Women’s sports in the U.S. receive only 4 percent of sports media coverage, according to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. In a study of televised sports news, ongoing since 1989, three LA-based stations dedicated, on average, 3.2 percent of their sports coverage to women’s sports, according to the 2014 results, the latest available.
There are many implications that have resulted from this lack of focus on women’s athletics , which can be seen by looking into how this has affected viewership and attendance among people who do not identify as men . For example, when examining television ratings for WNBA games—which account for about percent of all league games—it is clear that the vast majority of watchers are male. In fact, male viewership makes up a full 83 percent of viewers.
There are many implications that have resulted from this lack of focus on women’s athletics, which can be seen by looking into how this has affected viewership and attendance among people who do not identify as men. For example, when examining television ratings for WNBA games—which account for about percent of all league games—it is clear that the vast majority of watchers are male. In fact, male viewership makes up a full 83 percent of viewers.
In addition to watching these low-scoring games in their entirety, it would seem that many more men tune in to watch even smaller clips or recaps of WNBA games. While there is good reason to be critical of such statistics, they must consider the fact that they do not entirely tell the story of viewership habits. For instance, there are many men who regularly watch and enjoy women’s sports, even if those numbers might not be as high as those who regularly follow male-dominated sports like football or basketball.
Equal Opportunity in Sports
The concept of Title IX in education, which was passed in 1972 in America, enforced that men and women have equal access to opportunities when it comes to education at school or college level. This law has helped many women’s groups getting into higher positions in fields such as science, law etc. However, there are still certain jobs where women are not allowed with no specific reason behind this decision except for tradition or norms of the society
It is unfortunate that gender bias exists when it comes to competition in sports too with many female athletes being constantly discriminated against especially on international levels whether due to their appearance or their performance. It has been seen that rules and regulations regarding international competition are different for men and women based on sex. Also, there have been issues such as the recent case where Caster Semenya was asked to undergo a gender test because of her strong physical features displayed after she won gold medal in the Women’s 800m race during the Berlin World Championship (BBC, 2014). The IAAF quickly put an end to this controversy by announcing that no one will be forced to take a gender test and also clarified that it was not discrimination against Caster but an attempt to regulate unfair advantage of certain athletes over the others competing for sports i.e., if there is anything wrong with them then they should be stopped from competing internationally.
