Comm 316 Week 1 Gender Roles In Sports Research Paper
1346 Words6 Pages
Tom Valente
COM 316
Dr. Booth
9 November 2015
Gender Roles in Sports Most people find that sports are a way to create connections and friendships that will last a lifetime. In today’s society, there are a vast number of sports to play yet some are restricted to specific genders. Women have overcome many obstacles including the formation of the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) composed of 12 teams. While this is an impressive and important step forward for women’s athletics it does not compare favorably to men’s. The NBA on the other hand is composed of 30 teams, nearly triple that of the women’s. This statistic simply provides an estimate as to how the rest of sports are universally laid out. Often times, colleges have to get…show more content… Through television channels like ESPN, NFL Network, and NBA on TNT, they ultimately convey that male sports are more important than that of women. Women find a hard time getting on major television channels for sports where male sports have no problem at all getting the prime air time on ESPN. The media’s influence allows our perspective to be mainly focused on male sports. We are psychologically being programmed to be pro-male dominance in sports. If more women sports were portrayed on television, then a broader audience could be achieved. Through other sources of media such as magazines like Sports Illustrated, they constantly report on what is going on in sports. However, the cover of most magazines has a football, basketball, or baseball player on it. On the rare occasion when women are portrayed on the cover of Sports Illustrated, it is because of their swimsuit model edition. People often make assumptions about men and women’s athletic ability, and unfortunately these assumptions are often based on media portrayal of male and female athletes. Typically men are glorified for their strength and masculinity, while the focus on women represents their beauty and femininity (Lorber 1993). This does not help women sports in the media. If the media did not solely focus on men, women led sports would be able to flourish more easily. The media plays such a key role in what we perceive to be enjoyable. This industry is designed to make money so by televising men playing various sports more than women, the media must find that men ultimately are more enjoyable to watch. The ratings are indicating pro-men. To overcome this long held tradition of men in the media, women will have to once again prove themselves like they did when becoming heads of major corporations. It is this never ending battle for women to prove themselves to the world that they can be just as good as men. The main thing stopping