Coverage of Women’s Sports at standstill
According to a new study, male athletes still attracts 90 percent of reporting on television news and sports highlights shows, which is as same as the results taken in 1989, even though a great change has happened on women’s sports over the past three decades. The extremely uneven proportion of TV coverage between men and women’s sports exists all over the world. Many broadcasts even don’t involve in women’s sports at all and no women anchors appeared on any of the three network—affiliated news shows. And sometimes when a broadcast referred to an outstanding female athlete, like Sharapova, the commentators are always apt to comment on her appearance instead of her amazing performances.
This is the reality of women’s sports. They get trained as hard as male athletes, but they can never get the equivalent attention as men do. What accounts for this? That could be a dozen of reasons, such as people’s stereotype of sports and women. However, can we change the situation? What can we do?
The researchers suggested that the audience should demand the coverage of women’s sports. As far as I am concerned, to some extent, only if the producers and reporters show their interests on it, it can be improved. They are the persons who lead audience’s attention on male’s athletes. What if they talk about women’s sports from dawn to dusk? So obviously, how to arouse sports media’s interest on women’s sports is also a significant problem to resolve.
To fight for its TV coverage, women’s sports still has a long way to go. Best wishes for women’s sports! Hope we can know about sports deeply through female athletes!