When considering the effects of news media on gender roles, one only needs to look at the coverage of sports to see that the legendary singer James Brown was correct in saying “this is a man’s world”. ESPN, the aptly-described “world-wide leader in sports” boasts a total of 79 columnists on its website, espn.com, only eight of whom are female. That is almost ten males for every one female reporter. Of course, this seems fitting, because a recent visit to that website featured the images of more than a dozen athletes on the homepage, who are all male, and who better to tell the tale of male athletes than men? In fact, the only sports being covered regularly by the largest networks (FOX, CBS, NBC and ABC) come from only the largest sport leagues (the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and PGA), none of which allows female participants.

In the interest of fairness, however, there is a female presence heard and seen during major-league televised sporting events. While watching a televised Jacksonville Jaguars football game, the fans of said team glare at the projected images of monstrous men plowing into and through each other, laugh along with the humorous commentary and jovial banter of former athletes who now provide background fodder for the event, and listen intensely to the decisions of the judicious zebra-striped referees. Occasionally, there is a close-up view plastered onto the screen of The Roar, Jacksonville’s scantily-clad cheerleader group, high-kicking for the boys in teal. And sometimes the commentators in the studio speak shortly with a female field reporter who brings a two-second summation of the coach’s frustration with how the game is going for his team, a report that is cut short because it’s time for a commercial.
Could it be that most women aren’t that interested in sports, so this multi-billion dollar industry has been generously given to the men of the world, including the coverage of sports, which is also a multi-billion dollar industry? Not likely. According to the NFHS 2003-2004 High School Athletics Participation Survey, female athletes comprised 41.5% of high school athletes. So maybe women just don’t watch that much TV, right? Nope. Neilson viewing statistics from 2007 show that men, 18+, watch TV four hours 55 minutes a day on average, and women spend five hours 43 minutes on average, almost one hour more than men.
Although the cause for this disparity within sports and sports media may be unknown, or due to many factors (inequality at executive level of media, sports industry, waning effects of generations of inequality within all industries, etc.), the proprietors of sports and the media that cover them had better change their tune to survive. Most college students are now female, and women make 80% of all buying decisions in all homes. With more households being headed by women, more women graduating college and earning more pay, and more female participation in sports programs, the archaic ways of the world of sports are soon to change as well. If the ones who rule the game don’t see these realities for what they are soon, they may find themselves on the sidelines, off the field, and out of the studio.

-James Rutherford