Mainstreamed and marginalized: Female athletes as the “other” in international sport media coverage

Abstract

Western media critics have long observed that female athletes seldom receive more than a minimal amount of media coverage devoted to sport, due in large part to the masculine hegemony that pervades the sport industry. In the US and other Western countries, men’s sports are overwhelmingly privileged in nearly all media contexts. Consequently, female athletes have been accustomed to being marginalized, sexualized, and, in some cases, rendered invisible by media outlets as they are situated as the “Other” in the press. According to feminist critics, sport normalizes men’s power, as evidenced by the media’s tendency to highlight women’s physical attractiveness and marital status rather than their athletic skills. Increasingly, male privilege and bias are manifested through commentary intended to differentiate men’s and women’s sports rather than through blatant gendered stereotypes. The picture is not entirely bleak, however, with some increased media attention devoted to women’s sports in audience-driven televised events like the Olympics, the World Cup, and professional tennis and golf tournaments; however, these are the exceptions. This article explores the sometimes paradoxical relationship between women’s sport and “Otherness, " whereby women can be both mainstreamed and marginalized in contemporary popular media.