Name :- Samyak Nale

Roll No:-19
Subject:- Sports Health and Nutrition
Assignment 2

Women have participated in sports since ancient times. Still, before 1870 it
was more like a play activity without competition or special rules. Women
were looking for more physical activity. At the edge of 19th and 20th
centuries, they started creating unofficial sports societies on tennis,
archery, and croquet. The first college women competitions are not
recognized as such, for they were held inside the colleges. Thus, female
athletics was limited to college sports until the 1920s, when the Women’s
Division of National Amateur Athletic Federation was created. It took the
female sport to the intercollegiate level. With the introduction of basketball
in 1892, the intercollegiate activity increased. Female college competitions
became more popular in the early 20th century.

IN Nineteenth Amendment if 1920 gave women a right to vote, which activated

the movement for other female freedoms including participation in sports. Still,
the situation did not change much until World War II when the first professional
women athletic team appeared.

Since 1966, a Commission on Intercollegiate Sports for Women took care of

intercollegiate competitions. As of 1969, the national championships included
gymnastics and track and field for women. Some years later swimming,
badminton, and volleyball were added.

In 1970s female sport was treated positively. The main focus was still not on
winning but on the participation. The passage of Title IX was supposed to equal
the women’s rights, but its implementation was not clear. Nevertheless, after Title
IX, the participation of women and girls’ sports increased. In the early 1980s,
women’s championships were included into National Collegiate Athletic
Association program.

On the whole, the way of women into the sport was long and not easy. There
were no possibilities to participate on equal conditions with men for a long time.
Still, due to the feminist movements and Title IX, women became the equal
participants of the sporting life.

World Cup Soccer Stats Erase the Sport’s Most

Dominant Players: Women

In this article, Valerie Alexander shares her excitement about the World Cup. She
played soccer in high school herself, so she knows what she is talking about.
She gets angry with American soccer commentators who praise the male
players. The statistics reveal that women often have better results but are not
recognized. For example, the top-five of the goal scorers in soccer are women. It
may be the result of various factors. Among them, there are higher-scoring
games or longer women’s sports careers. Still, the fact is that four female soccer
players are included into the world top 10 goal scorers, while the male player got
just the 20th position.

The author does not disregard the outstanding results of male athletes. She is
just against the male dominance in sports reports while women show equal or
better results. Alexander claims that such injustice is observed in almost all
sports. The exceptions are gymnastics and tennis, where female performance is
obviously better.

Many researchers admit little participation of girls in sport. Some of them observe
the dominance of boys and, correspondently, the subordination of girls in sports
activities. The article under analysis presents the results of a study that
investigated the ways of school girls’ participation in physical education using the
feminist poststructuralism. The study explored the negotiation of gender relations
during the physical education classes in high school. The study was set in a
public high school. It lasted for eight weeks. The scholars used the qualitative
methods of research. They gathered the field notes and the interviews (both
formal and informal) with 15 student girls from three classes and a teacher. A
factor that differs the participants of this research was that the girls appreciated
and liked physical activity. The researcher visited each class 10 times. The
physical education classes were attended, and the girls were interviewed
afterward. The obtained data underwent inductive and content analysis to figure
out the categories and themes from the notes and interviews. The validity was
checked with a cross-scale analysis.

The results revealed that the gender relations which girls observed restrain and
promote their physical activity at the same time. On the one hand, they liked the
physical education classes and found them enjoyable. On the other hand, they
considered their activity restrained by the accepted gender issues.

The poststructuralist scheme allowed to observe the negotiation of gender

relations in physical education classes which are similar to those of the society.
Although the girls have various opportunities for participation in sports activities,
they still observe gender barriers.

Sport, Theory and the Problem of Values

The reviewed chapter reveals the role of sport in the society’s perception of
differences. In modern researches, sport is studied apart from the society. It is
not correct for sport is a part of social life. The author attempts to suggest a
theory to compose the analysis of sport, culture, and society. To analyze the role
of sport in a particular country and society, some frameworks may be used. The
first deals with functionalism. It includes the factions that sport fulfills, like socio-
emotional, integrative or political. Symbolic framework discovers what sport
mean to a person, the influence of interaction with people on the feelings about
sport etc. The framework of interpretative sociology suggests the questions on
the consciousness of athletes, the experience of their careers, and the
representation of sports in te media. The process sociology framework helps to
reveal the processes that influence the sports development, the level of violence
in sport, sport’s globalization, etc. Another framework to discover sport is that of
political economy. It deals with the incomes from sport, the exploitation of the
people involved in sport and the trade of athletes. The most significant topics
about the modern sport are as follows: the globalization, identity, social
inequality, culture and power, and development and freedom. Every concept
about the modern sport is worth of a separate research. Sport is the field where
theory and practice should be closely connected and applied simultaneously.

The Media’s Sexualization of Female Athletes: A Bad

Call for the Modern Game

For more than a century, the feminist activists have tried to increase the role of
women in sport. Female athletes were often discriminated earlier in the society.
The law that gave way for women in sport is Title IX of the Education
Amendments. Due to it, the quantity of girls and women engaged in sport
increased. With more women in the sports arena, another problem appeared. It is
the sexualization of female athletes. One of the possible reasons for it may be
the media attempt to distinguish the genders. Still, this fact may lead to the sexist
traditionalism of the society. The sexualization in the media makes female
athletes more popular but it distracts attention from their achievements. It may
also reduce the ladies’ self-esteem. Besides, the media’s methods influence the
spectators, misinterpreting the intended messages. Thus, the media do not
inform the viewers but strengthen the stereotypes.

The Olympics’ Women Coverage

In the column reviewed, Jennifer Vanasco investigates the coverage of female

athletes in the Olympic games in the media. She mentions that often the press
concentrates rather women’s bodies than the achievements. While women joined
the Olympics only in the 1990s, they are presented in all kinds of the sport now.
Even women athletes from Saudi Arabia visited the Olympics, although their
religion does not support such actions. The gender testing of female athletes
appears to be the most shocking on the news. It was not just, for was applied
only to women. The author claims that although female athletes were widely
depicted in the media, their real victory will be when their achievements are in
focus, not gender.

Exposure to Women’s Sports: Changing Attitudes Toward Female

Athletes

Many sports fans argue that women’s sports are boring compared to men’s
sports. Simultaneously, women’s sports, compared to men’s sports, are
rarely broadcasted in the media. Therefore, could the media be making
sports fans believe that women’s 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’s
sports to sports fans. Half of the participants received watched highlight
films of women’s 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’s sports. Future studies should
immerse participants into the live action of women’s sports rather than
highlight footage.

Women 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’s 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’s sports impacts attitudes
towards women’s sports.

Improvements in Gender Equality in Sports

Although 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 ‘Title IX’ to 200,000 intercollegiate women and
three million girls that participated in sports in 2010 (34).

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’s 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’s sports. More and more people watch the Women’s
Final Four of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball
every year, consistently breaking viewership records (3).

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).

Gender Inequality in Sports Still Exists

Despite 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’s 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).

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 “girls”
while men are portrayed as “strong and powerful men” that are “historically
important” (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’s 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).

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).

Media Exposure of Women’s Sports

Gender 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’s sports are also perceived as less exciting and slower than men’s
sports (40). In that same study, participants reported that they had minimal
experience with women’s sports and only watched women’s sports if that is
what was on television. The media, though, does not give women’s sports
much coverage, minimizing the frequency of which sports fans view
women’s sports. In fact, less than 10% of sports media covers women’s
sports and less than 2% of sports media covers women’s 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.

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’s 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’s 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’s sports than men’s sports on NBC;
however, this coverage was primarily for women’s sports deemed feminine
(e.g., gymnastics) (12).

A study examining ESPN’s SportsCenter and three Los Angeles networks

discovered that only 1.4% of SportsCenter’s coverage and 1.6% of the
local networks’ coverage were of women’s 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.
Such misrepresentation of women’s sports has been argued to be
responsible for the lack of interest in women’s sports from sports fans (9,
14, 15) and reinforces the public’s general negative attitudes towards
women (61). As previously argued, this lack of coverage of women’s sports
may be holding sports fans back from developing interest in women’s
sports and adapting fan affiliations with women’s 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.

Theoretical Considerations
The 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’s sports, in the eyes of the sports fans, may be
experienced as less important than men’s sports because it consistently
receives less media exposure with the exception of the 2012 Olympic
Games (12).

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, “the audience is thought to adopt the frames of
reference offered by journalists and to see the world in a similar way” (46,
p.557), thus, shaping the opinions of sports fans when women’s sports are
de-emphasized.

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’s sports, they comprehend the lack of exposure as if they should
not care about women’s sports (10, 15, 17). Additionally, when the media
places an emphasis on women’s 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).

If the media plays such a large role in shaping attitudes and values in
regards to women’s 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 ‘escape,’ 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’s sports and the
de-emphasis of women’s sports.

Athletes such as Danica Patrick and the German National Women’s 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.

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’s sports and women and girls, the primary fans of
women’s sports, react negatively to it (1, 33).

What method could work, then, to generate interest and respect for
women’s 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’s sports if they were more accessible, the researchers
hypothesized:

 H1: Individuals who are exposed to a 4-week intervention of watching

women’s sports
will be more interested in women’s sports.
 H2: Individuals who are exposed to a 4-week intervention of watching
women’s sports
will be less prejudiced towards women in sport.
METHODS
College students were recruited from various courses related to
psychology, sociology, and sport sciences at a Midwestern institution. The
participants were divided in half for the control and experimental condition.
Although 89 individuals started the study, 58 (65.5% females; 32.8%
males) completed all 4 weeks of the study (Mage = 20.0 years). The control
group completed a survey each week while the experimental group
watched various highlight footage of masculine women’s sports (e.g.,
soccer, hockey, etc.) each week. Highlight footage of women’s sports that
had athletes competing on behalf of the US was purposefully selected in
order to foster a connection to the athletes of the respective footage. The
researchers chose this method because identification with a sports team is
associated with emotional responses toward the competition (6, 4, 65) and
because the present study was conducted within the US.

Measures
Prejudice. The 12-item Prejudiced Attitudes Survey (59) was used to
measure prejudice, a preconceived negative affect toward another
individual or group based on their identity (e.g., gender). Items consisted of
single words (i.e., hostility, hatred, disliking, disdain) on a 10-point Likert-
type scale (0 = No hostility at all; 9 = Extreme hostility). Total prejudice was
calculated by averaging the scores for each item. Scores were tracked
each week of the study along with the change of scores throughout the
study.