“Masculine” vs “Pretty” These phrases should sound antiquated at this point in the modern world, where women apparently have an equal role. In reality, there are still many differences between males and females. Surely in this modern world, sexism should not exist? It is not fair to limit a girl or a women’s life capabilities all because of their gender. Shouldn’t we all be viewed equally? Shouldn’t we all be treated as equals? Shouldn’t we all be given the same chance in our life choices and we should be able to participate in sports that we want to do?
There is too much pressure put on female athletes to look their best whilst competing and there is the constant worry from these athletes about how they appear on the screen. Their role is to perform their sport and advocate the sport rather than looking glamorous while doing it. In a survey carried out by Sport England, it was found that 75% of women wanted to participate in sport, but were put off because of the worry that they would be judged on their appearance and not their skill in their field. The media puts pressure on young girls and tells them they need to have the ‘perfect body’. Anna Kessel reports that a “14-year-old girl that made headlines for being the first girl to “pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series”. As Mo ’ne Davis, the young girl was being interviewed she said “I mean I look like a blowfish, but otherwise it’s pretty cool. You can see how much power I put into it.” This highlights that even as a young girl she should be focusing on her talent, but with the pressure of the modern-day media a young girl cares more about how she looks than her success, this is a recurring scenario through all women’s sport. Anna Kessel questions “Why are we teaching young girls to care first about how they look and second about their talent?” The media will mostly focus on a woman athlete’s physical appearance instead of focusing on their ability and skill in the sport. The article titled “Media Discriminates the Female Athletes” highlights that “Studies have proven that the media would focus on hair, make-up and body shape for a woman, but they would rarely do the same for their male counterparts.”
During many of these games such as Mo’ne’s baseball tournament, the commentator will refer to the woman athlete in a demeaning way, making her seem less capable compared to the male equivalent. The BBC says that “Another commentator caused outrage on social media when he implied a female athlete was reliant on her husband – after Hungarian swimmer, Katinka Hosszu won gold in the 400m individual medley with a new world record. He referred to her partner, who is also her trainer, as: “The man responsible.” There is evidently a big gap in the way commentators speak about the different genders as shown in an article by Cambridge University: “Notable terms that cropped up for women, but not men, in sport include ‘aged’, ‘older’, ‘pregnant’ and ‘married’ or ‘un-married’… Men, by contrast, are more likely to be described as ‘fastest’, ‘strong’, ‘big’, ‘real’ and ‘great’”. This has implications that women are not as capable of performing to a high level of skill and that men are the only gender that matter when it comes to sports. Commentators tend to focus on women athlete’s lives outside of sport such as their motherhood which implies that there could be a weakness when there is none. There is such an inequality in the way commentators describe the game situation, the “Body Building Blog”, comments that “a man crashes into defenders, yet women only defend against them”. The choice of language only serves to propagate these stereotypes in a subtle way.
During preparation for the world cup qualifiers, the Scottish men’s football team would be training every day to maximise their opportunities of qualification. Leigh Griffiths, a Celtic and Scottish National team player earns £18,000 a week. For a male footballer, this price is relatively low compared to some of football’s giants like Messi who makes on average £336,000 per week. However, the Scottish Women’s have had to receive a grant from the Scottish Government to allow half of the team to train full time, the money from the grant will be used so that members of the team can afford to leave their current job for three months in the run up to the Euro 2017 tournament. The fact that a women’s football team needs a grant just so that half of the team can leave their jobs highlights just how big the wage gap is. In 2013, the Scottish Women’s football team received a grant of £200,000 to use to help them qualify for the world cup, much like the grant they recently received. The fact that this £200,000 is being split up amongst 8 of the team means as they will only receive £25,000 for three months’ work. This is shocking as many male football players are receiving a lot more than that.
Finally, in the media, women athletes do not receive the same amount of television or radio airtime as their male equivalent. If female athletes get any airtime at all, the coverage is chosen on how they appear, not what would be the most entertaining for the public. According to a study carried out by a student at The University of Southern California “In 2014 an LA based broadcasting company devoted only 3.2% of airtime to women sports, down from 5% in 1989.” This is a shocking figure because surely as times are moving on and society is apparently becoming more equal, these statistics should be increasing, not decreasing? During a survey carried out by the Women’s Sports Foundation it was found that while females make up around 40% of competitors, less than 10% of coverage was devoted to them. The ‘Sports Illustrated’ magazine had only a mere 5% of female athletes on their front covers, but 100% for their swimsuit edition!
Some may suggest female athletes are not equally represented in the media because the public could simply be losing interest in the sport. It may also be because many people have the image that men’s sport is more aggressive and exciting but I am sure that if people tuned into women’s sports they would realise that they are just as aggressive if not more than men. If the sport itself is not interesting, then no one would want to waste their time watching it. However, I think that if there were to be more adverts and a lot more publicity leading up to women’s sporting events then there would be more interest. The lack of interest is due to the lack of equality in advertising and publicity.
Overall, it is obvious that female athletes are not equally portrayed in the media. Looking at the evidence female athletes do not get described in the same way, paid the same, get the same coverage in the media and they are often focused on only for their looks. If they were given the same opportunities more people would be interested and if there was more publicity about women’s sporting events, then there would be more interest in the games. Female athletes should not be devalued for playing a sport that men do, they should be treated and celebrated equally in their sport and should be able to feel confident whilst participating.