Towards a level playing field: sport and gender in Australian media

Women in sport made up just nine per cent of all sports coverage in Australian television news and current affairs and seven per cent of other sport programming, according to this report. Television news reports on female sport had the lowest average duration of all the types of sport news analysed; with reports on male sport having an average duration of 30 seconds longer than reports on female sport. Female athletes generally need to win in order to receive media coverage, whereas male athletes tend to receive coverage regardless of their success. Nevertheless, the gender stereotyping in press and television coverage of female athletes was minimal, with reporting focussed on the performances and results rather than their looks, sexuality or emotions. This research was carried out for the Commission by the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW and Media Monitors Pty Ltd to provide a broad and rich picture of how much coverage there is of women’s sport and female athletes in radio, television and print media relative to the coverage of male sport, male athletes and mixed sport. The research also focused on how women’s sport and female athletes are portrayed: whether female athletes are routinely stereotyped, sexualised or trivialised in the media, and how they are depicted relative to male athletes.