Napier, Week 7

“Gender in Sports Writing by the Print Media: An Exploratory Examination of Writers’ Experiences and Attitudes” written by Dr. Edward Kian of the University of Central Florida starts of the article by giving the reader a word coined by an Italian revolutionary that describes the dominance of one social class over another; this word is hegemony. Kian states that mass media is responsible for the dominate images within our society, and from a sports perspective those images are that of the masculinity and power inside of male sports. This masculine hegemony leaves characteristics of femininity and women’s sports on the preverbal sidelines. But what Kian question is what experiences and attitudes from both female and male writers have contributed in creating this hegemony.

First, it is important to understand that mass media has reinforced these differences in a number of ways. These include limiting or refusing to cover women’s sports, the general public begins to under-estimate those abilities of women in these sports as a result of a lack in coverage, female sports that do get covered only reinforce the stereotypical images of women athletes, and when achievements are covered they are often downplayed. The severe lack of women in power within the sports writing profession only helps to perpetuate the masculine hegemonic institution currently in place. An estimate from the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) only 3 percent of the 10,000 print and broadcast journalist jobs in the United States in the 1990’s belonged to women.

Secondly, the attitude surrounding female sports journalism is poor to say the least. Those carrying a women’s sports beat drastically hindered the ability for advancement according to the article. With such a lack in career upward movement, the is no incentive for any individual to take on the task. While this is the attitude with covering women’s sports, female journalists expressed a high level of job satisfaction in a 2005 research study, but were reported as being frustrated by a lack of promotion opportunities. What becomes more unfortunate is that the women feel as though they don’t want to alter these norms since there seems to be a belief that being women is what helped them to get the job in the first place.

The final piece of this article address the question of what shapes the masculine hegemony in sports journalism. Men, from a younger age, were more likely to be socialized into the sports culture than their women counterparts even though both representing genders took an interest in sports from a young age. Upon entering the profession the differences became greater as women were placed into a binary view where the men were men had no such limitations, however it seems that a qualitative conclusion cannot be obtained from this study due to the fact that so few women sports journalists were interviewed.

It is clear from Kain’s article and the studies discussed that women are disadvantaged once entering the profession due to assumptions designated by the masculine hegemony. While there has only been minor improvements in the representation of women’s sports and minority athletes by their media counterparts, we still have a long way to go before there is an equal and fair representation and no one social group is put in second place.

-Shawn Napier