How equitable are media representations of sportswomen during major sport events?
The media play a critical role in the public access to women’s sport and in shaping our attitudes toward sportswomen and their performances. With this in mind, Adele Pavlidis, Millicent Kennelly and Laura Rodriguez Castro analysed coverage of the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games (Australia), an event which focused on improving gender equity through equal medaling opportunities for male and female athletes. Despite structural changes to the Games to improve gender equity, we found sportswomen were still depicted in a very narrow way, and intersectional representations were mainly excluded. Although sportswomen were quite visible in press coverage of the Games (i.e., the quantity of images of sportswomen had increased), the ‘quality’ of these images – in terms of representing sportswomen in their diversity – was poor. In particular, traditional press outlets favoured a discourse that celebrated “white women smiling”, exclusive of other, more diverse representations of women. The majority of images featured sportswomen who were white, smiling and embodying “feminine” traits such as fairness, kindness, and cooperation. We still have far to go in terms of media coverage if we are to embrace sportswomen in their multiplicity – and to recognize that sportswomen can be strong, capable, butch, femme, and varied in their range of expressions of gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity.
Publication
Pavlidis, A., Kennelly, M., & Rodriguez Castro, L. (2019). White women smiling? Media representations of women at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Sociology of Sport Journal.
Securing a sport participation legacy for women and girls.
This project explores the impact and influence of Commonwealth Games related funding initiatives on women and girls’ participation in multisport, fitness and physical activity programs with a particular focus on programs inclusive of diversity and including multicultural participants, women at risk, and children with additional needs. The project identifies structural and systemic factors that may facilitate or inhibit women and girls’ long-term participation and contributes to research on the sport participation legacy of major events. The research examines sport-event legacy goals and strategies, partnerships, systems, structures and resources, as well as attitudes and opinions of organisational members relating to women and girls’ sport participation.
Case studies centre on:
- policies and strategic plans
- action plans,
- media and communication, and
- organisational culture and leadership.
The research creates further understanding of how to maximise the long-term community, sport and health benefits from GC2018 by contributing new knowledge to planning and coordinating initiatives that increase awareness and attractiveness of sport and active recreation to women and girls.
Research Team
- Dr Caroline Riot
- Dr Adele Pavlidis
- Dr Millie Kennelly
- Dr Kristine Toohey
- Dr Kevin Filo
- Dr Alana Thomson
- Dr Brad Hill
- Dr Kath Lloyd
- Dr Wendy O’Brien
Gendered Representations of Athletes on Social Media #GC2018
Dr Elaine Yang PhD, Dr Caroline Riot PhD, Dr Catheryn Khoo-Lattimore PhD, Ms Michelle Hayes and Ms Emily Chen
The team collected and analysed more than 700,000 tweets during GC2018 to investigate the representations of female and male athletes on social media. The data consists of tweets posted by general public, Australian media, sport organisations and organising committee. The initial results using big data analytics indicate no gender differences in the coverage and representation of athletes. However, a closer investigation on the gender connotation of the tweets reveal gender differences albeit marginal. The study found that female athletes were 2.8 times more likely to be referred to as girls, rather than male athletes as boys. Gendered adjectives such as beautiful and sexy were about 2 times more likely to appear on tweets mentioning female athletes. More importantly, the findings reveal that seemingly neutral words (e.g., dedicated, talented and hard-working) could carry gendered connotations. The finding points to internalised stereotypes about women's sporting abilities, which is likely to discourage women and girls from participating in or even pursuing sports as a career. Social media has the ability to shape public opinion. If used strategically, social media presents a great avenue to neutralise the gender stereotypes and advance new ways of thinking about gender and sports, especially among the younger generation.
Gender Balance and the International Olympic Committee
A common approach to gender balance in governance has been through the creation of women’s groups/commissions and the use of gender targets/quotas. This approach may perpetuate the idea that gender equality is an issue that only affects women and does not explicitly encourage men to be involved in changing a male-dominated governance culture. The purpose of this study - led by Popi Sotiriadou - was to explore the role men have, and can play in working towards gender equity in sport governance. We drew on organisational documents and semi-structured interviews with 22 men and 12 women from eight organisations involved in sport governance at the national or international level. Data suggests that male board members primarily focus on creating gender equality. They actively recruit women to fill positions but there is little evidence that they do much to change the context/culture in which that governance takes place. Women argued for more active involvement of men in enabling a transformation towards gender equity, that is, a gender responsive shift in governance culture. Read more about this project here.
Publications
- Sotiriadou, P., & de Haan, D. (2019). Women and leadership: Advancing gender equity policies in sport leadership through sport governance. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 11(3), 365-383.
- Sotiriadou, P., & Pavlidis, A. (2020). Gender and diversity in sport governance. Routledge Handbook of Sport Governance.
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