Analysis of Vincent's piece

In the piece, “Equitable Media Coverage of Female and Male Athletes: Is There a Solution?,” author John Vincent makes a lot of good points in regards to media coverage of athletics.

Vincent talks a lot about how portrayal of female athletes in the media strongly reinforces gender-role stereotypes. He claims that female athletes are allowed to be in the spotlight as long as they are appealing in the sense of the heterosexual relationships. In other words, sports sections would get more readers or hits if they do a story on (and have pictures of) someone like Anna Kournikova as compared to Diana Taurasi or Lisa Leslie.

He also raises the point of the sports journalism field being dominated by males. It would be much easier for a male sports writer to frame a female athlete into the stereotypical gender-role than it would be for a female reporter. A male writer would probably ask more questions about her private or social life rather than focusing on performance or skills.

Perhaps what I found most interesting, though, was peoples’ interest in female sports. According to Vincent females “competing in the traditionally ‘gender-appropriate’ individual sports such as swimming, diving, gymnastics, and tennis, which represent a narrow, culturally stereotyped view of female athleticism, receive more electronic and print media coverage than female athletes competing in the traditionally ‘gender-inappropriate’ team sports such as field hockey, softball, and rugby,” (Vincent 3).

When it’s all said and done, I don’t know how realistic his recommendations are. I think if more women were involved in sports journalism you could see the field start to change its ways over time. However, I think it is hard for sports fans to get overly excited about female athletics not because they are not of an equivalent skill level to male athletes, but because of the traditions of sport that are instilled in the sporting world and our society. If people don’t care enough to watch the game live, they sure as hell won’t be waking up the next morning to read about it in the paper. For example:

The World Series: Major League Baseball. Men

The Super Bowl: National Football League. Men

The Finals: National Basketball Association. Men

I think for some people it is hard to get past the traditional gender-role stereotypes that come with sports. Which begs the question, how far have we actually come with gender equality in sport? Title IX was a step in the right direction. However, I think a lot of people could look at Title IX and say it’s more a punishment of male athletics than advancement for female athletics.