Gender Stereotypes In Sports Media

The shaping of viewpoints on women can be credited to cultural gender roles, which are reflected in sports media reporting. The amount of females working in sports media is staggeringly low compared to their male colleagues. The standpoint that men hold higher positions in society is basic to the socially deep-rooted gender structure, which makes men out to appear to be sensible and intellectual, and accordingly, commonly fit to have charge of society and culture. (Hardin & Shain, 2005). Hardin and Shain (2005) believe that sports has greatly been accused of bolstering male hegemony, which is the so-called “natural” way of thinking that men are more suitable for and entitled to the supremacy in sport and culture. With that being said, women are then made out to be the “biologically” supportive and “domestically" adapted beings, therefore, generally in a position to be controlled of. Male dominance is reflected in sports media. The locker-room mentality, which prospers in many media sports departments, previously allowed for male reporters to intimately interview players in a setting that is informal, allowing the player to be able to feel comfortable and thus be more open …show more content…
The author asserts that the theory focuses on the phenomena such as “prejudice, discrimination, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, intergroup conflict, conformity, normative behavior, group polarizing, crowd behavior, organizational behavior, leadership, deviance, and group cohesiveness” (p. 111). Using social identity theory as a means to explore women working in sports media looks at how people’s pertinent gender identity persuades their interpretation of another person’s validity and conclusiveness, translating into how people perceive the validity of female sports reporters/analysts (Baiocchi-Wagner & Behm-Morawitz,