Media and gender in sport

Dunja Antunovic

Chapter 7 in Reimagining the Gendering of Sport, 2025, pp 107-125 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Women's sports have received minimal media coverage over the last five decades across multiple geographic contexts, but a shift seems to be happening. In this chapter, I overview the key representation patterns and provide recommendations for change. First, the underrepresentation, marginalization, and trivialization of women's sport is well established and continues to occur. Second, women are represented as serious athletes in the context of international sport, but through the agendas of gendered nationalism. Third, the relationship between femininity and athleticism has become increasingly complex as athletes use digital media platforms for self-presentation strategies that both disrupt masculinist assumptions of sport and reinforce normative ideologies. Finally, athletes with complex racial, ethnic, and national identities continue to challenge journalists’ one-dimensional approach and create space for activism. To reimagine sports media coverage, the chapter calls for an implementation of media guidelines, an expansion of social issues reporting, and locally specific approaches to covering women's sport.

Keywords: Representation; Media coverage; Gender bias; Olympics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035310203
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