Media need to stop portraying women simply as 'touchline totty'

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/19/media-portraying-women-sports-sexism

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Try Googling the words "women" and "sport" and you quickly come across the item "No athlete would mind being interviewed by one of these sideline hotties" from the US's Men's Fitness online magazine. You can also have a look at the sexiest female athletes of 2013. Try it with men and sport and, sorry ladies, not a six-pack in sight.

The Commons culture, media and sport select committee has launched an inquiry into the barriers remaining to women's participation in sport. Has the success of Team GB's female athletes in the Olympics encouraged more girls to get sporty? What role does media coverage play?

The briefest of flicks through the back pages of newspapers shows a dearth of female bylines on reports and pictures; plus virtually no coverage of women's sporting events. Women are breaking down some barriers, yet it seems that you are more likely to see a female reporter on the frontline of a war than the touchline of a football or rugby match.

Of the Press Gazette's top 50 sport journalists of 2012, two were women. The 2011 shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year was exclusively male. Mainstream media promote an image of women that have set ideas on what constitutes femininity. So while it is OK to look like Maria Sharapova if you play tennis, it offends commentators such as the BBC's John Inverdale if you look like Marion Bartoli.

Sports radio and TV is squarely aimed at men. That's why the laddish Colin Murray can thrive, despite saying to the crowd at the anniversary games in the Olympic stadium, the ultimate athlete would have "the stamina of Mo (Farah), the speed of (Usain) Bolt, the leap of (Greg) Rutherford and the bottom of Jess Ennis".

According to the Women's Sport and Fitness foundation, 5% of sport's media coverage is given to women's sport in non-Olympic years and 0.5% of commercial investment goes to women-only sport. Research shows that as girls get older, they are less likely to get involved in sports.

Women who do well in sport do not have the same status as David Beckham, Tiger Woods or Louis Hamilton. Gareth Bales's £85m-plus transfer fee is an indication of the huge gulf in funding between the men's and the women's game. Yet, it seems economically illiterate of promoters of sport to exclude half their potential market.

The National Union of Journalists has two main messages for MPs on the committee: until the back pages recognise the other half of the population – as journalists and readers – women's sport will remain an anomaly; and unless sexist views of femininity are challenged, sportswomen will not be accepted as suitable role models for girls.

That is why young women today are more likely to aspire to be Wags (wives and girlfriends) of footballers than to pull on a shirt themselves.

<em>Michelle Stanistreet is general secretary of the </em><em>National Union of Journalists</em>

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