Social And Social Media's Coverage Of Female Athletes

Senior Research Consultant for the Australian Sports Commission Dr. Ralph Richards, has conducted research about woman’s sports, and how gender is an aspect of either succeeding or failing to become a professional elite athlete. In his research both social and cultural differences also have a major effect for making it harder for female athletes. This is due to the predominant social view of sport, and how print and social media, is still very male oriented. Statistics show that many aspiring female athletes drop out from continuing their professional sports career due to a lack of exposer for non-male sport broadcasting. It is shown that coverage of women in sport is only made up of around 9% of all the coverage in Australian broadcasting. Male sport on the other hand occupied around 81% of all coverage of television news reporting. (Richards, 2016). This shows a major difference of the lack of recognition that goes to female athletes. In order to continue to compete they later have to resort to demoralizing behaviors such as exposing their bodies in

Although for woman is is not a good strategy because they are forcing themselves to be treated as a piece of meat, in order to gain enough money to continue training as an elite athlete. Richard explains that during the coverage of the Olympic games, showed that both male and female received a more equal proportion of time on television, and women were the ones that were most likely to be discussed on their achievements (2016). This shows us that if news station were to increase more female oriented coverage, they would not have a decreased amount of viewers. Dr. Richards research implies that there wouldn’t be a need for female athletes to pose nude in calendars, if only woman were to receive more