{"id":72449,"date":"2024-04-11T01:21:06","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T05:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=72449"},"modified":"2024-04-11T01:21:06","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T05:21:06","slug":"s-this-the-dawn-of-a-new-era-in-womens-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/s-this-the-dawn-of-a-new-era-in-womens-sports\/","title":{"rendered":"s this the dawn of a new era in women\u2019s sports?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Though the college career of Iowa\u2019s Caitlin Clark ended with a disappointing loss,\u00a0the point guard\u2019s record-breaking season<\/a>\u00a0helped fuel widespread interest in this year\u2019s NCAA women\u2019s college basketball tournament.<\/p>\n

The women\u2019s Final Four\u00a0garnered higher television ratings<\/a>\u00a0than the men\u2019s Final Four. Then the women\u2019s basketball championship game between South Carolina and Iowa didn\u2019t just\u00a0draw in more viewers<\/a>\u00a0(18.9 million) than the men\u2019s championship game the following night (14.8 million); it also had more viewers than every World Series game since Game 7 of the 2019 World Series and every NBA Finals game since Game 5 of the 2017 NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

Does this represent another brief moment in the sun for women\u2019s sports? Or will this shining moment extend far into the future?<\/p>\n

Since Title IX\u2019s passage in 1972<\/a>, women\u2019s sports have occasionally experienced big ratings and massive crowds. In 1983,\u00a0nearly 12 million viewers tuned in<\/a>\u00a0as the University of Southern California, led by star forward\u00a0Cheryl Miller<\/a>, bested LSU in the basketball championship game.\u00a0And more than 90,000 fans<\/a>\u00a0attended the 1999 FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup final in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n

The media briefly focused on these events, before returning to business as usual: giving men\u2019s sports outsized attention.<\/p>\n

But this moment feels different. Many fans, journalists and scholars\u00a0are wondering<\/a>\u00a0if this is the dawn of a new era of women\u2019s sports, with more coverage, increased viewership, heightened interest and bigger investments continuing in the future.<\/p>\n

The long eclipse of women\u2019s sports<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve spent over 30 years studying\u00a0the intersections of gender, sports, media and culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since 1989, my colleagues and I have been tracking the quantity and quality of coverage of men\u2019s and women\u2019s sports on televised news and highlight shows. Every five years, we collect a new batch of data. We\u2019re in the middle of collecting data for the eighth time, the results of which will be published in 2025. (In 2019, we added online and social media content to our analysis.)<\/p>\n

In our samples, we\u2019ve consistently found that women\u2019s sports on televised news and sports highlight shows generally comprise between 3% and 5% of the coverage, measured in minutes and number of stories. Over the years, there have been a few spikes driven by high-profile international sporting events, such as the 1999 Women\u2019s World Cup and the Olympics. The newsletters and social media accounts of the same networks in our sample also mirror the dearth of television coverage, with about 4% to 5% of the content focused on women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

Our findings are not unique.\u00a0Hundreds of studies<\/a>\u00a0on the routine coverage of sports have similarly found that media coverage of women\u2019s sports rarely exceeds 10% of total sports coverage. This is a recurring pattern across media platforms \u2013 print, TV, radio, social \u2013 in English-speaking countries.<\/p>\n

Leapfrogging the gatekeepers<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Yet while research on traditional media \u2013 television, newspapers, magazines \u2013 was relevant at the time of these studies, it does not fully capture the explosion of other ways to consume sports over the past decade.<\/p>\n

Fans can watch highlights on X, formerly known as Twitter, and short-form video apps. Podcasts like \u201cHear Her Sports<\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Gist of It<\/a>,\u201d \u201cTea with A & Phee<\/a>\u201d and \u201cAttacking Third<\/a>\u201d directly appeal to women\u2019s sports fans. Streaming platforms such as Fubo TV and Women\u2019s Sports Zone on Roku offer a range of live women\u2019s basketball and soccer games, which helps build and sustain a fan base. And niche media outlets centered on women\u2019s sports, like\u00a0Just Women\u2019s Sports<\/a>, offer a diversity of content and perspectives.<\/p>\n

Women athletes, along with women\u2019s teams and leagues, no longer need to rely on newspapers, magazines and TV networks to reach fans. They can simply directly engage with them on social media, producing and pushing content that bypasses traditional media gatekeepers.<\/p>\n

Leveraging feminism<\/strong><\/h4>\n

A few decades ago, conventional wisdom held that \u201csex sells sports.\u201d Media executives focused on the sex appeal of female athletes to attract male fans and viewers. The thinking went that women simply weren\u2019t interested in sports.<\/p>\n

But my colleague\u00a0Dunja Antunovic<\/a>\u00a0and I observed an important shift in sports media starting in the mid-2010s: the mobilization of feminism and principles of equality to promote and sell women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

In one chapter of our latest book, \u201cServing Equality: Feminism, Media, and Women\u2019s Sports<\/a>,\u201d we focus on how women\u2019s sports leagues and teams, as well as their corporate sponsors, have used the imagery, language and slogans of feminism and social justice movements to sell merchandise and tickets.<\/p>\n

The WNBA\u00a0has a long-standing commitment to racial and social justice<\/a>, whether it\u2019s through promoting the #BlackLivesMatter movement, mobilizing voters\u00a0or advocating for reproductive justice<\/a>.
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