Media Representatin of Women in Sport

study Essay Current society is built upon stereotypes and gimmicks that be predetermined by previous generations views. One of the near recognised historical constructions is the patriarchal theory, that the egg-producing(prenominal) is subservient to the young-begetting(prenominal). b atomic number 18ly, this construction of gender power is slowly equalising, with the rise of womens liberationist groups in the latter part of the 20th century giving primer for this occurring. Nevertheless, gender battles are unperturbed occurring, curiously in the dissipated industry, which system male dominated. pi stableate pleasure has been given practically notoriety all everyplace their uproar in the bygone decade, but is bugger offing in a male controlled industry it is difficult for women to receive help from governing bodies. Female sport is marginalised compared to male sport, largely due to the sexualisation of the athletes themselves. Professionally they are receiving in truth little media reportage in comparison to males and in an amateur experience distaffs are existence stereotyped as a offspring of the stunt mans of athletic sexualised women displayed in magazines much(prenominal) as Zoo, Sports Illustrated and Alpha.The media has evolved female sport into sexually kindly entertainment and doesnt give the sports that vex not been sexualised, enough coverage. (maria Sharapova Bikini) The media give way constructed their own image of what a female athlete lastly looks worry by posting images in their magazines, characteristics favoured in visual media are those ordinarily associated with feminine beauty, such as smiling, unblemished skin, slender and toned physique, and want blonde hair (Schell n. d. ).Maria Sharapova see down the stairs is the perfect example, and even out though she isnt the number one female tennis pseudo and hasnt been for more than or less time, she is still one of the most popular and most followed player s in the womens circuit, she was the highest paid female athlete in the adult male come 2006, earning more from endorsements than prize bills (Carr 2006). We see in Australia the sexualisation of sports ilk Netball, where women in the ANZ Championship wear skin tight, short dresses to play, making it good-hearted to male audiences.We often see at the Australian Open, similar aloofness dresses or skirts that furnish little to the imagination. Venus Williams sent the media into frenzy in 2010 with her skin colour underwear visible as soon as she moved around the court, to which she designed herself (Eurosport 2010). Tennis uniforms are becoming a fashion statement more and more e precise year, which is always judged by the media when someone wears something even slightly risky or sexy.Anna Kournikova was the pioneer in making tennis sexy with her risque photographs in the magazine Sports Illustrated (Cover pictured below). Former tennis player and feminist rights activist Billie Jean exponent gave a response to the Anna Kournikova Sport illustrated photographs with this, It doesnt bother me at all if some of the guys come out to watch womens tennis beca utilise they want to see a beautiful woman. Who could hold that against Anna?Still, its unfortunate when others with a high skill factor put ont win the endorsements. Sure, the good-looking guys get more endorsements, but the difference in mens sports is that the ugly ones get their share, too. (Amateur Athletic invertebrate foot of Los Angeles 2000) In America, sexploitation is interpreted to another level at a maestro level, particularly in the sports of wrestling and in the gridiron league Lingerie Football League.In these competitions, females wear very little, going down to the bare minimum. Pictured below is an image of the Lingerie Football League, clearly the uniforms (Lingerie Football League 2009)(Anna Kournikova 2000) leave little to be desired, but are used to entertain to a male dominated audience. These sports are both considered to be female sports in their own right, but we also see the sexualisation of women in male sports, particularly in workal sides in the form of cheerleaders.Cheerleaders provide entertainment during the sport breaks, which we often see during breaks in male sports, providing a view of females in general as sexual objects and inferior to the male athletes. So from our stance it is clear that the media has constructed a view that the amateur female athlete must(prenominal) be sexy in order to be able to succeed, we dont read in magazines or see photographs of less mesmeric female athletes, they accept excluded them for what in their mind is good reason, sex sells.However it is creating an unrealistic image of the perfect female athlete, they are not judged by how good they are at hitting, catching, shooting, running or jumping, but by how much they can get paid for taking their clothes off. (Caple, Greenwood Lumby 2010) other cause for c oncern over female sport is that professionally they are not getting anywhere near enough media coverage and money as their male counterparts. The media cover male sport in uttermost more depth in fact a study in 2006 by South Australian Premiers Council for Women found comely 4. per cent of coverage was about female sport () and on Foxtel slightly 10 per cent was about female sport (Senate Standing Committees on Environment, Communications and the Arts 2006). The chart below verbalizes the volume of peeleds coverage that all the different sports receive, which not surprisingly shows Tennis as beingness pretty much the main female sport that is being covered, with very little else in comparison to male sport, even horses gain more exposure than females.So while females are being splayed all over the magazines in compromising poses and clothing, they receive very little coverage of them competing at heart their sports. So even though the Australian womens swimming team at the 2004 Olympic games secured more medals than their male counterparts. The womens hockey team, the Hockeyroos have frequently dominated internationalistic competition, winning Olympic gold and international championships on many occasions.The Australian womens netball team has won octonary of eleven world championships(Senate Standing Committees on Environment, Communications and the Arts 2006), we still dont see these teams play, other than at major sporting competitions like the Olympic and Commonwealth games. The lack of exposure can be hurtful to professional female athletes, in an interview with former Australian netball player explains her pain, I went very close to an emotional breakdown Ellis said, describing a time when she was struggling to combine her work as a solicitor, a marriage and the daily demands of club training and competing for Australia. (Magnay 2006) So while professional male sportsman have sport as their only profession earning a large salary in doing so, m ost women who compete at the top levels of their sports dont actually receive any defrayal for their services, or if they do, they definitely couldnt live of it, so majority of them have normal day jobs, which in itself would be stressful, but in confederation with family, training and games, they must lead extremely demanding lives, which hardly seems reasonable.The inability of female sport to be fully professional and given similar or equal coverage in the media leaves the representation of women very much being subservient in a male dominated industry. The representation of the ultimate female athlete projected as a result of the sexualisation that has occurred in higher level sport today has created a flow on effect into the amateur level of sport. Solmon et al. (2003) found that college-aged women who perceive a sport as gender-neutral are more confident about participating than are women who secernate a sport as manlike. (Hardin and Greer 2009, 207) Which is a direct resu lt from media exposure, they see sports on television almost every day confess that it is a male sport as the athletes are male and consequently deem it too masculine to try.There is also the issue of gender discrimination when a female becomes involved with sport because we see the masculine sports on television, any participation in such by a female has become deemed as homosexual, constructed by our culture and media, so when a female is called a dyke or lesbian in a derogatory manner, she may alter her actions and dress to be more feminine, derogate her athletic talents, or avoid sport altogether(Schell n. d. ).This has become a common problem with womens amateur sport, particularly sports that are deemed to be too masculine for women to try such as cricket (Burroughs, Seebohm and Ashburn 1995, 29) and Australian Rules football (Hillier 2006, 18) that there is an automatic stereotype of being homosexual. The social construction that female participants are labelled as homose xual in male dominated sports is a media formed fallacy. The reason why this has occurred is that in past societies, homosexuality was frowned upon and when a female athlete is found to be a lesbian, thusly the media reveals it to the world, the stereotype builds.This happened to the Australian womens cricket team in the opposite fashion when it was reported that female cricketer, Denise Annetts, had been dropped from the Australian team and had maintain that her sacking was due to her heterosexual preference and marital status. ( Burroughs, Seebohm and Ashburn 1995, 29) This built the written report than womens cricket still holds to this day. Nowadays there has been a run towards helping womens sport grow more. There have been the new Australian digital television channels which allowed channel Ten to show Netball during the day on their channel One.ABC still circulate lawn bowls and womens Basketball fairly often, and just this year, channel gild started broadcasting female Twenty20 cricket that was played before the mens game. So there has been improvement in the coverage regard, however women crossways the globe are still victims of sexploitation, which is undermining the coverage solution because we are still able to receive the medias representation of females in sport as marginalised and subservient to a male industry. Until this is solved and females stand up against this, then there is little find out they have in improving their image in the sporting industry.Reference List Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. 2000. Sportsletter. 12 (1,2) 2009. Quoted in Messner 2002, 100. Anna Kournikova. Image. 2000. http//sportsillustrated. cnn. com/vault/cover/toc/9744/index. htm (accessed may 20, 2011). Australia. Senate Standing Committees on Environment, Communications and the Arts. 2006. About time Women in sport and recreation in Australia. Volume 1. Canberra Senate Printing Unit. Burroughs, A. , L. Seebohm, and L. Ashburn. 1995. Sporting Tr aditions. The ledger of the Australian inn for Sports History 12 (1) 29. Google. www. google. om. au (accessed 21 may 2011). Caple, H. , K, Greenwood and C, Lumby. Image. 2010. http//www. ausport. gov. au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/356209/Towards_a_Level_Playing_Field_LR. pdf (accessed May 20, 2011) Carr, J. 2006. Maria Sharapova has become the sports most marketable icon. http//mariasharapova. wetpaint. com/ summon/Endorsements (accessed May 20, 2011). Eurosport. 2010. Australian Open Cheeky Venus outfit shocks crowd. http//uk. eurosport. yahoo. com/24012010/58/australian-open-cheeky-venus-outfit-shocks-crowd. html (accessed May 23, 2011). Hardin, M. , J. D. Greer. 2009.The Influence of Gender-Role Socialization, Media Use and Sports Participation on Perceptions of Gender-Appropriate Sports. Journal of Sport Behavior 32 (2) 207. Questia. www. questia. com (accessed 19 May 2011). Hillier, L. 2006. Safe Spaces The superlative of the image problem for same sex attracted young wo men playing Australian Rules football. International Journal of Football Studies 8 (2) 18. Google. www. google. com. au (accessed 21 May 2011). Lingerie Football League. Image. 2009. http//www. stuff. co. nz/sport/2834471/New-Lingerie-Football-League-under-debate (accessed May 20, 2011). Magnay, J. 2006.Women deserve sporting chance Ellis. http//www. smh. com. au/news/sport/women-deserve-sporting-chance-ellis/2006/08/02/1154198205721. html (accessed 20 May 2011). Maria Sharapova Bikini. Image. n. d. http//www. dailybum. com/ (accessed May 20, 2011). Messner, M. 2002. Taking the Field Women, Men and Sports. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press. Schell, B. n. d. (Dis)Empowering Images? Media Representations of Women in Sport. http//www. womenssportsfoundation. org/ capacitance/Articles/Issues/Media-and-Publicity/D/DisEmpowering-ImagesMedia-Representations-of-Women-in-Sport. aspx (accessed May 20, 2011).Short Research Essay Reflection What strengths and weaknesses did you identify in your Short Research Essay? My short research study was not quite as good as what I had hoped, the return Sexual Abuse in Sport With a focus on the AFL was too narrow, it was not a smart decision to give myself such a small focus, which basically narrowed myself down to Australian texts only, which wasnt easy. I did find a fair arrange of resources, but perchance didnt utilise them as much, and just relied on my own theory. The strike to rely on stereotypes and overuse of emotive language also hampered my turn up.How did you use the tutors feedback to improve your work for the Major Essay? I firstly acknowledged the fact that my essay used too much emotive language and made it a conscious focus to not try and use it so much, to what effect I am not sure, it is a habit in my writing that needs fixing for the future. I also rewrote my whole essay, broadening the topic to women in sport, which meant I could find an array of sources. I also have cleared up my depth psychology an d hopefully the referencing has improved. All in all I believe that this essay is a far improvement on the short research essay.