “immoral” shorts dressed by the young Italian athletes, such as Ondina Valla, going-to-be the first Italian woman to win an Olympic gold medal (1936, Berlin). Which was the situation of Italian female sports, at that time? Which was the influence of new women models coming from US? What was considered “immoral” by conservative people in 1933 Italy watching a women’s athletic or swimming meeting? How Hollywood stars could help Ondina and her mates on the road of female emancipation? These are the questions this essay is going to answer, helped by a lot of historical images, useful to reconstruct a whole collective imagination.
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Alla fine del 1933, L’Osservatore Romano scatenò una polemica sullo sport femminile contro Il Littoriale (all’epoca portavoce della politica sportiva del regime fascista): il giornale vaticano si dichiarava contrario agli incontri pubblici di atletica femminile, e in particolare agli “immorali” pantaloncini indossati dalle ragazze  italiane partecipanti, fra cui Ondina Valla, ossia colei che a Berlino, nel 1936, sarebbe andata a vincere la prima medaglia d’oro femminile della storia.
Qual era la situazione generale dello sport femminile italiano, a quell’altezza storica? Che influenza avevano i nuovi modelli di donna che provenivano dagli Stati Uniti? Cosa veniva considerato “immorale” dai tradizionalisti nell’iItalia nel 1933 intenti a guardare un meeting di atletica o di nuoto femminile? Come le stelle di Hollywood potevano aiutare Ondina e le sue compagne a percorrere la strada dell’emancipazione? Tali le domande a cui questo saggio proverà a rispondere, con l’aiuto di molte immagini, necessarie per ricostruire un intero immaginario collettivo, sia verbale sia visuale.

This research uses a content analysis to explore how male and female high school athletes are framed. In analyzing basketball coverage from 121 unique newspapers, results show that although boys received the bulk of the coverage, the gap in parity is much smaller compared to prior research. Furthermore, girls were generally not framed as overtly feminine. Still, the coverage also reflects lingering commonsense assumptions about gender, most notably in reference to the athletic body. The authors discuss the potential of high school sports coverage to challenge normative understandings of gender and sports and to consider the role community journalism standards may play in the construction of equitable and just interscholastic sports coverage.

The promotion of women in sport has been identified by the Australian Government as a key focus area for the future development of sport in Australia. The Australian Sports Commission (ASC), through its Women and Sport unit, is working towards achieving greater recognition of women’s sport and female athletes in the media, and improving leadership opportunities.
The Commission engaged the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW and Media Monitors Pty Ltd to undertake research that would provide a broad and rich picture of how much coverage there is of women’s sport and female athletes in radio, television and print media relative to the coverage of male sport, male athletes and mixed sport. The research also focused on how women’s sport and female athletes are portrayed: whether female athletes are routinely stereotyped, sexualised or trivialised in the media, and how they are depicted relative to male athletes.

This introductory chapter presents a brief rationale for the edited collection, 'Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors around the World', outlining some of the major theoretical concerns involved with conducting gender-sensitive analyses of the meanings of women’s engagement in combat sports. As well as briefly introducing readers to the themes and issues covered throughout the rest of the volume, this chapter offers a rough typology of women’s combat sports and related activities. Drawing on previous social and historical research, this typology illustrates the multi-faceted, often contradictory relationships which exist between women’s participation and the maintenance or subversion of sexist formations of gender, thus aiming to sensitise readers to the complexities of these contemporary cultural phenomena.

L’articolo affronta per la prima volta la rappresentazione di un curioso episodio della storia sportiva del nostro Paese, ossia il primo esperimento di calcio femminile italiano, avvenuto fra la primavera e l’autunno del 1933. Alcune tifose decisero infatti di organizzarsi in un sodalizio chiamato Gruppo Femminile Calcistico, ricevendo anche un temporaneo permesso da parte delle autorità sportive fasciste, a patto che le loro partire mantenessero sempre un carattere privato e non pubblico. Il successo del sodalizio, però, portò le calciatrici milanesi all’organizzazione di veri e propri incontri pubblici, che decretarono la prevedibile fine dell’esperimento.
Il lavoro, prendendo in analisi tutti gli articoli, vignette e fotografie pubblicate nel corso dell’anno dal giornale milanese Il Calcio Illustrato, prova a indagare la retorica adottata dalle calciatrici per presentare la propria attività non solo come accettabile ma addirittura come ideale agli occhi di un pubblico fascista (per questo motivo verranno interrogate, con gli strumenti della Storia della Lingua Italiana, alcune espressioni-chiave). Si analizza infine il dialogo instaurato fra queste calciatrici e un giornalista della redazione nel corso di una inchiesta sul campo.
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This essay is the first attempt to study an unique case in the History of Italian Sports: the first experimental women football team (Spring-Fall 1933). Some football fans set up a team called “Gruppo Femminile Calcistico” (GFC), and they obtained a temporary permission from the Fascist sport authorities, as long as GFC shouldn’t play public matches. Yet the team was so successful that the GFC started to play public matches: that’s how their adventure ended.
The essay analyses all the articles, comic strips and photos published during that year (1933) by Il Calcio Illustrato, a Milanese sport magazine. The main aim is to investigate the GFC’s rhetoric, focusing on keywords and linguistic expressions: the women tried to introduce their activity as an admissible, and even ideal activity for the Fascist audience. At the end of the essay there’s an analysis of the dialogue between the women and a male reporter of Il Calcio Illustrato, who wrote a reportage about GFC.
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For an English sum of this research, see also: https://goo.gl/N1bVwN

L’articolo indaga le modalità verbali e iconografiche usate dai giornali sportivi dell’epoca per raccontare la vicenda del Gruppo Femminile Calcistico (GFC), un gruppo di coraggiose ragazze che nella Milano fascista del 1933 tentò di organizzare la prima società calcistica femminile in Italia.
Dopo una prima parte dedicata al mondo delle “tifose” (supporters ancora passive del calcio maschile dell’epoca) [2], l’articolo presenta l’analisi di una serie di lettere ai giornali sportive dell’epoca, grazie alle quali la portavoce del GFC ebbe modo di difendere le ragioni del il neonato gruppo [3], grazie anche al supporto di un apposito testo programmatico (il “programma”) [4]. Vengono poi analizzati due diversi approcci da parte degli inviati (maschili) di due giornali sportivi dell’epoca (La Gazzetta dello Sport e Il Calcio Illustrato) [5], soffermandosi poi sulle interessantissime interviste alle calciatrici proposte dal secondo [6]. Si passa quindi all’analisi intertestuale dell’articolo autobiografico di una cestista milanese (sfruttata probabilmente dal regime in chiave anti-GFC) [7], per poi concludere con un piccolo studio sulla rappresentazione visiva (fotografie, vignette e relative didascalie) della donna sportiva in Italia in quell’epoca [8].
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The essay analyses the verbal and iconographical tools used by sport magazines to tell their audience about GFC (Gruppo Femminile Calcistico, ‘Women Football Club’), a group of brave girls who tried to organize, in 1933 Fascist-Milan, the first female football club in Italy.
After a first part about the social phenomenon of tifose (‘female supporters’ of contemporary male football, not yet active players) [2], the essay analyses some letters written to sport magazines by the mouthpiece of GFC: she wrote them in order to stand up for the new-born group [3], quoting  GFC’s manifesto, called programma [4]. Then the analysis of the different ways sport journalists of La Gazzetta dello Sport and of Il Calcio Illustrato used to write about GFC’s matches [5] comes; the second journalist conducted some interesting Il Calcio Illustrato interviews with the female players [6]. Intertextuality would be very useful to understand a contemporary autobiographical article by a female basketball player: she was most likely exploited by the Fascist regime against GFC [7]. The last part of the essays is about the iconographical representation (photos and captions, cartoon and captions) of the sport woman in 1930s’ Italy [8]. 
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For an English sum of this research, see also: https://goo.gl/N1bVwN

For more than two centuries, women and girls performed extraordinary feats of endurance--with limited notice. In the 19th century, women's individual achievements  included walking for a month with less than 10 or 15 minutes continuous rest, walking and running more than 400 miles in six consecutive days, and defeating all men contestants in endurance competitions. Ideally, these achievements should have shattered myths of female frailty and allowed more women to participate in and manage endurance events. However, women's sporting efforts were often reduced, marginalized or exploited. Analyzing more than 1000 primary sources, the author focuses on long-forgotten 19th century women's professional endurance sports, but it adds that marginalization and exploitation of women's efforts continues into the 21st century.

Plagued by criticism for its athletes being deemed too young and fragile, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) increased its minimum age eligibility policy for Olympic gymnasts from 15 to 16 in 1997 in an attempt to shift media perceptions of the sport in a more positive direction, lengthen gymnasts’ careers, and prevent injuries and burnout. Utilising framing theory, this study sought to determine how U.S.-based newspapers portrayed Olympic gymnasts’ age and physical appearance over the course of eight Olympic Games, how these portrayals changed over time, and whether coverage changed after the FIG’s minimum age rule increase. U.S. newspaper articles from every Olympics from 1984 through 2012 were analysed using qualitative document analysis methodology. Results revealed changes over time coinciding with the minimum age rule implementation. Portrayals of age shifted, with younger gymnasts being described as children and kids in the earlier years of the study and as teens or women in the later years, although language used in quotes by national sport organisations was found to perpetuate the stereotype of gymnasts as children. Regarding physical appearance, height and weight were focused on in the earlier years and excluded from coverage in the later years, although these aspects re-emerged in 2008 due to the intense scrutiny surrounding the Chinese women’s team, who were involved in an age-falsification controversy. The results illustrated the powerful framing function of the media, how those outside the media can influence frames, and how controversial issues can impact media portrayals.

English sum (for PlayingPasts web site) of my research about the first women's football club in Italy (Gruppo Femminile Calcistico, Milan, 1933): https://www.playingpasts.co.uk/articles/gender-and-sport/brave-and-clever-calciatrici-under-the-fascist-regime-the-first-womens-football-club-in-italy-milan-1933/ .

Disordered eating and body dissatisfaction are critical feminist issues. This study assumes a
feminist model of disordered eating, conceptualising it as an inherently socially-situated
continuum on which all women find themselves. Disordered eating and body dissatisfaction
are understood as symptomatic of a patriarchal society that disempowers and oppresses
women. Participation in sport is posited as a potential protective factor. Fourteen women with
a mean age of 34 participated in focus groups. Through thematic analysis, three themes were
constructed: food as foe; can’t get no (body) satisfaction; and sport is a man’s world. Both
sporting and non-sporting participants reported disordered eating and body dissatisfaction. It
was concluded that sport participation has the potential to protect against disordered eating
and body dissatisfaction, since it could both offer the opportunity for women to encounter an
alternative body type and instil in women a sense of control and agency over their bodies.
However, negative externalities such as the sexualisation and objectification of sportswomen,
the limited sporting opportunities for girls in schools and hegemonic femininity currently offset
many of its potential benefits in most circumstances.

This chapter - taken from a larger study considering the role of sport in film - examines the representation of gender in the mainstream sports film genre. While identifying the main focus of the genre on masculinity and the male body, the chapter is principally concerned with tracing the role of women in the mainstream sports film. Historically women have featured within the genre primarily in the roles of inspirational lovers or femme fatales. In the aftermath of World War II, film responded slowly to the changes more generally in Western society, with women featuring increasingly in more significant parts even on occasion crossing the ropes of the boxing ring. However, a recurring feature of such films is the repeated attempts to reaffirm patriarchy through the undermining of strong women. While female owners of sporting franchises are viewed with suspicion, female athletes are subordinated to their male coaches while been repeatedly subject to sexualisation.  Films considered include National Velvet (1944), Pat and Mike (1952), The Main Event (1979), Raging Bull (1980), A League of Their Own (1992), Bring It On (2000) and Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Abstract— Sport media is seldom covering women’s athletes by excluding them from sports news. Yet, female athletes often to be compared between male athlete’s ability and hegemonic powers during sport media coverage. This study identifies how national printed media in Malaysia (New Straits Times and Berita Harian) provide coverage to female athlete’s performance and also analyse construction of empowering positions and disempowering positions for women especially in newspapers. Methods: : a content analysis is used to determine the descriptor in  the newspaper’s content of both newspapers based on articles and images in sport sections during 26th Sea Games 2011 at Indonesia. Kian [2008] coding system was used to analyse the articles and Sport Illustrated Content [1997-2000] coding system for images. Result: Both of newspapers shows the different angle of view for women athletes where the highest numbers of articles published by Berita Harian focusing on psychological strengths and emotional strengths while New Straits Times is focusing on the positive skills level and accomplishment. However, both newspapers give a lowest coverage of articles which was focusing on athletic weaknesses and limitations. For images, NST and Berita Harian focused on the same coded of portrayal for non-sport setting images rather than athletic action.
Keywords- Women position, sport, printed media, articles, images

In terms of media coverage and sporting achievement, Marie-José Pérec dominated French athletics over the course of the 1990s. Pérec’s performances on and off the track produced a vast corpus of written and audiovisual material that illuminates abiding themes in French public discourse during this period, in particular attitudes towards money, fears regarding American-led globalisation, and the role of the media in society. As triple Olympic and double World champion, Pérec is enshrined among the pantheon of contemporary national heroes. Through the example of Pérec, this article investigates the construction of sporting heroes in contemporary France, shedding light on the multiple meanings that were associated with the athlete throughout her career and discussing in particular how her physical appearance, material wealth and mobility were implicated in this process.

This Journal of Sport History article describes the historical and social significance of women endurance walkers and runners--from medieval smock races to late-20th century professional sports.  The account reveals a complicated story about women's rights, medicine, sports as entertainment, and media framing.  Powerful groups and their ideologies, then as now, are a major force for deciding what is newsworthy, profitable, revolutionary, or immoral, and ultimately how history is written. Interest group actions are interpreted here within the context of six ideologies: Victorian beliefs, capitalism, medicalization, suffrage feminism, popular culture, and physical culture. In the see-sawing tension between legitimation and marginalization we discern a familiar pattern: the spectacular successes of a few promote legitimation and embolden so many others in such a short time to copy their activities that the social movement we call a “craze” develops. Often, as in this case, the craze leads to perceived excesses and abuses which erode legitimacy and provide a rationale for interference and suppression.

Articolo di Sandro Bocchio sulle calciatrici milanesi del Gruppo Femminile Calcistico (1933), nato da conversazioni con Marco Giani, pubblicato da Tuttosport (27/12/2017). Tratto dalla rassegna-stampa giornaliera di Moked (qui per il file completo: https://www.moked.it/unione_informa/pdfrassegna/rassegnastampa.pdf ). Riassume in maniera divulgativa i contenuti di due articoli scientifici, ossia:

https://www.academia.edu/35514299/_Amo_moltissimo_il_giuoco_del_calcio_._Storia_e_retorica_del_primo_esperimento_di_calcio_femminile_in_Italia_Milano_1933_I_really_love_football_._History_of_the_first_experimental_female_football_team_in_Italy_Milan_1933_

https://www.academia.edu/35514573/Le_nere_sottanine_e_la_congiura_del_silenzio_Lingua_e_immagini_nelle_polemiche_giornalistiche_sul_Gruppo_Femminile_Calcistico_milanese_1933_Black_skirts_and_the_silence_plot_Language_and_pictures_in_paper_war_about_Gruppo_Femminile_Calcistico_Milan_1933_

For an English sum of this research, see also: https://goo.gl/N1bVwN