Women fans not solely responsible for success/failure of women's sports leagues

The failure or success of female sports leagues in the United States rests primarily with female sports fans, Frank Deford said in a piece for National Public Radio titled “Ladies, Want Women's Sports To Get More Attention? Pony Up.”

Unfortunately, Deford missed the point entirely. Women’s sports should not appeal to uniquely to females because women are playing. Women’s sports should appeal to all sports fans because elite athletes are competing. Men do not feel mandated to watch LeBron James because he is a man. Men and women watch LeBron James because he is the best men’s basketball player in the world.

Note that I said James is the best men’s basketball player. This distinction is critical to understanding the problems facing women’s sports leagues. There is a tendency in mainstream media to deem male athletes or male sports as the unquestioned best or standard. For example, Deford mentions a new women’s soccer league is forming. Just saying women’s soccer league delegitimizes the athletes in that league because there is a qualifier to their prowess—their gender. Why can’t Major League Soccer be called Men’s Major League Soccer? By having their sports leagues gender marked, women athletes are already placed at a disadvantage because there is a latent implication that their leagues are inferior to men.

The second issue I have with Deford comes from the written summary of his piece. An excerpt states: “Still, I think the sisterhood has to look more into the mirror. In the post-Title IX era, as girls have flooded into athletics, there has been no comparable explosion by female spectators. It's all very comforting to blame media men for a lack of coverage, but if more women buy tickets to watch female athletes play, then more coverage will follow.

“This may be only anecdotal, but I have noticed that in small-town newspapers and on community websites, female high school and college sports seem to get a commensurate amount of attention with their male jocks. The imbalance of coverage is so much more at the top, where commerce matters.”

This argument is misguided. Women make up about 40 percent of fans in major North American sports leagues, according to 2009 research by Scarborough Sports Marketing published in Sports Business Daily. Male sports leagues need female fans to help fuel their billion-dollar industries. By extension, female sports leagues need male fans for their leagues to thrive.

And since the “sisterhood” of sports fans is markedly smaller than the “brotherhood”, it would be most appropriate to question why male fans are exempt from Deford’s critique of the struggles of women’s sports leagues.

-- Steve Bien-Aimé

Women's Sports Sell Without Sexual Objectification

This summer, I experienced one of those typical 21st century moments in my apartment in Serbia when talking on Skype while simultaneously chatting on Facebook and watching the Women’s Soccer World Cup on TV. My computer activities stopped when I vaguely heard one of the Eurosport commentators mention “voting”. Out of mere curiosity, I turned the volume up on the TV to listen more carefully to the “contest” that the Serbian commentators were conducting.

The viewers were encouraged to vote for “Miss World Cup.” The rules were simple: send a text message with the name of the best looking player. The players were to be evaluated solely based on their appearance and not on their athletic ability. The viewers were reminded of that distinction quite frequently throughout the broadcast just to avoid confusion.

To make the decision easier, the commentators pointed out the players’ many appealing physical traits such as “beautiful eyes” or “graceful figure,” though here and there they did offer a critical analysis on soccer ability, including the assessment of a French player who had “the skill-set of Zinedine Zidane, but luckily not his looks.”

Female athletes’ objectification and sexualization in the media are not news for those who follow sports. What may come as news, however, is that objectification and sexualization are, perhaps, not the most effective ways to promote female athletes.
Mary Jo Kane, from the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sports at the University of Minnesota, wrote an article in The Nation about her most recent study which examined if the “sex sells” concept indeed increased interest in women’s sports.

Dr Kane argues: No, it does not.

Contrary to the common assumption, the majority of the participants in Dr. Kane’s research found the hypersexual images offensive.
Instead of trying so hard to sell a skewed image of the female athlete with an excuse that these images are necessary because only then can we attract more viewers and appeal to (male) sports fans, Dr. Kane suggests that “those who cover women’s sports [should] simply turn on the camera and let us see the reality.”

If you watched the Women’s Soccer World Cup in the U.S., you saw just that. If you did not, you might have come across some disturbing attempts to “sell” female athletes to the viewers. We are still far from being liberated from the sexualized images. We have much work to do if we want to see the “reality.”

Finding out that sex doesn’t sell women’s sports is a step. Believing, as a society, that women’s sports do not need the sex-appeal to attract audiences would be a stride.

-- Dunja Antunovic

The media and UConn's winning streak: Another take

I've been reading -- with great interest -- the commentary around the UConn women's basketball team, which will very likely tonight break the longest winning streak in D-I basketball (set by the UCLA men's team under John Wooden).
Much of the commentary isn't on UConn's winning record, but is instead on what to make of coverage of UConn's phenomenal streak. If you've been paying attention to the story, you know that UConn coach Geno Auriemma himself weighed in on the coverage in a news conference after the team's game on Sunday.
He, along with others including sports columnist Christine Brennan and others who study women's sports coverage blame sports media for not giving the story more attention.
I certainly understand this argument. We have scores and scores of research that tells us two things: that institutions covering sports are dominated by men; and that women's sports don't get nearly the attention that men's sports get.
But behind the blame on sports journalists, editors and producers is this assumption: That somehow, those who cover sports are different from those who follow sports. They're "out of touch" with what we (sports fans, Americans, whatever) really want.
In short, it's the (cliched) "build it and they will come" assumption, mixed with imagery of an (evil) wizard behind the curtain pulling the strings contrary to the wishes of the hordes of consumers who would have it otherwise. It reminds me of the title of a book: Why TV Is Not Our Fault, which essentially argues that viewers have little influence over what they watch. It's someone else's fault.
No doubt, there are serious issues of political economy and masculine hegemony/power in the sports/media complex, to borrow the academic concepts that underpin these "media=bad" arguments.
But I'm convinced that at the end of the day, blaming the media for lack of coverage or for the wrong kind of coverage is failing to see the bigger problem.
It really is us. (Gulp.) It is our fault.
What I mean is this: The problem is embedded in the way we see women, men, and gender roles. It's in the way we define sports. It's in the small things we take for granted as "normal" in our everyday lives about the performance of gender. (Women wear skirts, men don't. Etc.) And in what all of these small things say about bodies and power.
These norms aren't without consequence.
They result in a culture that is less interested in women's sports as spectator activities because of the ways these performances challenge our everyday gendered lives.
Those who go to work for media are products of that culture. They aren't so different from the rest of us.
Not that things can't or won't change. But they happen slowly. Forty years out from Title IX is like 40 days in the big scheme of things. We're talking about a generation --maybe two, I think. Beyond our lifetimes to see real change.
In the meantime: I like what Megan Hueter,in her blog "Because I Played Sports," said about the UConn streak. She talked about the power of community and about the way progressive sports fans have found ways to connect, to create media, and to celebrate women's sports.
The real changes in our connection and celebration of women's sports won't start with big media -- they'll start with us.

-- Marie Hardin

The sports beat: How much has it really changed?

The latest issue of Nieman Reports looks at the beat structure in news reporting and includes a special focus on sports departments. In a piece about the influence of new media on sports reporting, Curley Center Director Malcolm Moran writes that "competitive pressures are rewriting the rules" by challenging traditional practice in regard to verifying sources and ensuring accuracy. Lindsay Jones, a beat writer for The Denver Post, talks about how she aims to adhere to high journalistic standards even as she races to be the first on the story -- with her thumbs on her phone keypad -- via Twitter.
Not all has changed, however. In a story I wrote about the beat structure in sports departments, I argue that the infinite news hole created by new media hasn't really expanded coverage of women's sports, mostly because beat structures in sports departments haven't changed to allow it. In other words, the technologies may be new, and the challenges to reporters to get the story fast may be more intense, but the types of sports covered and the types of stories consumers get from media sources haven't really changed that much.
The bottom line: It'll take a lot more than technology to see substantive changes in sports media content.
--Marie Hardin

Redirecting the gaze

After the epic Baylor-UConn game appeared on national television, the game story also earned a spot on cnn.com’s mobile page. Given that the mobile front page includes about eight headlines on average, cnn’s choice to include the recap represented some nice exposure for women’s collegiate basketball.
The story largely focused on the exciting game, top-level early-season competition and the superstar battle between Maya Moore and Brittney Griner.
However, in discussing Griner, the author included a parenthetical quote from a UConn player expressing amazement at her size near the end of the story.
There is no question that at six-foot-eight, Griner’s stature is unusual. After all, the average height for women in the United States is five-foot-four and 95 percent of 20-year-old women in this country are under five-foot-10.
Given that Griner has received national coverage since she was in high school – and plenty more during her first year of college during the 2009-2010 season, her stature is well-documented and thus remarking on her unusual height is something of old news.
Further, the quote lacked any reference to Griner’s play in this major early-season game and instead brought a focus to Griner’s unusual body. In including the comment, the piece became part of an ongoing narrative that focuses on women’s bodies over their athleticism.
Researchers have long written on the ways in which popular media coverage often emphasizes women’s aesthetic appeal, a practice achieved through featuring female athletes in passive poses rather than action shots, for example, or focusing on their off-the-court activities instead of their on-court athletic endeavors. Both strategies ultimately present female athletes as female first and athlete second.
Remarking on Griner’s body is a new twist on this old theme. When we view female athletes depicted in revealing dresses or with their kids away from athletic competition, we are invited to focus on their femininity – and ultimately their feminine bodies -- as opposed to their athleticism. Focusing on Griner’s unusual body redirects our attention in the same way, taking the focus away from her exploits on the court and returning our gaze to her body.
--Erin Whiteside

Glitter, Bronzer and Power

The New York Times Magazine recently posted a stunning visual piece on women’s tennis that features a video gallery of the world’s top players hitting a ball in slow motion. In some ways, the piece takes us a step forward in depictions of female athletes. Rather than simply showing them smiling while holding a racket, we see these women hitting the ball with incredible force --muscles rippling and all, an image only enhanced by the extreme slow motion video.

However, with the exception of seeing these athletes in actual “action,” the piece is more a re-tread on the old theme of emphasizing beauty over athleticism when depicting female athletes. Taken in its full context, the piece unfortunately minimizes the displays of exertion and maximizes sexuality and beauty.

For instance, Serena Williams, arguably the most powerful woman in tennis today, is seen smacking an unseen ball with ferocious intensity. However, that ball explodes in an avalanche of glitter in front of Williams, who is wearing a sequined dress, body glitter and flowing hair. Like Williams, many of the players are wearing body glitter or bronzer while wearing nightclub-style dresses, several not-so-subtle markers of femininity.

Perhaps most troubling is the way several of the athletes’ bodies are literally chopped up, with the camera focusing only on their legs, abs or breasts. For example, viewers see Samantha Stosur’s face for only a split second as the camera zooms into her breasts as she hits the ball, her head literally cut out of the frame. The video of Victoria Azarenka starts at her shoes and slowly pans up her legs, bare stomach and breasts, mimicking the way a film director might shoot a scene to indicate a man “checking out” a woman. The image of her hitting the ball happens only at the very end, and even then her long, loose and untied hair flows around her face in an image closer to what we might see in Sports Illustrated swimsuit than at Wimbledon. In fact, nearly all the women have loose, untied and flowing hair, another common feminine marker.

Even the title of the piece – “The Beauty of Power” – hints at the discomfort we have at a cultural level of associating women with raw physical power. By labeling these images as not just “power” images, but “beautiful images of power,” viewers are reminded that the players are beautiful [read: feminine] and thus “normal women” despite the displays of muscles and exertion.

In these ways, the players are offered as objects of sexual desire, and presented to the viewer from the perspective of the heterosexual male gaze. By doing so, the focus is put on the women’s sexuality rather than on the displays of strength that the camera also captures. Ultimately, despite the video of female athletes in action, the piece is an overall disappointment, especially given the potential it had to present the physical power and athleticism of the women’s tennis elite.

--Erin Whiteside

Why the apathy about women's sports coverage?

In a column published this morning, longtime journalist Eric Deggens addresses the lack of attention paid to a new study that empirically verifies what women's sports fans have suspected: Despite Title IX and the soaring numbers of girls and women participating in sports, mainstream coverage of women's sports continues to diminish.
Deggens rightly points out that the study has generally been greeted with apathy. He also rightly points out that media organizations have an obligation, based on their responsibility to address what he calls "an essential journalism failure," to provide fair, plentiful coverage of women's sports.
Of course, he's right.
I suggest, however, that blame the lack of women's sports coverage cannot be placed solely on journalistic organizations. Deggens seems to dismiss what he called "insulting rationalizations" for the lack of coverage, including "this is what the sports audience wants."
Unfortunately, because of the role (entertainment) and the values (masculinity) that we've placed on spectator sports as a culture, sports coverage -- even though considered "news" in many respects(on newscasts, in newspapers)-- tends to be much more audience driven. The powerful, unquestioned association of sports with masculine values has a negative impact on the potential of women's sports fandom to flourish on a mass scale.
In other words, lack of women's sports coverage a cultural problem -- not one that can be blamed solely on media organizations.
The solution is not as easy as "build it, and they will come." Fans won't come in the numbers media organizations see as sustainable until we, as a culture, move away from adhering to gender norms that make the sidelining of women in sports seem "common-sense" -- drawing nothing more than a yawn when it is pointed out to us.
-- M. Hardin

UConn's record: Reason to worry about women's sports?

As any women's sports fan knows, the past 24 hours have been unusual for the amount of attention that has been paid to a group of female athletes outside the Olympics. The big news: UConn's 71st consecutive victory -- an NCAA record.
The news, unlike most events in women's sports, made at least a mention on many sports pages, Web sites and blogs.
It's also spurred a lot of hand-wringing about: a.) the state of women's basketball; and b.) the state of coverage of women's basketball.
The first concern -- that somehow, UConn's dominance is a sign that women's basketball is plagued by untalented, inferior players -- isn't surprising. But the fact that this storyline was prominent on a site (Deadspin) with little regard (putting it mildly) for women's sports ought to tell us that it should be scrutinized. As a women's sports advocate, I grimace when I see mainstream journalists contextualize the story in the same way.
I saw Christine Brennan raise the concern on News Hour (and follow up with a column). "I'm a little worried about women's basketball, when you have got this kind of dominance," she said.
Brennan, who's covered women's sports for decades, did add important context to her concern: This is a “time of the most balance in women's sports…. to think that you have got this kind of dominating team at this time in women's sports history, it's extraordinary,” she said.
Others in the mainstream press in well-read blogs, though, were less nuanced in their assessment -- and I had to wonder whether their concern was really with the welfare of women's sports. For instance, one wrote, “Auriemma's top-ranked juggernaut is making a mockery of the alleged depth of women's hoops.”
UConn isn't the first team (or the last) to experience a period of tremendous dominance in its sport. These periods are finite. There are great players sprinkled among many D1 teams in the field.
And: Sometimes this kind of record-making draws attention from people who otherwise might not have paid attention. In other words, it can attract fans.
The hand-wringing about coverage of women's sports is justified by the fact that paltry and demeaning coverage has always been the norm. UConn's short burst of fame -- although not accompanied by much "buzz" in coverage, as one writer pointed out -- has been unusual. But even this phenomenal accomplishment has been buried underneath stories dissecting every move by men's "bubble teams."
Judy Woodruff asked Brennan about the "ongoing struggle" of female athletes to gain media attention.
Brennan responded: "It just hasn't equated to great television ratings day in and day out for women's sports. Maybe it never will."
Brennan, Bob Costas and others have suggested that perhaps participation – not spectatorship -- will have to be the gauge by which the success of women’s sports is measured. I understand their assessment -- every step has been a struggle.
I’d like to think, though, we’ve cleared that bar -- or that we're very close. I would also argue that spectatorship drives participation – thus, we’ve got to keep advocating for better coverage of women’s sports, even when records aren’t being broken.
-- Marie Hardin
(Note: I edited this blog post after it was (rightly) pointed out to me that I had failed to contextualize Brennan’s comments on NewsHour. The focus of this post was on storylines around UConn that trouble me, not about Brennan's comments in particular. I've edited this post in an attempt to better reflect that intent.)

Answer to DeFord: Why we're likely not to notice a women's basketball team excel

NPR commentator Frank DeFord today asked why women in individual sports more often get widespread public attention (and favorable media coverage) than do women in team sports.
Deford contrasted the recent hype around Olympian Lindsay Vonn, tennis star Serena Williams, and racing driver Danica Patrick against that surrounding the UConn women's basketball team to support his thesis that we're generally not willing to support women in team sports.
Deford is right -- women who play in team sports in the U.S. generally don't reach the same kind of "star" status as those who play in individual sports such as tennis. But the issue is more than whether women compete as a team or as individuals.
Team sports are usually contact sports, and that's the bigger issue, I think. Women in sports that involve varying degrees of contact -- from the individual sports of boxing and wrestling, to team sports such as basketball -- challenge traditional ideas about femininity. And that's why they don't get the media attention or public attention they might otherwise deserve. (Danica Patrick, who participates in a highly masculine, contact (car-to-car) sport, gets attention primarily because of her foray into a men's arena. Would we expect that an all-female auto racing circuit would get much media coverage?)
Sports like figure skating, gymnastics, tennis, skiing and snowboarding don't challenge gender norms for women nearly as much. To varying degrees they support them, from an emphasis on aesthetics in performance to the allowance for athletes to dress in feminine attire when they participate in these sports.
And that makes many people far more comfortable watching -- and cheering for -- these athletes.
-- mh

Images that "sell" to young female athletes

Researchers at Bowling Green State University, the University of Memphis and the University of Iowa presented results of a study during the annual NASSS conference today suggesting that adolescent girls involved in sports are generally attracted to images of sportswomen that are athletically oriented -- not those that emphasize traditional femininity. The study, led by Vikki Krane(BGSU) and Sally Ross (Memphis), has implications for the marketing of women's collegiate sports toward the girls these programs may someday try to recruit: active, sports-focused images may be the most effective in attracting girls to sports events and athletic participation. The marketing materials (posters, programs, guides) often used for women's collegiate programs now often downplay these types of images in favor of more traditionally "feminine" photos of athletes.

Media coverage of Serena Williams' outburst emphasizes gender norms

Serena Williams, in her outburst at the U.S. Open, stepped outside the box of what is considered acceptable behavior for female athletes, according to the most recent report from the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. We analyzed articles from both traditional and new media sources to answer questions about the way Williams was portrayed in coverage of her outburst. The most interesting findings concerned comparisons between Williams and other male and female athletes. We found that although Williams was more often compared to male athletes, comparisons between her and other female athletes were more likely to be negative. Further, in articles that did compare Williams negatively to other female athletes, Kim Clijsters' (her opponent in the match who went on to win the Open) motherhood was more likely to be mentioned. One Yahoo! Sports article went as far as to call Clijsters the Open's "silver lining" after the "stain" left by Williams' outburst.

This finding is, sadly, unsurprising. Gender norms are valued in our society, and while we might be able to stomach a male behaving “violently” during a sports match, females, even female athletes, are “supposed” to be -- above all -- women. Society needed a Kim Clijsters, a mother and wife who exemplifies our ideals of femininity, to put us at ease after the Williams outburst.

This is not to argue that Williams’ behavior was acceptable or undeserving of punishment. Any athlete who threatens an official should be rebuked. However, if it had been a male athlete, perhaps an opponent of Roger Federer (who recently become a dad), would the media be mentioning Federer’s fatherhood in negative commentary about the male offender?

Posted by Erin Ash

HS sports: 'one of the next great markets'

According to rankings, the biggest high school football game in the country tonight will be played in South Florida tonight and will -- courtesy of ESPN -- be aired for the nation to watch. Marketers from Nike and other major brands will be watching because, as an article in the Sun-Sentinel notes, they have "targeted high school sports as one of the next great markets." Nike moved into one of the high schools this week with a full-force marketing campaign aimed at students.
The Sun-Sentinel article suggests that ESPN's exposure of high school sports on a national level may be a "win-win" situation, as schools' travel costs are covered and they get a small sum of money for playing. But Fred Grimm of the Miami Herald correctly takes ESPN to task for exploiting the cheap labor at the high school level. He points out the obvious: ESPN is cultivating a potential goldmine by contriving "big-time" high school matchups, selling the audience and avoiding the astronomical rights fees it pays for college sports.
The implications are sickening. Do we really want to import the problems with academic integrity we have at the college level into public schools? As Grimm writes, "On Friday night, during ESPN's Old Spice High School Showcase Presented By Nike, the commodities will be offered up on national television, along with after-shave and athletic apparel."
On a related note, ESPN has also announced plans to launch a Web site devoted to coverage of girls' high school sports (beyond what it provides on RISE). Again, such a branded ("W") site could be a moneymaker for the net by allowing it to sell eyeballs not typically attracted to its products in large numbers. But it is likely that this idea will end up on ESPN's scrap heap: Making a female-focused, sport-focused media product that sells is an exceedingly difficult proposition (just ask the editors at SI Women or at Real Sports, for instance).

Focus: Women's sports and social media

Research in the Curley Center has recently turned to sports and social media -- especially in relationship to the opportunities and challenges for coverage of women's sports. The Tucker Center at the University of Minnesota is also focusing on this important topic. The Tucker Center's blog has two new entries that look at coverage of women's sports and at social media.
Dave Zirin's entry on coverage of women's sports covers some familiar territory for women's sport advocates as he recounts the stereotypes that are common themes (sexpot or mother, for instance). He doesn't extend his discussion into the sports blogosphere -- although the stereotypes he addresses are, unfortunately, common there, too.
The other intriguing entry on the Tucker Center blog addresses the ways women's sports advocates see social media: as a land of opportunity, a place where women's sports coverage and community can flourish. But is that happening?
There are pockets where great things are happening, including WomenTalkSports.com. But, as I'll discuss soon, we're really seeing more of the same sexism, homophobia and non-coverage of women's sports that "old media" has always given us. The question then has to be: Why?

Women's football makes the sports page!

Both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune found room on their sports pages recently for coverage of women's football: the Chicago Bliss, part of the newly launched Lingerie Football League. (I only wish I were making this up.) Both papers ran articles and photos in their sports sections featuring photos of bikini-clad LFL players.
The Sun-Times article, which ran after the team's home opener, ran under a photo and "Chicago's Hottest Team" display head. The story featured Mike Ditka (part owner of the league) and a reference to "wardrobe malfunctions" of players ("the top comes off...").
Is this team more interesting to serious sports fans than the
Chicago Force -- the 2008 Eastern Conference Champions in the Independent Women's Football League? The Force received little-to-no coverage from Chicago papers although the IWFL has been around longer and is clearly a much more serious league.
What does it say about the attitudes toward female athletes and women's sports at these two papers that the Bliss story got play in their sports sections while more serious women's sports enterprises go uncovered?