2. Literature Review
2.2 Gender Differences in News Coverage of Sports
2.2.3 Values Embedded in Gendered News
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before, serving as the overture for the coming men’s champion matches. In the timeout period of the women’s final match in 1993, the commentators even put their emphasis on the coming men’s game (Hallmark & Armstrong, 1999). With the unequal techniques in dealing with men’s and women’s games, it is undoubtful that the audience would consider men’s games as more important and exciting than the women’s.
Based on past research, the production process of the news with gender inequity tend to frame sports and feature females sports as less deserving of coverage than males sports with the scant amount, lower technique, and less attentional building for the audience. The current study is aimed to examine whether these kinds of
approaches appear in the Taiwan sports news, create concrete differences, and have impact on gendered news for male and female athletes. In addition, the current study is aimed to define “good coverage” with good reporting content and without gendered bias in order to offer the model for sports news reporters in Taiwan.
RQ1: How are women and men basketball games presented in newspaper (i.e., in terms of the amount of coverage, visual and other editorial elements)?
2.2.3 Values Embedded in Gendered News
Within the limited media coverage on women sports, there are great parts of lopsided, stereotypical contexts including the reinforced stereotype portraying female athletes as over-feminized and not strong enough, either physically or mentally, to deal with success and failure on the playing field, or to emphasize the glamor and grace of sports such as tennis and gymnastics. Many studies on media coverage of women in Olympic Games, from Daddario in 1997 to Roedl in 2007, indicate that the problem of gendered presentation of female athletes still exist. In 2004, Weiller et al.
asserted that real parity in narrative presentation was not achieved in these Olympic Games. By 2007, the content analysis for the front pages of 50 U.S. newspapers on
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the gender portrayals of Olympic athletes in 2006 Winter Olympics still specifies the disappointing truth that the problem of stereotypical gender representations is still present (Roedl, 2007).
Within this stereotypical representation of gender, certain gendered values are emphasized in the gendered news in mediated sports. Many scholars consider that gender differences are socially constructed and state that the sports, the battle field for ideological competition between the two genders, have long maintained and preserved the gender ideology (Hardin & Whiteside, 2008; Messner, 1988; Weiller et al., 2004;
連思晨, 2008). There has been the cutural warning sign in the sports field implicating that women should not participate in sports while highlighting the masculinity of the male athletes in the sports field, presenting male-dominance and prejudice on female.
Most recent research on the female representation in mediated sports is not aimed to examine whether the female athletes are misrepresented or underrepresented;
instead, it is the embedded value in the contexts that has become the focus to be discovered. The commonly studied gendered values in mediated sports include stereotype, attribution, and symbolic dominance.
Stereotype Stereotype is the over-simplified, inflexible and over-analogized point of view that the mass hold for a certain group of people (洪萬生, 2003). When it is applied to the geneder issue, the gendered stereotype thus occurs. It is widely believed that the expected roles for different genders, defined by the social and cultural rules, are the standard for both genders to abide by for their behaviors,
attitude, and characteristics that they are bestowed. Some scholars conducted research to examine what characteristics are considered as femine and what are considered musculine (Auster & Ohm, 2000;李美枝, 1984; 劉秀娟, 1997). The results show that most characteristics for men are mostly instrumental and related to
task-accomplishing with men usually described as ambitious, leader-like, competitive,
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determined, independent, decisive, dominant etc., while those for women are mainly expressive and related to interpersonal relationship with women mostly described as careful, friendly, ameable, graceful, emotional, affectionate etc. (李美枝, 1984).
When observing the media coverage for female athletes, we can easily discover this kind of gendered stereotype brought to the sports field. Among the dearth of the female coverage in media, the researchers found another fact that except for the sports deemed as feminine, appropriate and socially acceptable in nature for women, women sports overall are still not the top priority for the media. Therefore, for the women participating in sports involving power or high level of body contact, substantial media coverage is never the outcome that will happen to them. In Kane’s 1988 study, she indicated that the amount of coverage for female athlete has elevated, but only for sex-appropriate sports. Later on in other studies, the result has been verified that the soft sports like gymnastics, swimming, tennis, golf etc. which emphasiz more on athletes’ appearance, aesthetic and elegant body, are more likely to be reported in comparison with other male sports with high level of body contact (Leath & Lumpkin, 1992; Pedersen, 2003; Rintala & Birrel, 1984; Tuggle, 1997; Tuggle et al., 2002).
Some studies on the photographs in sports news are also concluded with the similar results that the feminime characteristics of female athletes tend to be shown in the sports news easily. Two studies both found that female athletes were usually represented in still pose in photographs, rather than in competitive or moving motion (Rintala & Birrel, 1984; Leath & Lumplin, 1992). Ducan (1990) pointed out that the angle of the photograph often positioned the female at a lower place than the male, indicating inferiority of women to men. With the presentation of stereotypical
feminime characteristics of female athletes, gender difference is further magnified and extended.
With the above stated gendered stereotype, the patriarchal male sport model is
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reinforced and legitimized as normative. Pirinen (1997) considers that in sports media, marginalization, one of the three kinds of gender discourses, maintains the exisitence of hegemonic masculinity and standardizes women’s behaviors and values, so as to control the society. According to Billings (2000), only eight female athletes were included in the Top 100 Greatest Athletes by ESPN. Female athletes in sports history is marginalized and neaerly rejected and deprived of the status in sports. For the underrepresented and misrepresented image of female athletes discovered in the previous research, Tuchman (1978) described it as annihilation of symbols for women by the mass media, discriminating the female and endangering the social development because there is no positive image for the female to be serve as model for their
behaviors and thinking.
Attribution In Duncan & Messner’s 1998 study, they examined attributions which are most commonly used for description of athletes, including ambivalence and successes and failures attribution. They indicate that the media tend to describe the male and female athletes with differenct approaches and thus enhance the gender differences. Ambivalence is the strategy that attributions with suggestions of strength and weakness are both presented and provided with both the positive and negative view of an athlete’s performance, thus trivializing the performance of the athletes to be described. According to Higgs, Weiller, and Martin (2003), commentary in both 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games contains ambivalent language for presenting female athletes, implying their powerlessness and fragility.
The strategy of attributions is also applied to describe the achievement and sport ability in the media coverage to imply the gender ideology. The success of the male athletes tend to be attributed to talnet, power, speed, physique, adventrous spirit and other men-natured capibility, while the success of female athletes may be attributed to luck, cooperation and the support from the family other than talent, hard-work and
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intellignece (Daddario, 1994; Duncan & Messner,1998; Halbert & Latimer, 1994;
Hillad, 1994). In addition, when failures occur, the male athletes are seldom to be blamed and the failure is attributed to the opponent’s capability, while the female atheltes are described with the stereotype that they are too nervous, emotional, or incapable, implying their weakness and insignificance in the male-dominant sports field (洪嘉 蔆, 2003; 連思晨, 2008; 黃雅欣, 2005).
Another strategy called formulae of exclusion can be seen as the discourse that functions to maintain certain dominance by constructing some and separating the others to maintain inner order (Foucault, 1972). In Duncan and Messner’ study on NCAA televised broadcasting (1998), formulae of exclusion occurred when the commentator emphasized on the turnovers made by female athletes and indicated that the turnovers seldom occur in comparison to the male’s games, implying that the male athletes are superior and the female athletes are inferior with the contrast.
Symbolic Dominance Symbolic dominance refers to the way the media construct difference with symbols (Duncan & Messner, 1998). By stressing the gender difference, the media present “men as the standard” and women as the non-standard, and position “men as dominant, women as subordinate”. The detailed study for symbolic dominance is divided into several types: gender marking (Higgs and Weiller, 1994; Messner et al., 1993; Weiller et al., 2004; 連思晨, 2008), infantilization/ hierarchies of naming (Blinde et al., 1991; Daddario, 1994; Halbert and Latimer, 1994; Higgs and Weiller, 1994; Messner et al., 1993), and sexualization (Duncan & Messner, 1998; 洪嘉 蔆, 2003; 黃雅欣, 2005). With symbolic
dominance, it is evident that the mediated sports are embedded with gender
discrimination, which is based on gendered stereotype and transformed into specific prejudice through direct negation and unfair language.
The use of gender marking in sports news or broadcasting has been proven in
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many studies (Higgs & Weiller, 1994; Messner et al., 1993; Weiller et al., 2004; 連思 晨, 2008). Gender marking occurs when sports are specifically identified or stressed as “male” or “female.” However, there are different levels and presentation of gender marking in different sports. For traditional sports like track and field, and rowing, the gender marking is evident and thus separates the two genders. For sports regarded as appropriate for the female, like gymnastics, male athletes were gender marked more than the female (Weiller et al., 2004). For the sports considered commonly with serious gendered discrimination, like basketball or tennis, the imbalanced gender marking was found to separate the two genders.
Gender hierarchy, one of the phenomona in the gendered society, refers to the fact that men and women are categorized into difference social hierarchy with
male-dominance, ranking men higher then women, forming the unequal status for the two genders (黃郁婷, 2005). Sports with the emphasis on physique, power, and masculinity, with the function of gendered stereotype and male-dominance in media, further accelerate the outcome of gendered hierarchy in sports, enforcing the value of
“men are superior and women are inferior.” For Duncan and Messner (1998), the infantilization, or hierarchy of naming, for female and male athletes serves as one of the proofs for the above mentioned value, which maintains the hegemony of
male-dominance. In their study, they found that female athletes were called “girls,”
“young ladies,” or even “babe” whichi labels women as “child-like,” and in contrast, labele men as “adults” (Duncan & Messner, 1998, p.180). By 2004, the situation has not been improved, Weiller et al. found hierarchy of naming from the commentators was still present in track and field and gymnastics, which infantilizes women and presumes a lesser status than male athletes. In Hong’s study about the representation of billiard athletes, hierarchy of naming is also present in Taiwan during broadcasting by the commentators and the mass media (洪嘉 蔆, 2003).
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Another situation in mediated sports which shows gendered hierarchy is
“male-female comparison” in which the performance of female athletes is compared to that of male athletes in same-sport activities, showing men as the standard and indicating women as the less capable ones. In Weiller et al.’s study in 2004, 74% of the instances they observed with male-female comparison, female athletes are compared to male athletes in the same sports. In Lien’s 2008 study for gender
disproportion in media for basketball in Taiwan, female basketball players with good performance are often compared to the male players from the commentators in order to show how good they are, implying the value of gender hierarchy with men at the top and women at the bottom (連思晨, 2008).
Sexualization empitomizes the image that the media have on female athletes. The previously-mentioned sex-appropriateness of certain sports can be seen as one form of sexualization when the gracefulness and aesthestics are stressed for sports like figure skating, gymnastics, swimming etc. However, scholars pointed out that commentators were very likely to exercise another form of sexualization by commenting on the appearance of female athletes more than male athletes, indicating that the judgment for female athletes tends to be the approval of their feminine characteristics, physical features, and female’s social roles, rather than their sports performance or capability in order to lower the attention of the performance of female athletes for the audience (Duncan & Messner, 1998; Kane & Parks, 1992; Weiller et al., 2004). More seriously, according to Media Report to Women (2002, p.7), when the appearance of female athletes is overemphasized and presented in “psuedo-sports events” like wrestling or poses in the nude in Playboy magazine, sexualizaion, the biased gendered values, and the image covered in media for female athletes will be deterioated. Contradicted to most of the past research indicating the lack of positive reporting for women sports, Kian, Mondello & Vincent (2009) asserted that female basketball players were
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recognized for their “athleticism and skill level” at least as much as male players in media coverage in their study on ESPN Internet and CBS SportsLine of the 2006 NCAA tournaments.
Many foreign studies are presented with the revealing fact of the lack of positive reporting for women sports. However, there are few studies regarding to media coverage on woman sports in Taiwan, and even fewer on women basketball. Hong examined the newspaper content and news photographs for Amway WPA Women World 9-Ball Championship and found that media construct the sports with the male athletes as the core and marginalize the female athletes by overemphasizing their appearances and ignoring their sports professions(洪嘉 蔆, 2003). Lien studied the televised broadcasting of SBL (Super Basketball League) and WSBL (Women Super Basketball League) in Taiwan and points out the gender disproportion of the sports programs in Taiwan (連思晨, 2008). Yet, the newspaper coverage on women basketball and the differences of reports between male and female basketball teams and players have not been studied before. Based on the previous research, the study is aimed to examine whether the gendered coverage exist in the news for the national women basketball team in Taiwan and hopefully to offer suggestion for sports news with the better solution for fair reporting for female basketball players in Taiwan.
RQ2: What is the gender ideology embedded in the media coverage of men and women basketball games in Taiwan?