User:Livharolds/sandbox

Article- Basketball in the United States

Subsection-Women's Basketball

''Most WNBA teams play at the same venue as their NBA counterparts. The top tier professional Basketball league for females is the WNBA. It is not as popular as its male counterpart.... ( or possibly create my own topic within Basketball in the United States and label it women's basketball in sports media.''

The WNBA and Women's basketball in general has a low popularity rate compared to the NBA and Men's basketball mainly due to the media coverage and the amount of money put into the WNBA. In the WNBA the league only has so much money it can spend due to sponsorship and the money it makes off of merchandise and games. As a result of this the athletes are paid significantly less than the men in the NBA because the WNBA has less media coverage and less promotion to gain money for the league. With the NBA they have news coverage and many sports channels that discuss how the season is going for the men. But when it comes to the WNBA you have to do more of a search to find the games and to find news coverage about each teams seasons. The same goes for the WNBA merchandise since it is almost never accessible in stores."Women account for a large percentage of the sporting world, but it is disheartening and discouraging to thousands of female athletes that they account for only a mere fraction of its media coverage. ;17" One of the reasons for this is that, "With scientific evidence indicating that men are biologically programmed to be stronger and faster, coverage of their sports is considered to be more entertaining, filled with greater excitement and action. ;17" Due to this belief or fact in some cases the media has never tried putting their full effort into publicizing women's basketball so they don't fully know how it will turn out.

More specifically "The media, for example, present sports as if there are masculine (e.g., football and ice hockey) and feminine (e.g., gymnastics and figure skating) sports, aligning with traditional expectations of male and female athletes, which makes it more difficult to break traditional gender barriers and allowing women to participate in masculine sports and men to participate in feminine sports. In fact, many female athletes are only accepted by society and receive coverage in the media if they participate in traditionally feminine sports . If a woman dares to participate in a masculine sport, their sexuality is immediately questioned . The media tends to ignore, which devalues, women’s athletic accomplishments by focusing on their physical appearance, private lives, and femininity and sexuality even if they achieve more impressive athletic feats. " By doing so women in basketball find themselves in a grey area because they are playing what is "meant" to be a masculine sport causing the media to over emphasize their appearance, femininity and sexuality. "The idea of women having a biologically inferior body has been extensively used to justify the exclusion of females in certain sports and influence the idea that women who chose masculine sports are promoting lesbianism and other unfeminine traits. The female body continues to be identified as an object within sport and women often experience significant conflict with the negotiation of being an athlete and being a woman.;219" All due to media and the gender differences society places on sports in this day and age causes basketball and any sport to not be just about the game anymore. It's about everything else that comes with it in the media and the world around the sport. But in a sense women's basketball has always been this way because even from the start there has been controversy and until that controversy goes away women's basketball will always be more about the world around it and the gender differences than it will be about the game itself.

https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=ur

The Inequality of Sport: Women < Men Valarie Hanson St. John Fisher College

"Women account for a large percentage of the sporting world, but it is disheartening and discouraging to thousands of female athletes that they account for only a mere fraction of its media coverage."

"With scientific evidence indicating that men are biologically programmed to be stronger and faster, coverage of their sports is considered to be more entertaining, filled with greater excitement and action."

"Mainstream media as a whole, not only magazines, largely ignores women, their athletic abilities, and the essence of the tough and talented female athlete."

"Men are portrayed as bigger, faster, stronger, and overall superior to women in college sports as well as professional, projecting men as the stereotypical images of athletic icons. Conversely, stereotypical femininity, like the feminine caretaker, represents the image of the female athlete. These representations further solidify the dominance, power, and control that males exert in the realm of sport. The commercialization of sport and increased media coverage has diminished the importance and prominence of females in sport. Women have come a long way in sports over the past few decades, but gender has become the aspect of identity within sports that encompasses not only the terms male and female, but also athlete and participant, respectively."

https://thesportjournal.org/article/exposure-to-womens-sports-changing-attitudes-toward-female-athletes/

Exposure to Women’s Sports: Changing Attitudes Toward Female Athletes

Authors: Travis Scheadler, Audrey Wagstaff, Ph.D., MJE

"The media, for example, present sports as if there are masculine (e.g., football and ice hockey) and feminine (e.g., gymnastics and figure skating) sports, aligning with traditional expectations of male and female athletes, which makes it more difficult to break traditional gender barriers and allowing women to participate in masculine sports and men to participate in feminine sports. In fact, many female athletes are only accepted by society and receive coverage in the media if they participate in traditionally feminine sports . If a woman dares to participate in a masculine sport, their sexuality is immediately questioned . The media tends to ignore, which devalues, women’s athletic accomplishments by focusing on their physical appearance, private lives, and femininity and sexuality even if they achieve more impressive athletic feats ."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042813025512

The Impact of the Media on Gender Inequality within Sport☆

Eoin J.Trolan

"the idea of women having a biologically inferior body has been extensively used to justify the exclusion of females in certain sports and influence the idea that women who chose masculine sports are promoting lesbianism and other unfeminine traits. The female body continues to be identified as an object within sport and women often experience significant conflict with the negotiation of being an athlete and being a woman."