Introduction

While sports for many are just a form of entertainment, they play a huge role in the lives of many young children. Children look up to athletes as heroes and role models that have qualities that transcend the playing field like poise and a competitive attitude. The way in which we reward athletes for winning is by is constantly giving them attention and feeding their acts of heroism to the general public for consumption. Sports broadcasting and the coverage of such athletes has been an almost exclusively male-dominated profession that has perpetuated men’s sports as being superior to its female counterpart. Countless times we see in the Olympics, men’s accomplishments dominating the front page of the newspaper when a women’s team has done better. As a result, young girls are not encouraged to play sports and develop some of these intangible qualities because no attention is given on the matter. While young boys are overwhelmed with images of male athletes exhibiting confidence and craft, young girls are not receiving the same message.

So, there is this notion that is perpetuated that men are the ones who are confident and poised, while women are not because there is no female role model in that same position because society does not equate them as being the same as male athletes. This has to do with the way sports are represented and covered by the media. In our presentation, we explore the history of women’s broadcasting in sports to analyze the lack of acceptance and representation of female commentators, which is rooted in what we have been learning in class about the scrutiny female athletes endure in our society.