Thanks to a sports communication class I am taking this semester I realized how scant the coverage of women sports is in mass media. It is true that women have gained plenty of space in several different environments in the United States. However, when we refer to this topic, it is a different reality.
Women’s participation in high school, college and professional sports has increased outstandingly in the last decades, mostly because of the introduction of the Title IX bill. However, that growth of the presence of females on the field or court is not represented in what the media displays. Maybe women are not as athletic or spectacular when they are playing their sports, but they work as hard as men do and put on a good show when they perform in their different disciplines.
Why do networks, newspapers or websites prefer to give coverage to men’s sports over women’s sports? According to a study by Terry Adams and C.A. Tuggle in 2002, less than five percent of the information given during an episode of Sportscenter is assigned to women’s sports.
I am not a diehard college or professional women’s sports fan, but I do believe they should have more coverage in the media.I am sure that there are a lot of cases of women sports fans that are not able to follow their favorite sports teams just because their games are not on TV or there are only few reviews on the internet or important newspapers.
What can we do to diminish this unbalance? Initiatives like ESPNW, a new website dedicated only to women’s sports, could save them and their professional leagues from disappearing in the next couple of years. It is critical that sport networks like ESPN realize that women sports deserve more room than what they have now.
We have advanced as a society, accepting the importance of women in places where they were not allowed before. Why are we not supporting them in this case?