Media Guide Project
Background and Overview of Study. An important part of our mission is to conduct research on women’s sports. Over the years, we at the Tucker Center have been particularly interested in media representations of female athletes at elite, highly organized levels of competition (e.g., Olympic and professional sports). As many of you know, how mass media portray athletic females can have an enormous impact on values and attitudes toward women’s sport involvement. In 2004, Center director Mary Jo Kane and Affiliated Scholar Jo Ann Buysse launched the most recent installment of nationwide, longitudinal research begun in the early 1990s. We examined images of intercollegiate female and male athletes from the 2003-04 season as depicted on media guide covers from the six most prestigious athletic conferences in the country (Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10, ACC, SEC, Big East). Our investigation asked two central questions: 1) If we compare the same sports (e.g., basketball, golf and tennis) in the same year, at the same school, using the same medium (media guide covers), will there be significant differences between how female and male athletes are portrayed?; and 2) will there be changes in these representations as a function of time? The second question was of particular interest because results from two previous studies (1990 and 1997) conducted by Dr. Buysse indicated that female athletes were significantly less likely to be portrayed as active sport participants—and significantly more likely to be portrayed in traditionally feminine, sexually provocative poses—than were their male counterparts.
Why Media Guides? We used media guide covers as our unit of analysis because they contain consciously constructed images about women’s and men’s sports that an athletic department, and by extension, a university, want to project to local and national media, advertisers and corporate sponsors, alumni groups and other campus and community members. Media guides also serve as powerful recruitment tools. Because coaches are allowed to send only one piece of information to prospective athletes, they routinely send media guides. Why? Because they provide in-depth and comprehensive details about the teams and thus carry great weight as the first piece of recruitment material received by the athlete and his or her parents and family members. In short, media guides are a primary means by which colleges and universities market their athletic teams. The images these institutions put on the guide covers reveal the messages they want to send—and the attitudes they hold—about women’s sports.
Findings. So what messages do schools want to send about their athletic programs? Much to our (pleasant) surprise, we discovered that today’s female athletes are portrayed in a manner that is virtually undistinguishable from their male counterparts, meaning as active, on-the-court competitors. This finding is in sharp contrast to images of sportswomen typically found in print and broadcast journalism. It is also in sharp contrast to Dr. Buysse’s previous investigations in which female athletes were significantly more likely than male athletes to be portrayed off the court, out of uniform and in passive, “sexy” poses.
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1989-90 Season |
1996-97 Season |
2003-04 Season |
An exemplar of these change-over-time results can be seen at Duke University where representations of female basketball players evolved from out-of-uniform, off the court images, to a posed presentation, and finally to live, on court, athletic images. (Reprinted by permission from the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, Duke University.)
Why Such a Dramatic Change? Across all six sport conferences
we examined, there was clearly a dramatic departure from the typical
(and unrelenting) mass media images that trivialize and marginalize
female athletes and their accomplishments. Why might this be the
case? Though speculative in nature, we suggest that such a change
may be due to the purpose of media guides in particular, and those
in the role of decision-maker in intercollegiate athletics in
general. Recall that media guides are an important recruitment tool
for prospective student-athletes. It is often the first point of
contact, not only for the student-athlete, but for his or her family
members as well. In this sense, it becomes a “first impression”
statement, not just about the facts and statistics of winning and
losing, but about the kind of values and attitudes an institution
has about its athletic teams. It may be that those who represent
these institutions (e.g., athletic administrators) produce and
market media guides to project an “appropriate,” All-American image
of women’s sports. Apparently those who produced representations of
sportswomen during the 2003-04 season believed that athletic
competence was a very appealing and broad-based message. Unlike
their predecessors, they may think an appropriate, even effective
way to market their teams is to equate females with athletic
competence.
Longitudinal Results. The three bar graphs below indicate the change-over time results in our three primary categories of measurement, female and male athletes portrayed: in vs. out of uniform (uniform presence); on vs. off the court (court location); and in active, athletic vs. passive images (pose presentation).
Figure 1: Longitudinal Comparisons in Women’s and Men’s Athletics by Uniform Presence
Figure 2: Longitudinal Comparisons in Women’s and Men’s Athletics by Court Location
Figure 3: Longitudinal Comparisons in Women’s and Men’s Athletics by Pose Presentation