Despite the growing presence of women in most sports disciplines, sports have traditionally been characterized as a discriminatory domain. Compared to men, women have faced biological, athletic, educational, sociocultural, economic, and moral barriers that have limited their participation in sports. Historically, the media has contributed to this marginalization of women. For instance, coverage of female athletes is often minimal or even non-existent. Furthermore, when female athletes are featured in the media, it tends to be from an androcentric perspective, focusing on non-professional aspects associated with femininity (e.g., physical attractiveness, romantic relationships, or their roles as mothers and/or wives) rather than their professional capabilities as athletes. This representation of women across various fields by the media has negatively affected public perceptions of them, particularly when they appear in stereotypically male domains where their skills or competence are often called into question. However, such negative effects do not seem to occur in the perception of male competence; men are generally regarded as competent even when news coverage is sexualized.
A research group from the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center at the University of Granada, including members of the Laboratory of Social and Gender Psychology (https://psygender-ugr.es/) and the Psychology of Social Problems group (HUM-289; https://www.pps-ugr.es/), conducted a study to examine the potential impact of media representation in sports news (focused on non-professional aspects such as the athlete’s attractiveness or romantic relationships vs. professional aspects) and the gender of the athlete (male vs. female) on social perceptions of athletes.
The main findings showed that when media representation focused exclusively on the professional success of the athlete (compared to focusing on non-professional aspects), participants perceived the news as more credible, believed the media valued the athlete's ability more, and attributed greater merit to the athlete. Additionally, when a male athlete was featured (compared to a female athlete), participants were more likely to consider the news content accurate, which, in turn, was associated with higher competence attributed to the athlete and greater intention to engage with sports media in the future.
In conclusion, the results of this research contribute to understanding how media influences the social perception of sports news, taking into account various psychosocial factors such as the type of representation (i.e., focused on non-professional vs. professional aspects) and the athlete’s gender. This innovative research could help improve media representation, reduce gender stereotypes, foster interest in sports media, and promote educational policies and programs supporting gender equality.
For more detailed information about the research, please refer to the following article:
Herrera, A., Sánchez-Hernández, M. D., Herrera, M. C., & Expósito, F. (2024). Athlete Portraits in News: Influence of Media Representation and Gender on Social Perception. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 27, e26, 1–14. DOI: 10.1017/SJP.2024.21
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