Gender in Sports & Media Coverage

Before today's presentation, I was aware that women in athletics are totally shafted in terms of air time, pay, etc. After today's presentation, I am disgusted by the fact that women in sports and media are hardly given ANY air time, hardly any sponsorship if they are not sexual, and overall, pretty much aren't even considered athletes by the world.

The summer olympics of 2012 was a huge leap for women.  There were women represented in countries that had never had  women from, there were pregnant women shooting guns, and women winning gold medals! HOWEVER, there were still so much criticism over women's outfits, women's hair styles, etc and there were significantly fewer women's events broadcast on television than men's. 

The media coverage(or lack there of) of men and women's sports was not just relevant to the olympics of 2012.  As they discussed in class, women's sports take up something like 10% of time on sports networks.  Along with that, if you look at sports magazines, women show up only if they are overly sexualized and scantily clad, and it probably helps if they have super awesome bodies.   Along with that, those are the women who have the best sponsorship!  To continue that, female athletes are often only paid attention to when they are not even on the court, field, etc.

One of the biggest pieces of information I took from the discussion was that female athletes are often not taken seriously, and if they are taken seriously, they probably do not have incredibly high sponsorship nor a fan base.  In essence, even though it is 2012, and the 40th anniversary of Title IX is coming up, women are not even close to being considered equal when it comes to athletics.