Gender stereotyping in football journalism and commentary

Over the past several decades, gender equality has risen to the front of commonly overlooked problems needing to be addressed. Casual discrimination towards women in media has caused outrage in recent years, particularly in the field of sport.
Women’s football is a sport which has risen in popularity in recent years, most recently due to the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Vancouver. The competition brought with it high media attention, in particular from England and the United States and for 3 weeks, had the attention of the world. This event was handled well in the media and the coverage was widely approved of, however in previous tournaments, there has been clear cases of casual gender discrimination.
In the 2011 finals in Germany, where there was far less media coverage and attention drawn to the tournament, the players consistently had their appearance commented on, such as hairstyles and complexion. When compared to the men’s game it is not unusual to have a players physical appearance noted, but parts of their appearance irrelevant to the game they were playing (such as hair and complexion) are rarely mentioned, if at all.
The media generally classify the Women’s world cup to be less important as the men’s event and therefore give it significantly less coverage. Whilst, in fairness, the recent world cup was widely covered and celebrated, it still had virtually no acknowledgment when compared to the men’s world cup in Brazil the year before. Weeks of build-up, large-scale advertisements seen both on television and around towns and cities and huge celebrity endorsement.
In print journalism, small comments that used to go un-noticed are turning heads due to their underlying implications that men are more capable in sport than women. In an article discussing the success of Jessica Ennis, she was referred to as ‘Recent mother Jessica’. In sports reports for men, their personal and private lives are only mentioned if they’re controversial and even then, the entire article tends to be focused around it, as opposed to it being briefly mentioned.
One case that caused wide-spread outrage and controversy took place after the England women’s team were eliminated from the 2015 Women’s World Cup at the semifinal stage after losing to Japan in heartbreaking fashion. Upon returning home after the tournament’s end, the official England twitter posted a tweet that read:
‘Our #Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today, but they have taken on another title – heroes.’
With this message being broadcast to over 1 million followers, the internet reacted furiously and the offensive tweet was deleted within the hour. Several widely-respected figures in the twitter world accused the F.A of sexism and the writer of the tweet was forced to apologize publicly.
This shows that even in the developed time that we live in, there are still clear examples of gender discrimination in the media. The real question is, will sexism still be widely present in 4 years’ time at the next world cup?

Sources: http://news.yahoo.com/english-fa-apology-tweet-womens-world-cup-team-185254017.html

James Daniels