WOMEN AND OLYMPIC GAMES: MEDIA COVERAGE

Abstract

Despite the fact that women have succeeded in their effort to have equal participation in the Summer Olympics, the public image of them is still predominantly stereotyped, which this study proves. The subject of analysis in this paper are narrative articles and photographs about male athletes and female athletes in sports sections, especially in the Olympic specials and the front pages of the best-selling daily newspaper in Serbia, Blic, during the Olympic Games, from July 27th to August 13th 2012. Hypotheses that the authors want to prove deal with the assumption that male athletes are often more represented in media than female athletes, and that the articles about women are often stereotyped. Some of the most frequent stereotypes are those which describe women as feminine, beautiful or sexual objects, as well as like someone's mother, wife or girlfriend, also, as infantile, emotional or irritable, or maybe those are just some irrelevant articles that do not talk about sport activities of female athletes. The Olympic Games in London are significant because, for the first time in history, women were equated with men in the sports in which both genders participate.