Our female athletes had their fair share of the media spotlight during the Tokyo Olympics. So, Toni Bruce asks, why can't they have 50 percent of the coverage all year round?
Like millions around the world, I was glued to the TV during the Olympics, as sportswomen cycled, sailed, vaulted, paddled, tackled, putted and threw their way to medals. Sportswomen were taken seriously, with the focus on their mental and physical strength, skills and commitment. It was everything a women’s sport fan could ask for.
The high quality, exciting Olympic coverage shows that sports media can meet the growing expectation of gender equality. At the 2016 Rio Games, New Zealand media gave almost equal coverage to Kiwi female and male athletes, and at earlier Olympics, Kiwi sportswomen have received more coverage than the men.
The Games are a rare exception when national identity outweighs gender, and our sportswomen are catapulted into the public eye.
Based on my ‘smorgasbord’ approach to watching as many sports as possible across 12 different Sky Sport live Olympics channels, coverage broadly achieved the IOC’s aim of equal, fair and inclusive representation that avoids unnecessary focus on looks, clothing or intimate body parts.
The first positive was that gender equality was clearly ‘on the agenda’. Hard on the heels of popular movements like #MeToo, news coverage highlighted issues in how media represent sportswomen such as the Tokyo Olympic broadcaster’s announcement that it would avoid images that sexualised female bodies.
It also highlighted athletes' decisions to challenge sexualisation in women's sport, such as the German gymnastic team who chose to compete in full-length unitards. Before the Games, the Norwegian women's beach handball team (admittedly not an Olympic sport) were fined for competing in tight-fitting shorts rather than the required bikini bottoms.
The global media coverage of these actions is good news for women’s sport - even if it has taken over 40 years of activism for issues of sexualisation to be taken seriously by mainstream media.
Secondly, commentators represented women and men as serious athletes competing at the pinnacle of their sports, and their hard work, determination and sacrifices were presented in similar ways.
The commentary overwhelmingly focused on technique, power, skill, style, fitness, mental strength, and the ability to overcome pain and injury. Athletes and teams were introduced in terms of their previous successes, current world records or rankings, training disruptions and other factors that might affect their performance. Men and women were validated for expressing emotion, including crying after winning or losing.
Another positive was the focus on sportswomen’s athlete role rather than their gender role (ie mum, wife). Rather than framing sportswomen with children as unusual and over-achieving 'supermums', the live coverage recognised and normalised pregnancy as a natural part of an elite sportswoman’s career.
Discussing Dame Valerie Adams’ time away from shotput to have two children, commentators presented it in the context of her past sporting achievements (medals and records), and focused on how time away from competition affected her Olympic preparation.
There was little evidence of sportswomen being presented as inferior, weaker or less able to cope with the emotional and mental pressures of elite competition. Instead, there was greater recognition of the physical and emotional costs of elite sport, such as gymnast Simone Biles’ decision to withdraw from some events, and the effects of media and public interest on New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard's performance as the first openly transgender woman to compete at an Olympics.
The commentators I heard also normalised same-sex relationships by discussing all couples in similar ways. For example, gold medal rower Emma Twigg’s live thank you to her wife evoked no unusual response.
The only lingering inequality I saw was infantilisation, when commentators refer to adult women as girls, ladies or young ladies, but not to adult sportsmen as boys, gentlemen or young gentlemen.
Some commentators — in judo, cycling and rowing — found it challenging to identify female athletes as women, like the male British commentator who discussed the ladies and the men’s events. Former elite sportsmen-commentators were more likely to discuss the girls (and less frequently the boys), which reflected the terms athletes use. So this slippage was not unexpected, even if it remains inappropriate, and these examples were the exception rather than the rule.
Overall, the Olympics live coverage gets a tick of approval. The real challenge is for sports media to show they can achieve this quality of coverage all year round. We are already ahead of the global curve in everyday sports coverage, with sportswomen averaging 15 percent of mentions in a recent large-scale analysis, funded by Sport New Zealand.
Unfortunately, the global bar is set very low. Across the world, women’s sport languishes at around 10 percent in mainstream news. Nightly TV news in the United States averages only five percent.
The downside of the New Zealand everyday results is that 15 percent is not high enough to normalise sportswomen as athletes instead of highlighting their difference as 'female athletes'.
The response to this study from New Zealand women was clear. It is good news that we are leading the world but much more can be done. As Hockey New Zealand president Pam Elgar put it, “15 percent is inadequate and it’s not worthy of the calibre we have on the world stage currently”. Sarah Beaman, a foundation member of Women in Sport Aotearoa (WISPA), believes many people are trying hard to turn “that 15 percent into 51 percent” but recognises that “in the end, it’s the media that control that”.
The challenge for New Zealand media is to move beyond tokenism on a regular, everyday basis. Media outlets have shown they can achieve Beaman’s desired 51 percent in Olympics coverage, and my conversations with journalists, commentators and broadcasters reveal they want to do better.
So does the government, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently stating that “we need to continue to challenge attitudes around media coverage for female athletes”.
Lack of coverage is often justified by a lack of interest but there’s growing evidence that men and women want to see sportswomen. Almost 85 percent of sports fans in a recent global survey are interested in watching women’s sport.
Women’s matches attract tens of thousands of fans to live events and generate large television audiences. Close to a billion people watched the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Other women’s World Cups draw millions of viewers. In New Zealand, over 1.2 million tuned in for the Silver Ferns’ Netball World Cup final victory in 2019.
Many just want inequality in media coverage to be solved. Basketball New Zealand high performance programmes manager, Melinda Hodgson, said she just wants “this question not to be relevant any more.” Sports broacaster Rikki Swannell wants “a day where we don’t have to say women’s sport, just sport.”
WISPA CEO Rachel Froggatt suggested taking on board the challenge to lead the world. Beaman asked: “Why not pilot one year of 50:50 coverage and see what happens?”
There’s no better time for media to take up these challenges. In 2022 and 2023, New Zealand hosts three women’s World Cups — in cricket, rugby and football — that attract global interest and television audiences in the millions. There won’t be any shortage of important women’s sport to cover.
New Zealand media has a great chance to significantly raise the global bar and give us Olympic-quality coverage all the time.
