{"id":5779,"date":"2018-06-05T06:30:20","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T11:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesportjournal.org\/?p=5779"},"modified":"2018-05-25T14:36:14","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T19:36:14","slug":"exposure-to-womens-sports-changing-attitudes-toward-female-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesportjournal.org\/article\/exposure-to-womens-sports-changing-attitudes-toward-female-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"Exposure to Women\u2019s Sports: Changing Attitudes Toward Female Athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Authors:<\/strong> Travis Scheadler, Audrey Wagstaff, Ph.D., MJE<\/p>\n

Corresponding Authors:<\/strong>
\nTravis Scheadler
\ntscheadler@wilmington.edu
\n(937) 751-5799
\n6811 Oakland Rd
\nLoveland, OH 45140
\nWilmington College<\/p>\n

Audrey Wagstaff, Ph.D., MJE
\naudrey_wagstaff@wilmington.edu
\n(937) 481-2253
\n1870 Quaker Way
\nPyle Box 1221
\nWilmington, OH 45177
\nWilmington College<\/p>\n

Exposure to Women\u2019s Sports: Changing Attitudes Toward Female Athletes<\/h3>\n

ABSTRACT<\/strong>
\nMany sports fans argue that women\u2019s sports are boring compared to men\u2019s sports. Simultaneously, women\u2019s sports, compared to men\u2019s sports, are rarely broadcasted in the media. Therefore, could the media be making sports fans believe that women\u2019s sports are less desirable by giving them less coverage? Using the Agenda-Setting Theory, Framing Theory, and Mere Exposure Effect, an intervention was developed to promote women\u2019s sports to sports fans. Half of the participants received watched highlight films of women\u2019s sports each week for 4 weeks. Results indicate that the intervention decreased prejudice towards female athletes after 3 weeks but had no effect on interest towards women\u2019s sports. Future studies should immerse participants into the live action of women\u2019s sports rather than highlight footage.
\n<\/p>\n

KEYWORDS:<\/strong> women\u2019s sports; sports media; gender discrimination<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/strong>
\nWomen have been fighting for equality all throughout history. In sport, specifically, women were once not even permitted to watch the Olympic Games (11). After finally being permitted to participate in sports, women had to undergo gender testing to make sure they were not men trying to cheat the system (62). Furthermore, the coverage of women\u2019s sports did not supersede coverage of dogs and horses until 1992 (42). To this day, female athletes still experience significantly less and different media coverage than their male counterparts. The purpose of this study is to examine how increasing exposure to women\u2019s sports impacts attitudes towards women\u2019s sports. <\/p>\n

Improvements in Gender Equality in Sports<\/strong>
\nAlthough women have faced many challenges throughout history, they have come closer and closer to achieving gender equality and those advances cannot be ignored. The US Congress passed Title IX of the Omnibus Education Act of 1972, for example, mandated equal federal funding opportunities towards male and female students in higher education (38), which encouraged more girls and women to participate in sports. This increased accessibility to sports sparked a change of less than 32,000 intercollegiate women and 300,000 high school girls that participated in sports prior to \u2018Title IX\u2019 to 200,000 intercollegiate women and three million girls that participated in sports in 2010 (34).<\/p>\n

Title IX has made it possible for women and girls to become more involved, and thus, more competitive in sports. The London 2012 Olympic Games featured, for the first time in history, an equal number of sports for women as for men (25). Upon this expansion of women\u2019s sports, many countries such as the US experienced a large growth in the number of female Olympians – so large that female US Olympians outnumbered male US Olympians (25) and went on to earn more medals, including more gold medals, for the US (12). The 2012 Games provided opportunities for more than just the US, though. Every single country participating, for the first time ever, had at least one female participant (12). Sports fans, too, are seemingly becoming more interested in the push for gender equality by watching more women\u2019s sports. More and more people watch the Women\u2019s Final Four of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball every year, consistently breaking viewership records (3). <\/p>\n

It is important to keep women and girls participating in sports and exercise because sports have many benefits for men and women regardless of gender including decreased social loafing later in life with a history of participating in team, rather than individual sports (16); improved respiratory and cardiovascular health (58); enhanced muscle and bone strength and reduced hip fractures, vertebrae fractures, and cancer diagnoses (2, 66); reduced risk of Type II diabetes (22); decreased risk of depression (39); improved grades (51); and in children who participate in team sports, increased self-concept and self-esteem (55).<\/p>\n

Gender Inequality in Sports Still Exists<\/strong>
\nDespite the improvements towards reaching gender equality in sports, female athletes still face numerous obstacles. The media, for example, present sports as if there are masculine (e.g., football and ice hockey) and feminine (e.g., gymnastics and figure skating) sports, aligning with traditional expectations of male and female athletes (36, 44), which makes it more difficult to break traditional gender barriers and allowing women to participate in masculine sports and men to participate in feminine sports. In fact, many female athletes are only accepted by society and receive coverage in the media if they participate in traditionally feminine sports (12). If a woman dares to participate in a masculine sport, their sexuality is immediately questioned (7). The media tends to ignore, which devalues, women\u2019s athletic accomplishments by focusing on their physical appearance (60), private lives (4, 29, 31), and femininity and sexuality even if they achieve more impressive athletic feats (21).<\/p>\n

Not only does the media focus on different features of a female athlete opposed to a male athlete, but some researchers analyzed media coverage of female athletes and reported that women receive poorer quality of technical production, less overall coverage, and are demeaned as \u201cgirls\u201d while men are portrayed as \u201cstrong and powerful men\u201d that are \u201chistorically important\u201d (18). Television networks even choose different shots and angles for at least female beach volleyball players (4) and track and field athletes (26), exploiting their bodies. The emphasis on their bodies and sexuality could be putting women and girls at risk for anxiety and fear (49). Females who experience the media\u2019s emphasis of attractive qualities are more likely to also experience anorexia, bulimia, body dissatisfaction, and a drive for thinness (5). In addition, such anxiety is related to quitting sports (24, 53), experiencing less enjoyment in sports (53, 57), and suffering impaired performances (28, 68, 32, 48, 63). Therefore, the unequal attention given to female athletes may lead to many negative consequences for women in addition to protecting male privilege in sports (13, 35).<\/p>\n

This unequal attention may seem minimal to some, but is discrimination nonetheless. Even if women and girls do not interpret the inequality as discrimination, it can still cause negative consequences because then any kind of negative outcome (i.e., lower ticket sales compared to male athletes) can be internally attributed (i.e., self-blame) which will result in reductions in motivation, self-esteem, and future expectations for achievement (67).<\/p>\n

Media Exposure of Women\u2019s Sports<\/strong>
\nGender inequality, as noted, has many negative consequences for female athletes. In addition to the unequal type of coverage that female athletes receive, they also receive less overall coverage (8, 19, 30, 47, 56). Women\u2019s sports are also perceived as less exciting and slower than men\u2019s sports (40). In that same study, participants reported that they had minimal experience with women\u2019s sports and only watched women\u2019s sports if that is what was on television. The media, though, does not give women\u2019s sports much coverage, minimizing the frequency of which sports fans view women\u2019s sports. In fact, less than 10% of sports media covers women\u2019s sports and less than 2% of sports media covers women\u2019s sports that are deemed masculine (37). Unfortunately, news staff are less likely to recognize this difference than viewers (41), meaning that news staff may not realize that they are arguably discriminating against female athletes. <\/p>\n

Even though the Olympic Games are now offering the same number of sports for women as they do men as previously noted, the Olympic Games also displays unequal coverage through their networks. For example, the US women\u2019s basketball team won their fifth consecutive gold medal in 2012, but received less than half of a minute in prime-time coverage whereas the men\u2019s team who won their second consecutive gold medal received approximately half of an hour of prime-time coverage (12). Notably, though, the 2012 Olympic Games, for the first time ever, also provided more coverage of women\u2019s sports than men\u2019s sports on NBC; however, this coverage was primarily for women\u2019s sports deemed feminine (e.g., gymnastics) (12). <\/p>\n

A study examining ESPN\u2019s SportsCenter and three Los Angeles networks discovered that only 1.4% of SportsCenter\u2019s coverage and 1.6% of the local networks\u2019 coverage were of women\u2019s sports, the lowest in at least 20 years (47). Although this study was conducted earlier than 2012, it provides evidence that women are still receiving less coverage in sports outside of the summer Olympics. <\/p>\n

Such misrepresentation of women\u2019s sports has been argued to be responsible for the lack of interest in women\u2019s sports from sports fans (9, 14, 15) and reinforces the public\u2019s general negative attitudes towards women (61). As previously argued, this lack of coverage of women\u2019s sports may be holding sports fans back from developing interest in women\u2019s sports and adapting fan affiliations with women\u2019s sports teams and athletes (27). The same study also noted that societal expectations also promote divisions between boys and girls during youth, arguing that this issue is more than just an issue with the media. The media, however, may play an important role in changing the inequalities women face in sports.<\/p>\n

Theoretical Considerations<\/strong>
\nThe Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media, also known as the Agenda-Setting Theory (45) argues that the media tells the audience what to think about by giving a topic or issue with higher importance more coverage. Therefore, women\u2019s sports, in the eyes of the sports fans, may be experienced as less important than men\u2019s sports because it consistently receives less media exposure with the exception of the 2012 Olympic Games (12).<\/p>\n

Framing Theory (23) similarly argues that frames, or mental schemas, facilitate information processing, thus shaping what the audience knows about a topic and what they should think about a topic based on the inclusion, exclusion, and prominence of the frames the media presents (20). In other words, \u201cthe audience is thought to adopt the frames of reference offered by journalists and to see the world in a similar way\u201d (46, p.557), thus, shaping the opinions of sports fans when women\u2019s sports are de-emphasized.<\/p>\n

The Mere Exposure Effect (69), adds more to these theories, simply arguing that the more an individual is exposed to a stimulus, the more favorable they perceive it. Therefore, when sports fans are not exposed to women\u2019s sports, they comprehend the lack of exposure as if they should not care about women\u2019s sports (10, 15, 17). Additionally, when the media places an emphasis on women\u2019s sports that are feminine opposed to masculine, sports fans begin to believe that women and girls should only be participating in feminine sports and not masculine sports (12).<\/p>\n

If the media plays such a large role in shaping attitudes and values in regards to women\u2019s sports, why does the media continue? For starters, as previously mentioned, the media, especially male members of the media, may be unaware of the vast differences in portrayals of women and girls versus men and boys in sports (41). Additionally, sports fans are continuing to watch sports because it allows eustress, boosts self-esteem if a favorite team or athlete performs well, offers a way to \u2018escape,\u2019 entertains them, provides an opportunity to gamble, is aesthetically pleasing, commits one to a larger group affiliation (e.g., sport fan of a specific team), and brings families together (64). Perhaps, given all of these potential benefits, sports fans continue to watch sports in an attempt to reap more of the benefits, which unintentionally leads the media to believe that their audience likes what they are watching, reinforcing the emphasis on men\u2019s sports and the de-emphasis of women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

Athletes such as Danica Patrick and the German National Women\u2019s soccer team, amongst many others, though, often sexualize themselves, despite other feminists claiming the media is the culprit (50). The same article argued, though, that these female athletes feel obligated to sexualize their bodies in an effort to promote their respective sport.<\/p>\n

Female athletes and marketing organizations that sell sex believe that it is the most powerful way to advertise and increase sales, ratings, and sponsorships (33). This method, however, does not increase interest or respect for women\u2019s sports and women and girls, the primary fans of women\u2019s sports, react negatively to it (1, 33). <\/p>\n

What method could work, then, to generate interest and respect for women\u2019s sports if selling sex does not work? The present study uses the provided information and theories to deduce some hypotheses. For example, because the Mere Exposure Effect argues that increased exposure to a stimulus can generate more favorable attitudes towards the stimulus and because sports fans have indicated that they may watch more women\u2019s sports if they were more accessible, the researchers hypothesized:<\/p>\n