Sports And Society's Oppression Of Women

In today’s society women are often doubted for their abilities in comparison with men’s abilities. If women are too good at sport we question their womanhood and whether or not they are truly a woman, if they are average or below average we just assume that they are a normal woman and match the normal ability. Due to a lack of enforcing or appreciating of women’s abilities, women do not feel as supported and have a lack of drive to succeed in sport due to society’s standards. This brings us to the focus of why are women’s abilities doubted in sport? In this paper we will analyze why and how women are doubted in sport through media coverage, childhood experiences, stereotyping, leadership, and physical ability. A huge part of our society currently

A content analysis of covers (2000-2011),” Jonetta D. Weber and Robert M. Carini discuss the lack of women represented on Sports Illustrated covers and how women’s sport participation is minimized through this lack of representation in media. The authors speak of how women’s participation in sport is often minimized by society’s portrayal of women as sexual objects, “…females are not socialized as strongly into sport as their male counterparts, and strides they make within the sports world are often minimized, for example, considered less important than physical beauty or sexual worth. Socialization into sex roles is shaped, in part, via a lifetime of interactions with the media; thus, media portrayals are instrumental in helping females determine their place in

This is mainly due to a lack of information regarding whether or not it would be beneficial to expose. Due to this lack, women’s abilities are not showed off enough because of the doubt of ability for women’s sports to create a profit. In her September 2012 The Muse article, “Road to the Olympics: Why Women’s Sports Are Still Behind,” Pan Pan Fan speaks on the lack of exposure of women’s sports and how that has lead to women’s sports falling behind. Fan explains how the media’s worries of ratings leads to lack of exposure to women’s sports within media, “…there wasn’t enough commercial interest in women’s sports and the risk was far too high for sponsors and sports federations given a volatile economic period.” Fan found data that proved the worry of women’s sports not being interesting enough wrong and that supports that people want to and would watch women in popular sports events. Fan believes that by engaging women, a large market can grow for women’s sports and sports viewing in media which in return would create more women athletes because of the affect that seeing women athletes engage in sport would have on other women. Fan believes that women athletes need to take a stand and demand to be represented more in media in order to serve more as role models for young girls rather than girls just looking up to those celebrities and models that are