Women’s Sport and Questionable Sex

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
American Women ◽  
Disadvantaged Women ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Testing Policies

This chapter explores how leaders of several international athletic federations worked to quell anxieties about “manly” women competitors by instituting “sex-testing” policies to verify the femaleness of female athletes. Purporting to safeguard women's sport and its participants, the tests have too often disadvantaged women and served as a powerful form of social control that encouraged normative femininity in the context of sport. Although most organizations have since declared an end to sex-testing in their official policies, new forms of surveillance and detection continue to define who counts as a woman in the context of sport. For better or worse, the introduction of the sex-test signified that women's sports were on the rise, and in the 1970s American women went through what many felt was an athletic revolution.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Female Athletes ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Practical Solution ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Mediated Discourse ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Gendered Ideologies

This introductory chapter considers how something as seemingly mundane as a ponytail is actually shot through with substantial and varied cultural significance. Unquestionably, the hairstyle provides a practical solution for dealing with longer hair, but what it comes to mean, how it is taken up in mediated discourse, the ways it becomes synonymous with female athletes, and its relationships to sexuality, age, race, nationality, and culture engender a normative, athletic femininity in the context of U.S. women's sports. At the same time, there are dynamics of power, pleasure, agency, and resistance involved with the everyday act of styling one's hair. It is difficult to imagine women's sport without the ponytail, but the chapter argues that it is precisely because they seem so commonsense and commonplace that they are powerfully connected to gendered ideologies.

scholarly journals Gender Representation of Athletes in Finnish and Swedish Tabloids

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti Laine
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Sporting Events ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Sports Journalism ◽  
Male Athletes ◽  
Winter Olympics ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage

Abstract The study examines quantitatively and qualitatively gender representation in Finnish and Swedish tabloids’ sports coverage during Athens 2004 summer and Turin 2006 winter Olympics. Several media studies argue that sports journalism marginalises women’s sports and sexualises female athletes. The results of this study show that male athletes received more coverage than female athletes in every tabloid, but when the number of domestic participants and their level of success were considered, neither country’s tabloids quantitatively marginalised women’s sports. Qualitative analysis found that research stereotypes showing trivialisation and sexualisation of female athletes were incorrect, with the exception of Finnish tabloids representations of female athletes participating in sports that are considered masculine. For the most part, female athletes were represented in the same way as male athletes. However, it should be emphasised that the material is limited to Olympics coverage: during such major sporting events women are treated more equally, particularly quantitatively.

Newswork, News Values, and Audience Considerations

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 647-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merryn Sherwood ◽  
Angela Osborne ◽  
Matthew Nicholson ◽  
Emma Sherry
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
News Values ◽  
Sports Media ◽  
Repetitive Nature ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sports Coverage ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Sports News

Substantial research indicates that women’s sports and female athletes gain only a small fraction of sports media coverage worldwide. Research that has examined why this is the case suggested this can be attributed to three particular factors that govern sports newswork: the male-dominated sports newsroom, ingrained assumptions about readership, and the systematic, repetitive nature of sports news. This study sought to explore women’s sports coverage using a different perspective, exploring cases where women’s sports gained coverage. It identified Australian newspapers that published more articles on women’s sports, relative to their competitors, and conducted interviews with both journalists and editors at these newspapers. It found that small, subtle changes to the three newswork elements that had previously relegated the coverage of women’s sports now facilitated it. This research provides evidence that, at least in some newspapers in Australia, sports newswork has developed to include the coverage of women’s sports.

Gender loci in DNA forensics and women's sports

Biomics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-74
Author(s):  
R.R. Garafutdinov ◽  
A.R. Sakhabutdinova ◽  
Ya.I. Alekseev ◽  
A.V. Chemeris
Keyword(s):  
Y Chromosome ◽  
Forensic Medicine ◽  
Dna Sequences ◽  
Female Athletes ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
False Negative ◽  
Pcr Analysis ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Genetic Characteristics ◽  
Women’S Sports

In forensic medicine, it is necessary to establish the sexual identity of the owner of the analyzed biological material. To do this, it is necessary to use PCR to detect specific DNA sequences that are characteristic only of the Y chromosome. For these purposes, a number of loci are used, located on both the Y and X chromosomes but carrying certain differences in the nucleotide sequences (alpha satellites DYZ and DXZ; amelogenin loci AMELY and AMELX; STS steroid sulfatase genes; the genes of the neuroligin NLG4Y and NLG4X, etc.), and those located only on the Y-chromosome (sex-determining region SRY; gene of the specific testicular protein TSPY, etc.). At the same time, forensic experts often deal with damaged or old samples in which the DNA has been destroyed and extended fragments in it may simply not be, as a result of which false negative results will be formed. Thus, in DNA forensics, when detecting gender loci, the sizes of amplicons should tend to the minimum possible. Therefore, in this review article, a certain emphasis was placed on the size of amplicons, and as practice shows, for most loci, their minimization is in demand. Moreover, such a PCR analysis in a number of cases (in XX-men, XY-women, in persons with other sex chromosome abnormalities, in people who deliberately changed their gender identity) it can lead to a false definition of the phenotypic sex due to the genetic characteristics of such individuals. As a result, the ongoing investigation of a crime, focused on the search for a representative of a particular gender, can go down the wrong path. A cardinal solution to this problem in DNA criminology can be a universal DNA registration of the entire population, which will allow for the biological traces with high accuracy to establish a specific person to whom these traces belong and his real sex will no longer be important and it will not be relevant to determine it with the help of PCR. In addition to forensic medicine, the problem of establishing gender also exists in women's sports. For a whole decade, the PCR method and some of the loci listed above were used for this purpose, but since 2011 PCR has been abandoned and instead the level of the male hormone testosterone has became determined. However, with the gender of female athletes, there are much more ethical issues than genetic ones.

Newspaper Representation of Women Athletes in 1984 and 1994

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Mathesen ◽  
Kay Flatten
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
General Population ◽  
Women Athletes ◽  
Sport Participation ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Women’S Sports

This research was to assess changes in Great Britain (GB) in the percent coverage of women’s sports in six national and Sunday newspapers (Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Express, Mail and Mirror) between 1984 and 1994. Measurements were taken of all sports articles on the front pages, editorial pages and sports pages for the period 1st-14th July in both years. Data were categorized into male only, female only and mixed articles per day, square centimetres per day and photos per day. There was a decrease in percentage coverage of women’s sport coverage (articles per day down 5.2%; cm2 per day down 5.2%; photos per day down 7.1%) while the overall coverage of sport increased. During the time period the portion of GB Olympians who were women increased by 7% and there was a 3% increase in proportion of sports participants in the general population who were women. An adjustment index is presented which uses population figures and sport participation figures to calculate the proportion of sport participants who are female. This index was used to assess fairness in reporting sport.

Image and Investment: Sponsorship and Women's Sport

2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Shaw ◽  
John Amis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Makers ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Sports Teams ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
The Media ◽  
Marketing Tool

Studies that have examined the disparity in investment between men's and women's sports are rare and are generally distributional in nature. Little research has been carried out that has explored the reasons why managers tend to invest in men's sport instead of women's. Given the rise in sponsorship spending, and the increasingly strategic nature of such investments, this represents an important gap in the literature. The purpose of this paper was to explore conceptually and empirically some of the possible reasons for this disparity. By examining the agreements made by the sponsors of two international women's sports teams, we found support for the contention that the values and beliefs of decision makers, the media representation of sport, and mimetic pressures on managers combine to heavily influence decisions about what and who to sponsor. We also suggest that if such factors can be overcome, women's sport has the potential to be a very useful marketing tool for certain firms.

A Quest for a Market: A Profile of the Consumers of a Professional Women’s Basketball Team and the Marketing Implications

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketra L. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Financial Stability ◽  
Marketing Strategies ◽  
Professional Sport ◽  
Sport Organizations ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Discretionary Time ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Women's Basketball ◽  
Basketball Team

Women’s sports is at an all-time high, as evidenced by the emergence of a number of professional women’s sport leagues (such as basketball, baseball, and fast-pitch softball). Notwithstanding the growth and popularity of women’s sports, these leagues will have to compete with other forms of leisure for consumers’ discretionary time and resources. Since financial stability is vital to the longevity of the developing women’s leagues, the competition for consumers will require a greater need for the marketers of women’s professional sport organizations to understand the variety of factors that influence sport consumers’ behavior and shape the composition of their respective markets. Presented in this article are the results of a study in which the consumers of one of the professional women’s basketball teams that competed in the American Basketball League (ABL)were investigated. The teams’ spectators are profiled as sport consumers, factors that influenced their attendance, are identified and implications for effective marketing strategies are noted.

scholarly journals The role of the International Olympic Committee in the development of women`s sports in Muslim countries

2020 ◽  
pp. 44-47
Author(s):  
A. Domina
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
International Olympic Committee ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Features

The development of women's sports as a whole depends on a significant number of factors that directly or indirectly influence this process. The development of women's sports in Muslim countries faces additional obstacles in the form of socio- historical and socio-cultural features of Islamic conservative society. But, in recent decades, the process of women's sport development has intensified significantly, in Muslim countries in particular. A significant role in the process of becoming a women's sport is played by the International Olympic Committee in cooperation with the world organizations

Rules, Rulers, and the “Right Kind” of Competition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Schultz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Educators ◽  
Women's Sports ◽  
Women's Sport ◽  
Women’S Sports ◽  
Sport Skills ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
United States Olympic Committee

This chapter discusses how women physical educators began to reevaluate their collective position against intercollegiate, commercial, and hypercompetitive sports for their students. Particular attention is given to a series of National Institutes on Girls' Sports, jointly sponsored by the Division for Girls and Women's Sports (DGWS) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) that took place during the 1960s. At these clinics, educators, recreation leaders, and other interested parties learned the necessary tools to teach sport skills to their respective charges and to encourage them to engage in “the right kind of competition.” The emergent groundswell of support was an important antecedent to the subsequent developments in women's sport.

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