A Few Good Women (and a Large Crowd of Men)

The media plays an influential role in creating images of both women and men. Sports coverage is in many ways dominated by coverage of men rather than women, which can be mirrored in the traditional public perception that men are active and athletic, and women, by exclusion, are not. To name one example for the importance of the matter, studies have shown that girls frequently drop out of organized sports as teenagers and this has, at least to some extent, been explained by the absence of women as role models in the sports media.
The Sports, media and stereotypes (SMS) project is a trans-national study involving five European countries, i.e. Iceland, Norway, Lithuania, Austria and Italy. The project aims at contributing to the knowledge of representation of women and men in the sports media in Europe as it aims to promote change in the stereotypes presented of both genders in this field.
The main objectives of the SMS-project are two: First of all to explore similarities and variations in representations of women and men in sports. And secondly to promote change in the gendered stereotypes in sports by enlightening the most influential target groups about the impact of their representation of male and female athletes, particularly in the media, and how it creates and maintains traditional images of women and men.

Publisher: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal Convention Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Aug 10, 2006
Year of Publication: 2006