Media Representation of Female Athletes

Here we are. Yes, I love watching sports.. I'm sorry.. And the most enthralling news on Earth are the champs of the WNBA... Media coverage and female athletes is a Minnesota partnership co-production of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota and Twin Cities Public Television. We've been told for decades that nobody is interested in women's sports, that females aren't good at sports, and that they don't really want to play anyway. They suck. Girls suck at sports. We have done a video about this before, but I took it off the internet because some people were getting a little bit offended. Because apparently women need respect or something like that. I think women's sports is stupid. I mean, really, women don't even play sports that much. So why not take a deeper look at the issue? What do female athletes, coaches, and the media think? And what has the research on the subject shown us? I had a lot of energy. So sports was the perfect fit for me. I was always running around trying to invent a game, or climb a tree, or race my friends, or going to the pool. Or if it had a ball in it, I was going to play it. I actually first started playing hockey, I think, because my parents grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, so my dad played. I played that until I was in, like, fifth grade, and then I switched to basketball, basically just because there was, like, a girls'varsity team at the time, and hockey there wasn't. My dad coached my brother's team, and my brother's a few years older than me, and I always went through a rink with them, and then I just told my mom I didn't just want to watch them play, I want to play myself. I was the first born in my family and we're a big football-based family. So my parents got me started in everything as soon as possible. You know, they always told me I could pick whatever sport I wanted to do as long as I was doing something at every season. When the boys are on the rink, I get to go on the little rink. So I was the only girl that was out there. I practiced my slap shots because, God forbid, you didn't play with the boys back then. When my friend's dad was looking for young girls to play, he happened upon me. Well, for me, sports started when I was just four years old. I had a father who was very into opportunities, not only for my two brothers but for myself as well. So we started playing t-ball at a really young age. I remember being four or five and I just loved it and I had that competitive side and I think my dad recognized that and he treated me exactly the same as he treated my brothers. My favorite moment in my swimming career was my sophomore year of college 2011 NCAAs. I went into it as the underdog in the 200 breaststroke. so underdog that I wasn't even considered the underdog, which is great. I had gotten fifth place my freshman year in the same event, and everyone except for one girl had graduated, so I figured my chances were pretty good. I think the only people that believed me were my coach, my team, and my parents. I dove in the water for the 200 breaststroke at finals, was in eighth place at the 100, so the halfway point. I was in seventh place with a 25 to go and ended up winning. Probably in a bronze medal at 2010 Olympics and pitting our huge rally, Sweden. In the overtime and then of course two national championships with the Golden Golfers. I would say that those national championships maybe felt a little bit better than the Olympic bronze medal because it's such a close group of girls and it's really special to share a moment like that with them. So it is my honor as a governor to proclaim today Gopher Women's Hockey National Champions Day in Minnesota. I've been fortunate to be a part of some really cool teams. With the Olympics last year in 2011 we won. The WNBA championship in 2004, we went to the Final Four. I'm just lucky to be a part of those kind of teams. Being at Connecticut and winning some national championships, playing in some really awesome... Some competitive games on national TV are also really, really fun moments. And to be able to connect with my teammates and execute and play well on the big stage are always some of my favorite memories, too. It helped that the team drafted UConn. Standout Maya Moore. She is becoming a regular here. I mean, this is like the fourth time she's shown up at the White House. She just somehow likes to attract hardware. Last year I had the pleasure of coaching the Boston Blades. There were, I want to say, 11 or 12 Olympians on our team. It's the only women's professional hockey team in the U.S. We play out of a league called the CWHL. There are four Canadian teams and one U.S. team. The easy thing to say is, you know, when you... when you win the gold medal or you win a big event or whatever. I mean, I guess because that's the culmination in terms of the result of so many years of hard work. But I think there are so many moments in coaching that are really pure that have nothing to do with the result that are based in the process. I remember recruiting top-notch athletes. I remember the letters that I used to write and the interactions we'd have. But then I think, you know, my most recent memory. It serves me well in that we've got some championships to speak of. I'm having the time of my life right now, my coaching life. I think that we always try to do our best to just impress with our prowess. Most people can't do gymnastics, and so when they look at gymnastics, I think they can't help but see the athleticism in these athletes. In 2006, we won the Big Ten, and what was so great about that was we had had just a... The comedy of errors, they ran out of food at the Big Ten banquet, and we were ranked third. We just thought, you know, what else is going to go wrong on this trip? One of the other coaches was talking to us about how chemistry didn't matter. On our team, chemistry matters a lot. And we went into that meet, and we just rocked. I think my first lesson in sport came in fifth grade when I was the left tackle on the flag football team at my elementary school. And I also went out to try out for the boys traveling basketball team because we didn't have a girls team. And I made the team with one other girl which displaced two boys that were on the team the previous year because it's the boys team. And I was called into the principal's office the next morning, called out of class, went to the principal's office. I thought it was going to be congratulated for making the team. And the principal told me that he thought that I should quit the team and join ballet or the Girl Scouts instead. That might be more appropriate for me. And I looked at him and I said, well I'm already a Girl Scout and I don't want to be in ballet, I want to play basketball. And so that was my first lesson in gender equity and gender discrimination in sport at the age of 10. The stories that fans and athletics enthusiasts love about football players or basketball players or hockey players, those same stories exist in our sport and in other women's sports and I think if people had an opportunity to really follow those other sports and learn about what those athletes go through and the kind of accomplishments that they have and the trials that they they overcome. They would love it. I think it's always amazed me that here you have an Olympic year where an Olympic team, especially the last Olympic cycle, was amazing and you had all these fans that were thrilled with these young women and their accomplishments, but yet the media doesn't tend to look for that to continue after those four years. And there's so many great stories and great events and accomplishments and meets that they could be covering to give those fans. the same kind of excitement. You occupy this relatively anonymous space for most of your four-year journey and then all of a sudden you get to the show and it's on. And, you know, your athletes are thrust into a very real spotlight. Of course they're professional athletes and their notion of what that vocational path looks like includes some of these media opportunities because they compare themselves to the basketballs and the footballs and the baseballs and the hockeys. Minnesota. is a big volleyball state. The sport has great roots here, and people are interested. So I think that works. With the national team, even though we were based in Southern California in Anaheim, you know, the Orange County Register wasn't writing about volleyball every week. We were on television nationwide in Canada. The media coverage in the... The paper was amazing, the Toronto Globe and Mail, like all sorts of Canadian newspapers picked us up. I mean we were rock stars. And then we come home to Boston and no one even knows that we played. So, you know, it was an interesting dynamic and I just think it really speaks speaks to the culture of women's athletic coverage in the media and our sport. In Finland the car is pretty much non-existent and Our national team only gets coverage during the Olympic year and then for three years there's pretty much nothing. With the golfers here in springtime we get more coverage, fall not that much. Last year we actually made this joke that we're the best kept secret not only in the Minnesota but the USA and we started to get more and more coverage as our streak went on something like we were 30 and old. A lot more media started following us. I've actually seen a decline in media coverage for women's sports, and I think that's really interesting because there are a lot of resources being devoted to women's athletics. So I'm not really sure why, but I see that happening. I was a big pusher in women's ice hockey for media coverage because I have daughters, I have sons that want to see women's hockey. My son would be like, Mom, why aren't you on TV? I don't know. Ask the powers that be. In terms of my women's sport, I feel like we're very underrepresented. A lot of the previews come out for men's Division I NCAAs and men's Big Tens and men's SECs, but you don't see what their previews are for the women's meet as much. And that can be a little bit disappointing at times. Over the last 40 years, sport media scholars have produced a pretty impressive body of evidence, and very consistent, which is quite unusual within research studies, that has shown two very significant patterns. It hasn't mattered whether we've looked at high school, college, or pro and Olympic sports. It hasn't mattered whether we've looked at sort of early Title IX, middle, 40 years later. The first has to do with amount of coverage. Even though females represent 40% of all sports participants nationwide, they only receive on average about 2-4% of all sports media coverage. And then the second pattern of portrayal has to do with the type of coverage within that 2-4%. Female athletes, when compared to their male counterparts, are much more likely to be portrayed off the court, out of uniform, and in highly sexualized poses. The research that I've conducted with Michael Messner and our colleagues has looked at televised news media coverage of men's and women's sports. So essentially what we do is we turn on the TV, or actually, you know, TiVo it, record it, the local news in Los Angeles, as well as ESPN Sports Center, and we just take a tally of how many stories are on men's sports, how many are women's, the time that's devoted to men's sports versus women's sports, and so on. And what we found in the 20 years that we've been conducting this research within our sample is that the amount of coverage has actually declined over the past 20 years, which is quite shocking and surprising for us as researchers, given the fact that women's sports has exploded in terms of participation, in terms of popularity, in terms of interest within that same timeframe. When we look at what does get covered in those spaces, there's this kind of perception that the media, the news media, are just giving us the stories that we want to hear. the stories that are interesting. And what we argue in some of our research is the converse of that. It's what role does the media play in building audiences and in sustaining and creating interest. It's not one or the other but they're two pieces of a very complex issue. There are certain sports that I feel are really underrepresented in the sports pages and they will occasionally have me do stories about these sports but not as frequently as I would like. So there's definitely a quantity issue there. If I start to pitch too many stories about sports that they don't consider mainstream sports, that's sort of the code that is used for the four men's major professional sports plus gopher football and gopher men's basketball. If you pitch too many stories outside those things, you won't get them in the paper. There's a finite number of those things that they want to publish. I generally have. Autonomy where I could say I want to do this and I'm going to do this and you know there's sometimes it might be Some discussion about it, but generally to me if it's a good story They generally trust what I what I think is a good story I love any story that shows the way that someone became an athlete and no matter what level It's at high school college professional. I'm interested in in what they had to do to get there, what kept them maybe from moving to another level. Was it academics? Was it injury? Was it they just weren't good enough? Those stories are great stories for both men and women. There's times I've told some of the SIDs at the U from men's and women's sports, if you have a good human interest story, let me know. That's also a way to get some sports that don't get recognition, some recognition. There's some sports that people, unless it's a compelling story, they're going to look at what the headline is or the first. Paragraph, well, it's not a sport that interests me. But if it's a story that interests them, then they would be more inclined to follow it through. Let the gatekeepers of the media know that there is interest because I hear this all the time. Sports editors will look at the number of people reading stories about women's sports, they will look at attendance, they will look at television ratings or the lack of television coverage and they will say there's not enough interest. They want to sell papers, they want to bring viewers to their their programs so if there's a demand there will be incentive to meet it. What I see happening is When I go to college games around the country and here at the University of Minnesota I see a lot of fans in the stands and so it surprises me that those same people wouldn't want to go to the game and then go home and that night see highlights of that game on let's say a SportsCenter or any other sports media outlet and my guess is that they do want to see that but they're not being given that. We do have limited space in the newspapers, limited space on television newscasts, even on ESPN there's a limited amount of airtime to fill and limited resources, a finite number of reporters and a finite amount of money that can be spent on the coverage. Well, it comes down to interest and resources. The Lynx basketball team over the last three years and the Gophers women's hockey team, as that team made its push to an undefeated season, the interest kept ratcheting up. People want to follow winners. I'm on the KQRS morning show and I know that When the Gophers women's hockey team made their run, I made sure to mention every game and talk about it, and the same thing with the Lynx. Now, it's not just that we want to see winners, and we want to see athletes excelling, because if that were the case, then the Cubs would never be covered in the Chicago media, right? We do a very good job, as does the Star Tribune, of covering girls'sports at the high school level. When you move up into the college level, the basketball team, what it was good with Lindsay Whalen and Janelle McCarville. They got a lot of coverage. They're very heavily covered. It comes down to interest. Frankly, take a look at, let's use the Lynx as an example. If you want to say that they don't get enough media coverage, well, they don't get enough money. I mean, look how much they're paid. They have to take jobs overseas. So it's not just the media. There's a reason they're making a fraction of what NBA players are making, and you can't blame that on the media. I mean, you can't say, well, if the media, that's been you, well, if the media would cover them, then people would go. No. It's the same thing with TV shows. Everyone has the option to watch a TV show. They're not going to watch a TV show they're not interested in. And how do you drive that interest? Well, frankly, that becomes the role of the team. I'll disagree with you a little bit. What? I know, it's shocking, isn't it? I think there's definitely a chicken and egg situation here with media and with interest. Because we certainly do hear this all the time, that there's not enough interest in that sport. I find that interest is measured at... by our sports staff in terms of is this sport on television? How many people see it on television? They have a lot of games on television. How many people come to the games? These are the things that sports editors look at to determine how much interest is there. And I think there is something to the argument that if there were wider media coverage of some of these teams and athletes, it would create more interest because more people would be exposed to it. And if you don't cover them, then you're... perpetually in this situation of well there's no interest so we don't want to cover them. I think we give too much credit to the side of the media is just sort of passively meeting audience demand and what role does the media play in enhancing the experience of watching certain sports over others. How do they build audiences for certain sports over others. But now there's a local push to make pole dancing an Olympic sport. And so it's not just that the time isn't there or the resources aren't there for the coverage, but what they're choosing to show. So, for example, in the study that we did recently, on a day where there was no coverage of women's sports, one of the channels devoted 30 seconds to covering a two-year-old pool prodigy. So it's not so much that, oh, the resources aren't there in terms of the space, in terms of... the ability to cover, but what it is that editors and journalists are choosing to set as kind of the agenda of what's important in that day. The Gopher women's hockey team is one of the Best stories the university's ever had. What they did is incredible to have an undefeated season and win a national championship. They should have gotten more coverage earlier in the season. We really jumped on late in the season but I would have liked to have seen more coverage of that team earlier. In fairness to them they were defending national champion. Correct, yes. The fact that the Gophers women's Final Four run was not televised was a mistake. Somebody made a big mistake. It should have been televised. People not only in the Twin Cities but throughout the nation, should have been given the opportunity to watch a team that was doing something that few teams in any sports do these days, have an undefeated run to a national title. And there was public interest. I know I got emails from people saying, why isn't this on television? There was Twitter conversation about it. There were a lot of people that were really shocked and surprised and upset that that championship game, at least, was not televised. Frankly, I was getting a lot of Twitter. comments to me, what's the score? Because that's how they got the score, was basically by Twitter. I think I was going to be one of the commentators on it. I was kind of shocked when they said that it wasn't going to happen. I think there's a certain amount of red tape associated with it. I think if you're going to want to promote your sports, I think the NCAA should make every effort to make that happen. I think the NCAA should examine their policies in all different areas. To paint a picture with one broad stroke, It is not effective. It would be tough, but if you really care about it, you're going to figure out how to have these little caveats where it's not just about, well, we have the rights of it. We have the rights of these. Well, you know what? If you've got someone that really wants to cover it, figure out a way to make it happen. Let's say you have two kids in your family, a boy and girl, and then they watch sports and all they see is the males playing. What's the message they get? Of course, the boy gets the message, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to play sports. My friends also play sports, but what about this little girl? What message does she get? Like, oh, I don't see any females playing sports on TV. Is this something I'm supposed to do, or am I supposed to do something else? But what if there were, like, equal coverage for both males and females and all the... Little kids would get this message that, okay, sports are for both genders. Lynn working around Ramsey. Nice job getting right in. Point blank, save made, Rod two. I can't tell you the number of times over the years where sports reporters and sports editors have said to me, well, the reason that we don't cover women's sports is because nobody's interested. And, you know, it took me a really long time to figure out that the referent for nobody's interested are those very same sports reporters and sports editors because there is an enormous untapped market of people who are desperately interested. I remember having a conversation once with a sports writer, and I was sharing with him this very consistent line of research that showed that female athletes were significantly underrepresented in sports media coverage and then again were... portrayed in highly sexualized poses when they were covered. And when I shared the data with him, his response to me was, well, Dr. Kane, don't you think the reason that we cover women's sports in this way is because when you're a reporter or when you're a photographer, you're always looking for a different angle. And my retort to him was to say, well, if you're looking for a different angle when you're covering women's sports, you might want to try to cover female athletes as athletes. Because if you did, that would be a different angle. I think it's very tough to be a female athlete in society in general. I think there's a lot of marginalization that goes on. I call it, you know, bitch or butch. Generally, if you excel as a female, you're either a very nasty person or, you know, there's questions about your sexual orientation. They would use that to marginalize someone. It's not... It's not an even playing field, I don't think. In our program, and certainly with the USA Women, we were trying to get into a more clearly defined concept of the female warrior and what that meant relative to being a woman and being a stud, that those things don't need to be mutually exclusive. It's a lifetime, and I'm an icon when I let my light shine. I was watching a distance race, and usually when you watch this, it's about who's edging out who in what event. What their splits are per 50 or per 100 so you can keep track of whether or not they're ahead of their country's record or their world record. And I remember watching this and the announcers were only talking about the fact that the girl in lane whatever had stolen the girl in the other lane's boyfriend. And I remember thinking, who cares? Because they're on the pace for the world record and I'd really like to know how this is going on. I don't care if they're getting married. Houston rumbling through, finds Griner for the dunk. That's what the sellout crowd was waiting for. Brittney Griner, in the ways that she was talked about, particularly in the social media and on online blogs, the kind of vitriolic commentary questioning her femininity, questioning her womanhood. I was worried for her on draft day. I was worried because I knew that people were going to be really mean. I knew that people were going to question her sexuality, we're going to question the way that she looks. And I wasn't sure that she was ready for the spotlight. She was the number one draft pick, 6'8", and people were saying that she's going to change the game. So all eyes were on her on draft day. It was really clear that she was ready for it. She chose to wear a white pantsuit. To me, that told me... You know what, she's good with who she is. What was it like to finally hear your name called here tonight? Ugh, um, lost for words. And then when she just came out so easily to the public about her sexuality, it just kind of stopped everyone in their tracks. To me, she said to people, I'm good with who I am. She had an amazing college career, a lot of attention, and I think people on the WNBA side and... We're trying to continue that excitement. Grinder on top, her first professional performance. It's a lot, and for her to be able to carry herself with the grace that she does. Someone on that day when she spoke out said to themselves, it's okay to be me. We had this sort of cultural assumption that men playing sports are heterosexual. Women playing sports... Are they men? Are they lesbians? They're not quite feminine. They're not conforming to this idea. And so I think that that has a lot to do with then why female athletes choose to pose half-naked in Maxim magazine. Because if I'm conforming to this image, no one's going to question my femininity, and therefore no one's going to question my sexual orientation or my sexual identity. Female athletes obviously have agency to choose how they're portrayed. But when your choices are limited and you're rarely asked to be portrayed at all, when you are, your choice is, I could make money and be portrayed in sexualized ways or be portrayed and make no money, that's a difficult choice. So we can't blame female athletes for being sexualized in the sport media because those choices are tempered by the lack of coverage in general. It's a complicated issue because for female athletes on an individual level, Right, they have much to benefit by participating and being complicit in the reproduction of that kind of imagery, right? So that you get corporate endorsements and sponsorships, you get individual attention as an athlete, you might promote yourself as an athlete. As a society, we have all different shapes and sizes of women, you know, we have all different, you know, colors of women, we have different sexualities in women. So, you know, I think to say are there gender norms, I don't think they are, I don't. but I think that people think they are. So you have to start to change what people perceive them to be. Homophobia is the kind of elephant in the room. It's this underlying dynamic that shapes much of the cultural understandings of women's sports, that shape the interpersonal dynamics in women's sports, that shape... some of the barriers that women face? I think there is some pressure. I've talked to parents whose kids are in college who are worried that there's going to be pressure on them to not be feminine. So I've seen it probably a little bit more from the other side. I've seen athletes worry that people were just going to automatically assume that they were gay because they played a certain sport. So I think there's no doubt. What are those issues? My colleagues and I recently conducted a study with elite female athletes at two universities in both team and individual sports. And we randomly presented them with four different images ranging from on-court athletic inaction competence to off the court, out of uniform, and in highly sexualized poses. And then we asked each one of those athletes which one of these images best represents how you would like to be portrayed. How you would like your sport to be portrayed. Which one of these images do you think best increases interest for your sport and increases respect for your sport? And what was amazing about this study and a completely unexpected result was that half of them in both universities spontaneously said, can I pick more than one image? And of course we said yes because what's important is Follow the data trail. And of the 50% of the female athletes who asked to pick more than one image, they always picked the image of on-court athletic competence, and they never picked the image where the female athlete was highly objectified and sexualized. But they did pick the kind of medium image where the female athlete was portrayed off the court in a nice evening gown or with makeup and looking really classy. And when we asked them why they wanted to pick that picture as well as the on-court competence picture, They said, well, because we want to be seen and known as something that's more well-rounded. We don't want to just be a sweaty jock all the time. And we like to be seen as pretty and classy off the court, as well as highly competent on the court. For those female athletes who said, yeah, I just want to pick one picture that best represents me and my sport. 100% of the time they picked on-court athletic competence. Does sex sell women's sports is really the $64,000 question that scholars ask when it comes to media coverage of females. And for the last two and a half decades, I have devoted much of my research to trying to address that very question. And I have presented my research on how female athletes are portrayed all over this country and indeed all over the world and in front of audiences that are sympathetic to me and in front of audiences that are hostile to me. I will always get at the end of my talk, I will always get at the end of my talk, I will of my presentation, the showstopper, that really sort of ends the conversation. And that's when someone in the audience, again, either sympathetic or hostile, will raise his or her hand and say, well, Dr. Kane, I get your point, and I may even agree with it. But unfortunately, the bottom line is that sex sells women's sports. I think that's the dominant narrative that we hear and the dominant way that we have thought about marketing and promoting and selling women's sport. But no, I don't believe that works, because if it had worked, we would see women in equal proportions in the sport media, and we would have equal leagues and equal attention to women's sports. I think in men's sports, you know, we kind of sensationalize the violence. And I think in women's sports, we sensationalize the sex. I think sex sells. I think men like to watch sports involving women that... I have to take that back. I think men like watching sports, but I think that the sex component of it sells it more in the media. I think maybe sponsorships follow it. You don't see that with men. They're all like heroic and masculine, and they are shown as skilled, highly skilled athletes, whereas sometimes females, it's like they're shown in media because they look good and they have good bodies. I would rather see media focused on how... Good these female athletes are and how highly skilled they are. So just like they do with male athletes. I am an athlete and I'm proud of that athlete. It's not a girl thing. It's not a boy thing. It's a skills thing. I will. I remember driving home one day after giving yet another presentation. Presenting very powerful research findings and very powerful images of female athletes and saying to myself You know what? We don't have any data on whether or not sex sells women's sports Because I know the literature and I know that there is absolutely no research out there that shows That if in one season you show female athletes as off-court sexy babes And then the next season you show them as highly competent on-court athletes And then you compare attendance records, you compare corporate sponsorship, you compare amount of media coverage, that when you sell female athletes as sexy babes, they're gonna get a lot more of that than when you simply show them as highly competent athletes. And at the same time, when I would ask sport marketers or sports information directors or those who promote women's sports, they don't have any data either. These are athletes. They're not bikini models. They are people who are great at their sport. We are going to take them down to a spectacular setting and with wardrobe and fantastic photography, make these people look better than they've ever looked before. And another study that my colleagues and I did where we looked at whether or not it was really the case that sex sells women's sports, we did focus groups with 18-to 34-year-old males and females, which are the sweet spot for sport marketers, that age group. And we also looked at older males and females, meaning 35 to 55 year old males and females, and we looked at them in terms of high and low sport backgrounds. We randomly presented them with four different images. On one end, on-court athletic competence, and on the other end, highly sexualized and objectified female athletes. And this time, the question was, which one of these images makes you more interested in wanting to read about women's sports? Watch women's sports, attend a game, or buy season tickets. And what we found was that for both groups of women, the 18 to 34 year olds and the 35 to 55 year olds, they were deeply offended by these highly sexualized images and it did absolutely nothing to increase their interest in women's sports. And at the same time, they readily embraced images of female athletes in terms of on-court competence. And in addition to how the females reacted, the 35 to 55 year old males, the dads with daughters category, they too were deeply offended by those highly sexualized images and also chose images of athletic competence as the one image that most increased their interest in women's sports. The one group that differed was the 18 to 34 year old males, and they did pick the sexy babe image more than any of the other focus groups. But when we did the follow-up and we said to them, okay, you've picked this sexy image, meaning you want to buy the magazine, but does that make you want to then go and attend an event and watch women's sports? And they said, well, no, why would we want to do that? They don't look like that when you go to a game. They did have one thing in common with all those other three focus groups. Their number one overall choice was an image of a female athlete as an on-court, highly skilled athlete. When we look at the impact of sexualization and seeing sexualized images predominantly of female athletes in the sport media, it affects them in many ways. The first and maybe most important is that it tells girls and young women that it's more important what their bodies look like than what their bodies can do in terms of athletic performance. There's so many little girls who look up to them and if that's what they see, especially if they see me, my... goalie gear on that's like, okay, I want to be a goalie like she is, rather than having, okay, I want to have body like she does. Sexualized images of girls and women lead to a host of negative psychosocial outcomes, body image, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, lack of confidence and self-efficacy. So sexualization of women in general and sport in particular. can lead to a lot of negative outcomes for girls and women. And sport provides or can provide a really positive context for development for girls and women. As a little girl trying to do sports, you're constantly fighting against the notion that you're not supposed to be, even though it's totally fine. You're fighting against the notion that, let's say you really like football, but you can't play because your only option is lingerie football team or... Playing with the boys, which some girls now are beginning to do, and I think that's awesome. Most people don't know that there are two leagues of professional women's tackle football. Well, with women's football, what most people don't understand is that we really are playing the true game of football. We have on the pads, the helmets, we hit each other, we run, we roll out, we have big passes. The hits are sometimes loud enough we can hear them in the stands. We still have so-called sports, called the lingerie football league. And I am very sensitive to being critical of females and their choices when they want to engage in sport and physical activity. But it's just not clear to me how this is about female on-court athleticism at very high levels of competition. So when I look at that, it's really hard for me to take them seriously as athletes. Don't just rely on how I feel about it. If you listen to radio talk shows, and not only the radio hosts, but those who call in, they don't take women. seriously who are playing in the lingerie football league, they mock them, they ridicule them, they treat them as a joke. So it's just not clear to me how the lingerie football league is in any way advancing the ball when it comes to increasing interest in women's sports. And even more important to me, it's not clear how they're advancing the ball when it comes to increasing respect for women's sports. and for female athletes who are enormously gifted and dedicated to their craft. We're changing little girls that grow up like me wanting to play football now can see us and say I can play football and I don't have to take off my clothes to play football. I can suit up just like the boys would play. Having female athletes demonstrate grace under pressure, having all of the action stopped and a female athlete at a free throw line and she is about to make a free throw to not just win the game but to win a national title. or an Olympic gold medal, that when we see females performing like that under pressure really breaks the mold about what are women's biological capacities, physiological capacities, mental and psychological capacities. Let's look at images of female athletes who are engaged in on-court athletic competence and the kind of inspiration that comes from that kind of image and then take the same female athlete and compare that image to her you Off the court in a highly sexualized image, which does nothing to show off her competence. It might show off her body, but it doesn't have anything to do with her athleticism. And all I would ask you to do is to compare those two images in terms of how it makes you feel. And just be really honest with yourself. How images of... On-court competence makes you feel versus how images of sexualized, objectified bodies make you feel. And I think that you would conclude, if you're honest with yourself, that there is simply no comparison. I think it would be better to show more female swimming. You know, treat us the same way that you treat the men. I definitely want to be seen as, you know, a beautiful person. I like to be healthy and fit and to celebrate that. I like to be seen as a great... Basketball player, and obviously that's what I put out on the floor. The strength, the power, the skill, the competitiveness, the passion that I play with, I like that to be seen. There really is an enormous generational divide between those younger women and women of my age and older. And for women of my age and older, we are deeply offended by sexualized images. But what I hear from younger women all the time is, well, what's wrong with showing off your body in those kinds of ways? I have worked really, really hard to be ripped and to be toned, and I like to show off my body. They do make a distinction, and I think we need to start making a distinction between images where it's kind of a sexy babe, kind of kittenish image. versus what my mother would call a slutty image where the female is highly sexualized and objectified. We haven't talked to any female athletes who embrace the notion of being portrayed in a slutty kind of way. So what I would say to those young women who say I'm proud of my body, I want to show off my body, I would point out to them that you do not have to take off your clothes and strip naked in order to show off your enormously gifted, taut, toned body that you've worked so hard for. In fact, I would ask, what muscle group do bare breasts belong to? What we're finding from an emerging body of research is that sex doesn't sell women's sport. Sex sells sex. And if we want to legitimately sell women's sport, we need to focus on their athleticism. There is this maybe element of empowerment for individual female athletes. They might feel that they get to highlight their femininity and their athleticism, which may be empowering for them as a person. But I think the question that we need to ask is, what is this doing for women's sport? A more feminist critique would say that sport has, for centuries, been something that's been exclusively male. And there are few institutions in this culture that we care more about where we invest. both literally and figuratively capital, and then another group comes along, which women have done in the wake of Title IX, and want access to the same status and the same resources that that institution provides, there is going to be resistance to letting females have those kinds of resources. If you want to contain women's power in sports, one of the things that you can do is to portray them as off-the-court sexy babes. Rather than highly competent athletes, when you treat female athletes in such ways, they will always and forever remain second-class citizens in sport. And that is a perfect way to contain their power at a time when their interest and their participation is skyrocketing. We're kind of at that tipping point where I think it could really turn in a way that we could all be proud of. You know, men, instead of feeling threatened by a strong, confident woman, come to expect it and see them as equals. And I feel like we're close. We're on the verge of that. So I think doing anything to objectify women only turns back the clock. There's an organization that does a yearly report card for hiring practices in sports media on basis of race and gender. I believe it was the third year in a row sports media received a grade of F for their gender hiring practices and 90% of the sports editors in the United States are men. And I think that has something to do with this as well, because I think a lot of male sports editors are very traditional. They look at it as, well, people want to know about the NFL. They want to know Major League Baseball. They want to know the NBA. They want to know college football. And I think they're just not really thinking very progressively in terms of women's sports. They might bite on a good story once in a while. that it's not a high priority for them. Pound that ball down low to Bryna. Maya! Wow! The media coverage in our sport has definitely come a long way. I think with the help of the college game being as popular and as televised as it has been, it has tremendously increased the popularity and awareness and excitement around women's basketball. You know, I think it's a responsibility to the players to keep getting better and keep making the league grow. That's why we work so hard. That's why we practice. That's why we take extra shots. 132 of the world's best ready to go at it. It's 40 minutes of fire every single game. I don't know many people who have come to me and said, you know, I came to a game and it just wasn't exciting. I don't really, I can't think of anybody who's told me that. You know, they come to games and they say, I didn't know. It's hard because I'm comparing, like, the Final Four run to now, so, like, it's pretty similar, the amount of coverage. I mean, maybe at that point we had a ton, just like in the finals we probably had more. I feel like... From my first year here to now, we've had a lot more coverage, you know, because, you know, we've been successful. This year with the ESPN deal with the WNBA is really good progress. I think that there can be more. I feel like we can have our highlights on SportsCenter more. I feel like there's top ten plays in almost every WNBA game. This year we qualified to the NCAA Championships as a team. And it's a huge accomplishment because we go from 85 teams to 36 teams. to 12th. So to get into that top 12 is a huge accomplishment. And we got a lot of media coverage this year. Sierra, talk to me about, you know, at the time they were number one, you knocked off Michigan, toppling the top team in the nation. What did that do for confidence? We went into that meet and we didn't look at the rankings. We didn't look at the scores throughout the meet at all. And I just remember at the end, like realizing we won. I will frequently say to my students, and I would use, Ozzie and Harriet example, but they wouldn't get that, so I use Homer and Marge Simpson. I say to them, okay, let's imagine this conversation. Marge says to Homer, we need to go see the women's basketball team at the University of Minnesota tonight, because if they win, they're going to finish the season undefeated. They're not only going to win the Big Ten championship, but they're going to put themselves in a position to maybe even go into the women's Final Four and win the national championship. And Homer's response to Marge is, No, I don't want to go see them this year because you know why? They're just not very pretty. And then my students laugh. That is the logical conclusion to where we are when we are talking about does sex sell women's sports. I think what's really important for us who do research in this area is to be able to provide those who make the kinds of decisions about how female athletes are covered, if we can give them good, solid, empirical data. Including how the female athletes themselves feel about how they're portrayed will make a difference because I think that if only those people believe that it is in their own self-interest to simply turn on the camera and let us see what it looks like when female athletes play sports, from success to failure, from strength and power to grace and beauty, that it is only then, I believe, that female athletes will get the respect, the recognition. and the acknowledgement that they so richly deserve. I think it would just be interesting if on any given night, if they just gave the exact same coverage for boys and girls sports in the exact same way and showed the best plays from both games. And I think people would just walk away with, that's what I want to see. There's quite a few things people can do. They can attend. They can sit. Buy tickets. They can show up and generate interest. They can support legitimate coverage of women's sports. So when ESPN shows a WNBA game, make sure you're watching it. Tune into the College World Series. Watch the Women's Final Four. Anytime women's sport is on TV, set your DVR, turn on your TV. You can also click. When you click on stories, legitimate coverage of women's sport on Sports Illustrated, ESPN, whatever that means may be, clicks matter because clicks mean sponsorship. Well, the one advantage I think, in the case of newspapers and websites have, they can track how many times these stories are read. And if there's a lot more readership, they're going to put more coverage on them. ESPN, who's arguably the most visible sport media producer in the U.S., has turned to a brand extension called ESPNW and I serve on their advisory board. Their mission is to serve the interest of the female sport fan. Now in that coverage, which is an online site, it's not a channel, but they have the brand extension because they realize that targeting female fans of sport has been underserved and that they can make money trying to bring female fans into the... ESPN fold. What we can do if the mainstream media aren't going to cover it, let's create our own media outlets, internet. Blogs are going up. Local communities can set up websites and cover the sports that matter to them. I write a blog and I try to use that blog as a different platform to talk about issues in women in sport that you would not see covered in traditional media. And that's placing the responsibility on the viewers, on the athletes. To do that kind of work and I that doesn't sit well with me I want to I want to hold the mainstream media more accountable because that's their job and their role the way that women's Media coverage has changed since I was at Cornell from 1979 to 83 is astronomical. I mean let's just face it like we were lucky to get a picture in the Cornell Daily Sun back then which was the newspaper. Now you you you watch Cornell women just take take for example Cornell women's ice hockey. The the rink is packed, the coverage is insane. I know that they have television games so I mean that in and of itself is is different. Our school newspaper did a lot on us as a collegiate team. I went to Iowa State. We were never on television. None of our meets were ever televised. That was back in the day before cable and all of those things. We certainly didn't have computers, so we didn't have YouTube and all of those kinds of things either. There has clearly been a shift over the last few years in terms of how female athletes are portrayed, where I think those who market and promote women's sports are finally starting to get it in terms of what really works. So if you look at the WNBA, for example, in the early years of the WNBA, WNBA is a very important sport. They promoted the whole notion of being feminine, being classy, even the whole issue of playing up the notion of motherhood, not that there's anything wrong with motherhood. Then there's Tamika Dixon. Not Tamika is tough. But that they focused on those kinds of off-the-court characteristics rather than on-court competence. But if you look at how female athletes in the WNBA are portrayed these days, if you look at their commercials, If you look at their marketing campaigns, are about female competence on court, in action, at the most elite levels of competition. For one trophy. And if you look at ESPN and how they've shifted their coverage over the last four years when it comes to March Madness and women's basketball, they cover, and here's a surprise, Women's basketball the same way they cover men's basketball. The UConn Notre Dame rivalry is so great because just the tenacity. There's always a battle. Two great programs fighting it out. We've really overcome the intimidation factor that they have on a lot of teams. I'm seeing in the newspaper now a lot more photographs of really great action photographs of women athletes. Not so much of them just sitting on the bench or standing on the sidelines as we frequently used to see, but a lot of photographs of women. and just sweating and throwing elbows and really getting into the action of the heat of the game. It's very satisfying when I take the time every few months to go through some of the letters people send and hearing some of the stories of how I motivated them. or encourage them or how our team inspired them to do something and it's it's definitely a great feeling to know that what we're doing here on the court is bigger bigger than basketball. I feel like the Lynx and the WNBA here with our with our success is really really grown and you can just feel it every year our momentum and our energy in the building is is great and I think you know last week we had our camp day here we broke a record for the attendance with you know, 16,000, over 16,000. I know a lot of those were, you know, grade school boys and girls and maybe their first game ever at a WNBA game. So I feel like we put on a good show and kind of gave them someone to, you know, you know, I want to be like Maya Moore. I want to be like Simone Augustus. Everybody is a role model in a sense. We all have an effect and a presence on each other, whether it's your neighbor, whether it's your teacher, whether it's someone younger than you or older than you, we all have the ability to influence each other. Girls who are born today have never known anything other than having a WNBA, anything other than playing hockey with their brothers. And so those are just norms to them. And so when they get into the workforce, they're going to want to show that representation just how they know it. And so that's when I think it will really change. My favorite moment by far was Glory Johnson from the Tulsa Shock in warm-ups just decided to show us what she's been hiding. I think she's been hiding it because I had no idea she could get up like that and she jumped off of two feet, cocked the ball back and just dunked it right in the front of the rim. And I pretty much lost all control of my body and it just just fell to the ground in amazement of that show, that display of athleticism. I think she needs to do that more, you know, in the league. I think that if she, well not against us, but you know against the other teams. Media coverage and female athletes is a Minnesota partnership co-production of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota and Twin Cities Public Television

Here we are. Yes, I love watching sports.. I'm sorry..

And the most enthralling news on Earth are the champs of the WNBA... Media coverage and female athletes is a Minnesota partnership co-production of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota and Twin Cities Public Television. We've been told for decades that nobody is interested in women's sports, that females aren't good at sports, and that they don't really want to play anyway.

They suck. Girls suck at sports. We have done a video about this before, but I took it off the internet because some people were getting a little bit offended. Because apparently women need respect or something like that. I think women's sports is stupid.

I mean, really, women don't even play sports that much. So why not take a deeper look at the issue? What do female athletes, coaches, and the media think?

And what has the research on the subject shown us? I had a lot of energy. So sports was the perfect fit for me. I was always running around trying to invent a game, or climb a tree, or race my friends, or going to the pool. Or if it had a ball in it, I was going to play it.

I actually first started playing hockey, I think, because my parents grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, so my dad played. I played that until I was in, like, fifth grade, and then I switched to basketball, basically just because there was, like, a girls'varsity team at the time, and hockey there wasn't. My dad coached my brother's team, and my brother's a few years older than me, and I always went through a rink with them, and then I just told my mom I didn't just want to watch them play, I want to play myself.

I was the first born in my family and we're a big football-based family. So my parents got me started in everything as soon as possible. You know, they always told me I could pick whatever sport I wanted to do as long as I was doing something at every season.

When the boys are on the rink, I get to go on the little rink. So I was the only girl that was out there. I practiced my slap shots because, God forbid, you didn't play with the boys back then.

When my friend's dad was looking for young girls to play, he happened upon me. Well, for me, sports started when I was just four years old. I had a father who was very into opportunities, not only for my two brothers but for myself as well. So we started playing t-ball at a really young age.

I remember being four or five and I just loved it and I had that competitive side and I think my dad recognized that and he treated me exactly the same as he treated my brothers. My favorite moment in my swimming career was my sophomore year of college 2011 NCAAs. I went into it as the underdog in the 200 breaststroke.

so underdog that I wasn't even considered the underdog, which is great. I had gotten fifth place my freshman year in the same event, and everyone except for one girl had graduated, so I figured my chances were pretty good. I think the only people that believed me were my coach, my team, and my parents. I dove in the water for the 200 breaststroke at finals, was in eighth place at the 100, so the halfway point. I was in seventh place with a 25 to go and ended up winning.

Probably in a bronze medal at 2010 Olympics and pitting our huge rally, Sweden. In the overtime and then of course two national championships with the Golden Golfers. I would say that those national championships maybe felt a little bit better than the Olympic bronze medal because it's such a close group of girls and it's really special to share a moment like that with them. So it is my honor as a governor to proclaim today Gopher Women's Hockey National Champions Day in Minnesota. I've been fortunate to be a part of some really cool teams.

With the Olympics last year in 2011 we won. The WNBA championship in 2004, we went to the Final Four. I'm just lucky to be a part of those kind of teams.

Being at Connecticut and winning some national championships, playing in some really awesome... Some competitive games on national TV are also really, really fun moments. And to be able to connect with my teammates and execute and play well on the big stage are always some of my favorite memories, too.

It helped that the team drafted UConn. Standout Maya Moore. She is becoming a regular here. I mean, this is like the fourth time she's shown up at the White House.

She just somehow likes to attract hardware. Last year I had the pleasure of coaching the Boston Blades. There were, I want to say, 11 or 12 Olympians on our team.

It's the only women's professional hockey team in the U.S. We play out of a league called the CWHL. There are four Canadian teams and one U.S. team. The easy thing to say is, you know, when you... when you win the gold medal or you win a big event or whatever.

I mean, I guess because that's the culmination in terms of the result of so many years of hard work. But I think there are so many moments in coaching that are really pure that have nothing to do with the result that are based in the process. I remember recruiting top-notch athletes. I remember the letters that I used to write and the interactions we'd have.

But then I think, you know, my most recent memory. It serves me well in that we've got some championships to speak of. I'm having the time of my life right now, my coaching life.

I think that we always try to do our best to just impress with our prowess. Most people can't do gymnastics, and so when they look at gymnastics, I think they can't help but see the athleticism in these athletes. In 2006, we won the Big Ten, and what was so great about that was we had had just a...

The comedy of errors, they ran out of food at the Big Ten banquet, and we were ranked third. We just thought, you know, what else is going to go wrong on this trip? One of the other coaches was talking to us about how chemistry didn't matter.

On our team, chemistry matters a lot. And we went into that meet, and we just rocked. I think my first lesson in sport came in fifth grade when I was the left tackle on the flag football team at my elementary school. And I also went out to try out for the boys traveling basketball team because we didn't have a girls team. And I made the team with one other girl which displaced two boys that were on the team the previous year because it's the boys team.

And I was called into the principal's office the next morning, called out of class, went to the principal's office. I thought it was going to be congratulated for making the team. And the principal told me that he thought that I should quit the team and join ballet or the Girl Scouts instead. That might be more appropriate for me.

And I looked at him and I said, well I'm already a Girl Scout and I don't want to be in ballet, I want to play basketball. And so that was my first lesson in gender equity and gender discrimination in sport at the age of 10. The stories that fans and athletics enthusiasts love about football players or basketball players or hockey players, those same stories exist in our sport and in other women's sports and I think if people had an opportunity to really follow those other sports and learn about what those athletes go through and the kind of accomplishments that they have and the trials that they they overcome. They would love it. I think it's always amazed me that here you have an Olympic year where an Olympic team, especially the last Olympic cycle, was amazing and you had all these fans that were thrilled with these young women and their accomplishments, but yet the media doesn't tend to look for that to continue after those four years.

And there's so many great stories and great events and accomplishments and meets that they could be covering to give those fans. the same kind of excitement. You occupy this relatively anonymous space for most of your four-year journey and then all of a sudden you get to the show and it's on.

And, you know, your athletes are thrust into a very real spotlight. Of course they're professional athletes and their notion of what that vocational path looks like includes some of these media opportunities because they compare themselves to the basketballs and the footballs and the baseballs and the hockeys. Minnesota. is a big volleyball state.

The sport has great roots here, and people are interested. So I think that works. With the national team, even though we were based in Southern California in Anaheim, you know, the Orange County Register wasn't writing about volleyball every week.

We were on television nationwide in Canada. The media coverage in the... The paper was amazing, the Toronto Globe and Mail, like all sorts of Canadian newspapers picked us up.

I mean we were rock stars. And then we come home to Boston and no one even knows that we played. So, you know, it was an interesting dynamic and I just think it really speaks speaks to the culture of women's athletic coverage in the media and our sport.

In Finland the car is pretty much non-existent and Our national team only gets coverage during the Olympic year and then for three years there's pretty much nothing. With the golfers here in springtime we get more coverage, fall not that much. Last year we actually made this joke that we're the best kept secret not only in the Minnesota but the USA and we started to get more and more coverage as our streak went on something like we were 30 and old. A lot more media started following us. I've actually seen a decline in media coverage for women's sports, and I think that's really interesting because there are a lot of resources being devoted to women's athletics.

So I'm not really sure why, but I see that happening. I was a big pusher in women's ice hockey for media coverage because I have daughters, I have sons that want to see women's hockey. My son would be like, Mom, why aren't you on TV? I don't know. Ask the powers that be.

In terms of my women's sport, I feel like we're very underrepresented. A lot of the previews come out for men's Division I NCAAs and men's Big Tens and men's SECs, but you don't see what their previews are for the women's meet as much. And that can be a little bit disappointing at times.

Over the last 40 years, sport media scholars have produced a pretty impressive body of evidence, and very consistent, which is quite unusual within research studies, that has shown two very significant patterns. It hasn't mattered whether we've looked at high school, college, or pro and Olympic sports. It hasn't mattered whether we've looked at sort of early Title IX, middle, 40 years later. The first has to do with amount of coverage. Even though females represent 40% of all sports participants nationwide, they only receive on average about 2-4% of all sports media coverage.

And then the second pattern of portrayal has to do with the type of coverage within that 2-4%. Female athletes, when compared to their male counterparts, are much more likely to be portrayed off the court, out of uniform, and in highly sexualized poses. The research that I've conducted with Michael Messner and our colleagues has looked at televised news media coverage of men's and women's sports. So essentially what we do is we turn on the TV, or actually, you know, TiVo it, record it, the local news in Los Angeles, as well as ESPN Sports Center, and we just take a tally of how many stories are on men's sports, how many are women's, the time that's devoted to men's sports versus women's sports, and so on.

And what we found in the 20 years that we've been conducting this research within our sample is that the amount of coverage has actually declined over the past 20 years, which is quite shocking and surprising for us as researchers, given the fact that women's sports has exploded in terms of participation, in terms of popularity, in terms of interest within that same timeframe. When we look at what does get covered in those spaces, there's this kind of perception that the media, the news media, are just giving us the stories that we want to hear. the stories that are interesting.

And what we argue in some of our research is the converse of that. It's what role does the media play in building audiences and in sustaining and creating interest. It's not one or the other but they're two pieces of a very complex issue.

There are certain sports that I feel are really underrepresented in the sports pages and they will occasionally have me do stories about these sports but not as frequently as I would like. So there's definitely a quantity issue there. If I start to pitch too many stories about sports that they don't consider mainstream sports, that's sort of the code that is used for the four men's major professional sports plus gopher football and gopher men's basketball.

If you pitch too many stories outside those things, you won't get them in the paper. There's a finite number of those things that they want to publish. I generally have. Autonomy where I could say I want to do this and I'm going to do this and you know there's sometimes it might be Some discussion about it, but generally to me if it's a good story They generally trust what I what I think is a good story I love any story that shows the way that someone became an athlete and no matter what level It's at high school college professional.

I'm interested in in what they had to do to get there, what kept them maybe from moving to another level. Was it academics? Was it injury? Was it they just weren't good enough?

Those stories are great stories for both men and women. There's times I've told some of the SIDs at the U from men's and women's sports, if you have a good human interest story, let me know. That's also a way to get some sports that don't get recognition, some recognition.

There's some sports that people, unless it's a compelling story, they're going to look at what the headline is or the first. Paragraph, well, it's not a sport that interests me. But if it's a story that interests them, then they would be more inclined to follow it through. Let the gatekeepers of the media know that there is interest because I hear this all the time. Sports editors will look at the number of people reading stories about women's sports, they will look at attendance, they will look at television ratings or the lack of television coverage and they will say there's not enough interest.

They want to sell papers, they want to bring viewers to their their programs so if there's a demand there will be incentive to meet it. What I see happening is When I go to college games around the country and here at the University of Minnesota I see a lot of fans in the stands and so it surprises me that those same people wouldn't want to go to the game and then go home and that night see highlights of that game on let's say a SportsCenter or any other sports media outlet and my guess is that they do want to see that but they're not being given that. We do have limited space in the newspapers, limited space on television newscasts, even on ESPN there's a limited amount of airtime to fill and limited resources, a finite number of reporters and a finite amount of money that can be spent on the coverage.

Well, it comes down to interest and resources. The Lynx basketball team over the last three years and the Gophers women's hockey team, as that team made its push to an undefeated season, the interest kept ratcheting up. People want to follow winners.

I'm on the KQRS morning show and I know that When the Gophers women's hockey team made their run, I made sure to mention every game and talk about it, and the same thing with the Lynx. Now, it's not just that we want to see winners, and we want to see athletes excelling, because if that were the case, then the Cubs would never be covered in the Chicago media, right? We do a very good job, as does the Star Tribune, of covering girls'sports at the high school level.

When you move up into the college level, the basketball team, what it was good with Lindsay Whalen and Janelle McCarville. They got a lot of coverage. They're very heavily covered.

It comes down to interest. Frankly, take a look at, let's use the Lynx as an example. If you want to say that they don't get enough media coverage, well, they don't get enough money. I mean, look how much they're paid.

They have to take jobs overseas. So it's not just the media. There's a reason they're making a fraction of what NBA players are making, and you can't blame that on the media.

I mean, you can't say, well, if the media, that's been you, well, if the media would cover them, then people would go. No. It's the same thing with TV shows.

Everyone has the option to watch a TV show. They're not going to watch a TV show they're not interested in. And how do you drive that interest? Well, frankly, that becomes the role of the team.

I'll disagree with you a little bit. What? I know, it's shocking, isn't it? I think there's definitely a chicken and egg situation here with media and with interest. Because we certainly do hear this all the time, that there's not enough interest in that sport.

I find that interest is measured at... by our sports staff in terms of is this sport on television? How many people see it on television?

They have a lot of games on television. How many people come to the games? These are the things that sports editors look at to determine how much interest is there.

And I think there is something to the argument that if there were wider media coverage of some of these teams and athletes, it would create more interest because more people would be exposed to it. And if you don't cover them, then you're... perpetually in this situation of well there's no interest so we don't want to cover them. I think we give too much credit to the side of the media is just sort of passively meeting audience demand and what role does the media play in enhancing the experience of watching certain sports over others. How do they build audiences for certain sports over others.

But now there's a local push to make pole dancing an Olympic sport. And so it's not just that the time isn't there or the resources aren't there for the coverage, but what they're choosing to show. So, for example, in the study that we did recently, on a day where there was no coverage of women's sports, one of the channels devoted 30 seconds to covering a two-year-old pool prodigy.

So it's not so much that, oh, the resources aren't there in terms of the space, in terms of... the ability to cover, but what it is that editors and journalists are choosing to set as kind of the agenda of what's important in that day. The Gopher women's hockey team is one of the Best stories the university's ever had. What they did is incredible to have an undefeated season and win a national championship.

They should have gotten more coverage earlier in the season. We really jumped on late in the season but I would have liked to have seen more coverage of that team earlier. In fairness to them they were defending national champion. Correct, yes. The fact that the Gophers women's Final Four run was not televised was a mistake.

Somebody made a big mistake. It should have been televised. People not only in the Twin Cities but throughout the nation, should have been given the opportunity to watch a team that was doing something that few teams in any sports do these days, have an undefeated run to a national title. And there was public interest. I know I got emails from people saying, why isn't this on television?

There was Twitter conversation about it. There were a lot of people that were really shocked and surprised and upset that that championship game, at least, was not televised. Frankly, I was getting a lot of Twitter.

comments to me, what's the score? Because that's how they got the score, was basically by Twitter. I think I was going to be one of the commentators on it. I was kind of shocked when they said that it wasn't going to happen. I think there's a certain amount of red tape associated with it.

I think if you're going to want to promote your sports, I think the NCAA should make every effort to make that happen. I think the NCAA should examine their policies in all different areas. To paint a picture with one broad stroke, It is not effective. It would be tough, but if you really care about it, you're going to figure out how to have these little caveats where it's not just about, well, we have the rights of it.

We have the rights of these. Well, you know what? If you've got someone that really wants to cover it, figure out a way to make it happen. Let's say you have two kids in your family, a boy and girl, and then they watch sports and all they see is the males playing.

What's the message they get? Of course, the boy gets the message, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to play sports.

My friends also play sports, but what about this little girl? What message does she get? Like, oh, I don't see any females playing sports on TV. Is this something I'm supposed to do, or am I supposed to do something else? But what if there were, like, equal coverage for both males and females and all the...

Little kids would get this message that, okay, sports are for both genders. Lynn working around Ramsey. Nice job getting right in. Point blank, save made, Rod two. I can't tell you the number of times over the years where sports reporters and sports editors have said to me, well, the reason that we don't cover women's sports is because nobody's interested.

And, you know, it took me a really long time to figure out that the referent for nobody's interested are those very same sports reporters and sports editors because there is an enormous untapped market of people who are desperately interested. I remember having a conversation once with a sports writer, and I was sharing with him this very consistent line of research that showed that female athletes were significantly underrepresented in sports media coverage and then again were... portrayed in highly sexualized poses when they were covered. And when I shared the data with him, his response to me was, well, Dr. Kane, don't you think the reason that we cover women's sports in this way is because when you're a reporter or when you're a photographer, you're always looking for a different angle.

And my retort to him was to say, well, if you're looking for a different angle when you're covering women's sports, you might want to try to cover female athletes as athletes. Because if you did, that would be a different angle. I think it's very tough to be a female athlete in society in general. I think there's a lot of marginalization that goes on. I call it, you know, bitch or butch.

Generally, if you excel as a female, you're either a very nasty person or, you know, there's questions about your sexual orientation. They would use that to marginalize someone. It's not... It's not an even playing field, I don't think. In our program, and certainly with the USA Women, we were trying to get into a more clearly defined concept of the female warrior and what that meant relative to being a woman and being a stud, that those things don't need to be mutually exclusive.

It's a lifetime, and I'm an icon when I let my light shine. I was watching a distance race, and usually when you watch this, it's about who's edging out who in what event. What their splits are per 50 or per 100 so you can keep track of whether or not they're ahead of their country's record or their world record. And I remember watching this and the announcers were only talking about the fact that the girl in lane whatever had stolen the girl in the other lane's boyfriend.

And I remember thinking, who cares? Because they're on the pace for the world record and I'd really like to know how this is going on. I don't care if they're getting married.

Houston rumbling through, finds Griner for the dunk. That's what the sellout crowd was waiting for. Brittney Griner, in the ways that she was talked about, particularly in the social media and on online blogs, the kind of vitriolic commentary questioning her femininity, questioning her womanhood. I was worried for her on draft day. I was worried because I knew that people were going to be really mean.

I knew that people were going to question her sexuality, we're going to question the way that she looks. And I wasn't sure that she was ready for the spotlight. She was the number one draft pick, 6'8", and people were saying that she's going to change the game. So all eyes were on her on draft day. It was really clear that she was ready for it. She chose to wear a white pantsuit. To me, that told me... You know what, she's good with who she is. What was it like to finally hear your name called here tonight? Ugh, um, lost for words. And then when she just came out so easily to the public about her sexuality, it just kind of stopped everyone in their tracks. To me, she said to people, I'm good with who I am. She had an amazing college career, a lot of attention, and I think people on the WNBA side and... We're trying to continue that excitement. Grinder on top, her first professional performance. It's a lot, and for her to be able to carry herself with the grace that she does. Someone on that day when she spoke out said to themselves, it's okay to be me. We had this sort of cultural assumption that men playing sports are heterosexual. Women playing sports... Are they men? Are they lesbians? They're not quite feminine. They're not conforming to this idea. And so I think that that has a lot to do with then why female athletes choose to pose half-naked in Maxim magazine. Because if I'm conforming to this image, no one's going to question my femininity, and therefore no one's going to question my sexual orientation or my sexual identity. Female athletes obviously have agency to choose how they're portrayed. But when your choices are limited and you're rarely asked to be portrayed at all, when you are, your choice is, I could make money and be portrayed in sexualized ways or be portrayed and make no money, that's a difficult choice. So we can't blame female athletes for being sexualized in the sport media because those choices are tempered by the lack of coverage in general. It's a complicated issue because for female athletes on an individual level, Right, they have much to benefit by participating and being complicit in the reproduction of that kind of imagery, right? So that you get corporate endorsements and sponsorships, you get individual attention as an athlete, you might promote yourself as an athlete. As a society, we have all different shapes and sizes of women, you know, we have all different, you know, colors of women, we have different sexualities in women. So, you know, I think to say are there gender norms, I don't think they are, I don't. but I think that people think they are. So you have to start to change what people perceive them to be. Homophobia is the kind of elephant in the room. It's this underlying dynamic that shapes much of the cultural understandings of women's sports, that shape the interpersonal dynamics in women's sports, that shape... some of the barriers that women face? I think there is some pressure. I've talked to parents whose kids are in college who are worried that there's going to be pressure on them to not be feminine. So I've seen it probably a little bit more from the other side. I've seen athletes worry that people were just going to automatically assume that they were gay because they played a certain sport. So I think there's no doubt. What are those issues? My colleagues and I recently conducted a study with elite female athletes at two universities in both team and individual sports. And we randomly presented them with four different images ranging from on-court athletic inaction competence to off the court, out of uniform, and in highly sexualized poses. And then we asked each one of those athletes which one of these images best represents how you would like to be portrayed. How you would like your sport to be portrayed. Which one of these images do you think best increases interest for your sport and increases respect for your sport? And what was amazing about this study and a completely unexpected result was that half of them in both universities spontaneously said, can I pick more than one image? And of course we said yes because what's important is Follow the data trail. And of the 50% of the female athletes who asked to pick more than one image, they always picked the image of on-court athletic competence, and they never picked the image where the female athlete was highly objectified and sexualized. But they did pick the kind of medium image where the female athlete was portrayed off the court in a nice evening gown or with makeup and looking really classy. And when we asked them why they wanted to pick that picture as well as the on-court competence picture, They said, well, because we want to be seen and known as something that's more well-rounded. We don't want to just be a sweaty jock all the time. And we like to be seen as pretty and classy off the court, as well as highly competent on the court. For those female athletes who said, yeah, I just want to pick one picture that best represents me and my sport. 100% of the time they picked on-court athletic competence. Does sex sell women's sports is really the $64,000 question that scholars ask when it comes to media coverage of females. And for the last two and a half decades, I have devoted much of my research to trying to address that very question. And I have presented my research on how female athletes are portrayed all over this country and indeed all over the world and in front of audiences that are sympathetic to me and in front of audiences that are hostile to me. I will always get at the end of my talk, I will always get at the end of my talk, I will of my presentation, the showstopper, that really sort of ends the conversation. And that's when someone in the audience, again, either sympathetic or hostile, will raise his or her hand and say, well, Dr. Kane, I get your point, and I may even agree with it. But unfortunately, the bottom line is that sex sells women's sports. I think that's the dominant narrative that we hear and the dominant way that we have thought about marketing and promoting and selling women's sport. But no, I don't believe that works, because if it had worked, we would see women in equal proportions in the sport media, and we would have equal leagues and equal attention to women's sports. I think in men's sports, you know, we kind of sensationalize the violence. And I think in women's sports, we sensationalize the sex. I think sex sells. I think men like to watch sports involving women that... I have to take that back. I think men like watching sports, but I think that the sex component of it sells it more in the media. I think maybe sponsorships follow it. You don't see that with men. They're all like heroic and masculine, and they are shown as skilled, highly skilled athletes, whereas sometimes females, it's like they're shown in media because they look good and they have good bodies. I would rather see media focused on how... Good these female athletes are and how highly skilled they are. So just like they do with male athletes. I am an athlete and I'm proud of that athlete. It's not a girl thing. It's not a boy thing. It's a skills thing. I will. I remember driving home one day after giving yet another presentation. Presenting very powerful research findings and very powerful images of female athletes and saying to myself You know what? We don't have any data on whether or not sex sells women's sports Because I know the literature and I know that there is absolutely no research out there that shows That if in one season you show female athletes as off-court sexy babes And then the next season you show them as highly competent on-court athletes And then you compare attendance records, you compare corporate sponsorship, you compare amount of media coverage, that when you sell female athletes as sexy babes, they're gonna get a lot more of that than when you simply show them as highly competent athletes. And at the same time, when I would ask sport marketers or sports information directors or those who promote women's sports, they don't have any data either. These are athletes. They're not bikini models. They are people who are great at their sport. We are going to take them down to a spectacular setting and with wardrobe and fantastic photography, make these people look better than they've ever looked before. And another study that my colleagues and I did where we looked at whether or not it was really the case that sex sells women's sports, we did focus groups with 18-to 34-year-old males and females, which are the sweet spot for sport marketers, that age group. And we also looked at older males and females, meaning 35 to 55 year old males and females, and we looked at them in terms of high and low sport backgrounds. We randomly presented them with four different images. On one end, on-court athletic competence, and on the other end, highly sexualized and objectified female athletes. And this time, the question was, which one of these images makes you more interested in wanting to read about women's sports? Watch women's sports, attend a game, or buy season tickets. And what we found was that for both groups of women, the 18 to 34 year olds and the 35 to 55 year olds, they were deeply offended by these highly sexualized images and it did absolutely nothing to increase their interest in women's sports. And at the same time, they readily embraced images of female athletes in terms of on-court competence. And in addition to how the females reacted, the 35 to 55 year old males, the dads with daughters category, they too were deeply offended by those highly sexualized images and also chose images of athletic competence as the one image that most increased their interest in women's sports. The one group that differed was the 18 to 34 year old males, and they did pick the sexy babe image more than any of the other focus groups. But when we did the follow-up and we said to them, okay, you've picked this sexy image, meaning you want to buy the magazine, but does that make you want to then go and attend an event and watch women's sports? And they said, well, no, why would we want to do that? They don't look like that when you go to a game. They did have one thing in common with all those other three focus groups. Their number one overall choice was an image of a female athlete as an on-court, highly skilled athlete. When we look at the impact of sexualization and seeing sexualized images predominantly of female athletes in the sport media, it affects them in many ways. The first and maybe most important is that it tells girls and young women that it's more important what their bodies look like than what their bodies can do in terms of athletic performance. There's so many little girls who look up to them and if that's what they see, especially if they see me, my... goalie gear on that's like, okay, I want to be a goalie like she is, rather than having, okay, I want to have body like she does. Sexualized images of girls and women lead to a host of negative psychosocial outcomes, body image, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, lack of confidence and self-efficacy. So sexualization of women in general and sport in particular. can lead to a lot of negative outcomes for girls and women. And sport provides or can provide a really positive context for development for girls and women. As a little girl trying to do sports, you're constantly fighting against the notion that you're not supposed to be, even though it's totally fine. You're fighting against the notion that, let's say you really like football, but you can't play because your only option is lingerie football team or... Playing with the boys, which some girls now are beginning to do, and I think that's awesome. Most people don't know that there are two leagues of professional women's tackle football. Well, with women's football, what most people don't understand is that we really are playing the true game of football. We have on the pads, the helmets, we hit each other, we run, we roll out, we have big passes. The hits are sometimes loud enough we can hear them in the stands. We still have so-called sports, called the lingerie football league. And I am very sensitive to being critical of females and their choices when they want to engage in sport and physical activity. But it's just not clear to me how this is about female on-court athleticism at very high levels of competition. So when I look at that, it's really hard for me to take them seriously as athletes. Don't just rely on how I feel about it. If you listen to radio talk shows, and not only the radio hosts, but those who call in, they don't take women. seriously who are playing in the lingerie football league, they mock them, they ridicule them, they treat them as a joke. So it's just not clear to me how the lingerie football league is in any way advancing the ball when it comes to increasing interest in women's sports. And even more important to me, it's not clear how they're advancing the ball when it comes to increasing respect for women's sports. and for female athletes who are enormously gifted and dedicated to their craft. We're changing little girls that grow up like me wanting to play football now can see us and say I can play football and I don't have to take off my clothes to play football. I can suit up just like the boys would play. Having female athletes demonstrate grace under pressure, having all of the action stopped and a female athlete at a free throw line and she is about to make a free throw to not just win the game but to win a national title. or an Olympic gold medal, that when we see females performing like that under pressure really breaks the mold about what are women's biological capacities, physiological capacities, mental and psychological capacities. Let's look at images of female athletes who are engaged in on-court athletic competence and the kind of inspiration that comes from that kind of image and then take the same female athlete and compare that image to her you Off the court in a highly sexualized image, which does nothing to show off her competence. It might show off her body, but it doesn't have anything to do with her athleticism. And all I would ask you to do is to compare those two images in terms of how it makes you feel. And just be really honest with yourself. How images of... On-court competence makes you feel versus how images of sexualized, objectified bodies make you feel. And I think that you would conclude, if you're honest with yourself, that there is simply no comparison. I think it would be better to show more female swimming. You know, treat us the same way that you treat the men. I definitely want to be seen as, you know, a beautiful person. I like to be healthy and fit and to celebrate that. I like to be seen as a great... Basketball player, and obviously that's what I put out on the floor. The strength, the power, the skill, the competitiveness, the passion that I play with, I like that to be seen. There really is an enormous generational divide between those younger women and women of my age and older. And for women of my age and older, we are deeply offended by sexualized images. But what I hear from younger women all the time is, well, what's wrong with showing off your body in those kinds of ways? I have worked really, really hard to be ripped and to be toned, and I like to show off my body. They do make a distinction, and I think we need to start making a distinction between images where it's kind of a sexy babe, kind of kittenish image. versus what my mother would call a slutty image where the female is highly sexualized and objectified. We haven't talked to any female athletes who embrace the notion of being portrayed in a slutty kind of way. So what I would say to those young women who say I'm proud of my body, I want to show off my body, I would point out to them that you do not have to take off your clothes and strip naked in order to show off your enormously gifted, taut, toned body that you've worked so hard for. In fact, I would ask, what muscle group do bare breasts belong to? What we're finding from an emerging body of research is that sex doesn't sell women's sport. Sex sells sex. And if we want to legitimately sell women's sport, we need to focus on their athleticism. There is this maybe element of empowerment for individual female athletes. They might feel that they get to highlight their femininity and their athleticism, which may be empowering for them as a person. But I think the question that we need to ask is, what is this doing for women's sport? A more feminist critique would say that sport has, for centuries, been something that's been exclusively male. And there are few institutions in this culture that we care more about where we invest. both literally and figuratively capital, and then another group comes along, which women have done in the wake of Title IX, and want access to the same status and the same resources that that institution provides, there is going to be resistance to letting females have those kinds of resources. If you want to contain women's power in sports, one of the things that you can do is to portray them as off-the-court sexy babes. Rather than highly competent athletes, when you treat female athletes in such ways, they will always and forever remain second-class citizens in sport. And that is a perfect way to contain their power at a time when their interest and their participation is skyrocketing. We're kind of at that tipping point where I think it could really turn in a way that we could all be proud of. You know, men, instead of feeling threatened by a strong, confident woman, come to expect it and see them as equals. And I feel like we're close. We're on the verge of that. So I think doing anything to objectify women only turns back the clock. There's an organization that does a yearly report card for hiring practices in sports media on basis of race and gender. I believe it was the third year in a row sports media received a grade of F for their gender hiring practices and 90% of the sports editors in the United States are men. And I think that has something to do with this as well, because I think a lot of male sports editors are very traditional. They look at it as, well, people want to know about the NFL. They want to know Major League Baseball. They want to know the NBA. They want to know college football. And I think they're just not really thinking very progressively in terms of women's sports. They might bite on a good story once in a while. that it's not a high priority for them. Pound that ball down low to Bryna. Maya! Wow! The media coverage in our sport has definitely come a long way. I think with the help of the college game being as popular and as televised as it has been, it has tremendously increased the popularity and awareness and excitement around women's basketball. You know, I think it's a responsibility to the players to keep getting better and keep making the league grow. That's why we work so hard. That's why we practice. That's why we take extra shots. 132 of the world's best ready to go at it. It's 40 minutes of fire every single game. I don't know many people who have come to me and said, you know, I came to a game and it just wasn't exciting. I don't really, I can't think of anybody who's told me that. You know, they come to games and they say, I didn't know. It's hard because I'm comparing, like, the Final Four run to now, so, like, it's pretty similar, the amount of coverage. I mean, maybe at that point we had a ton, just like in the finals we probably had more. I feel like... From my first year here to now, we've had a lot more coverage, you know, because, you know, we've been successful. This year with the ESPN deal with the WNBA is really good progress. I think that there can be more. I feel like we can have our highlights on SportsCenter more. I feel like there's top ten plays in almost every WNBA game. This year we qualified to the NCAA Championships as a team. And it's a huge accomplishment because we go from 85 teams to 36 teams. to 12th. So to get into that top 12 is a huge accomplishment. And we got a lot of media coverage this year. Sierra, talk to me about, you know, at the time they were number one, you knocked off Michigan, toppling the top team in the nation. What did that do for confidence? We went into that meet and we didn't look at the rankings. We didn't look at the scores throughout the meet at all. And I just remember at the end, like realizing we won. I will frequently say to my students, and I would use, Ozzie and Harriet example, but they wouldn't get that, so I use Homer and Marge Simpson. I say to them, okay, let's imagine this conversation. Marge says to Homer, we need to go see the women's basketball team at the University of Minnesota tonight, because if they win, they're going to finish the season undefeated. They're not only going to win the Big Ten championship, but they're going to put themselves in a position to maybe even go into the women's Final Four and win the national championship. And Homer's response to Marge is, No, I don't want to go see them this year because you know why? They're just not very pretty. And then my students laugh. That is the logical conclusion to where we are when we are talking about does sex sell women's sports. I think what's really important for us who do research in this area is to be able to provide those who make the kinds of decisions about how female athletes are covered, if we can give them good, solid, empirical data. Including how the female athletes themselves feel about how they're portrayed will make a difference because I think that if only those people believe that it is in their own self-interest to simply turn on the camera and let us see what it looks like when female athletes play sports, from success to failure, from strength and power to grace and beauty, that it is only then, I believe, that female athletes will get the respect, the recognition. and the acknowledgement that they so richly deserve. I think it would just be interesting if on any given night, if they just gave the exact same coverage for boys and girls sports in the exact same way and showed the best plays from both games. And I think people would just walk away with, that's what I want to see. There's quite a few things people can do. They can attend. They can sit. Buy tickets. They can show up and generate interest. They can support legitimate coverage of women's sports. So when ESPN shows a WNBA game, make sure you're watching it. Tune into the College World Series. Watch the Women's Final Four. Anytime women's sport is on TV, set your DVR, turn on your TV. You can also click. When you click on stories, legitimate coverage of women's sport on Sports Illustrated, ESPN, whatever that means may be, clicks matter because clicks mean sponsorship. Well, the one advantage I think, in the case of newspapers and websites have, they can track how many times these stories are read. And if there's a lot more readership, they're going to put more coverage on them. ESPN, who's arguably the most visible sport media producer in the U.S., has turned to a brand extension called ESPNW and I serve on their advisory board. Their mission is to serve the interest of the female sport fan. Now in that coverage, which is an online site, it's not a channel, but they have the brand extension because they realize that targeting female fans of sport has been underserved and that they can make money trying to bring female fans into the... ESPN fold. What we can do if the mainstream media aren't going to cover it, let's create our own media outlets, internet. Blogs are going up. Local communities can set up websites and cover the sports that matter to them. I write a blog and I try to use that blog as a different platform to talk about issues in women in sport that you would not see covered in traditional media. And that's placing the responsibility on the viewers, on the athletes. To do that kind of work and I that doesn't sit well with me I want to I want to hold the mainstream media more accountable because that's their job and their role the way that women's Media coverage has changed since I was at Cornell from 1979 to 83 is astronomical. I mean let's just face it like we were lucky to get a picture in the Cornell Daily Sun back then which was the newspaper. Now you you you watch Cornell women just take take for example Cornell women's ice hockey. The the rink is packed, the coverage is insane. I know that they have television games so I mean that in and of itself is is different. Our school newspaper did a lot on us as a collegiate team. I went to Iowa State. We were never on television. None of our meets were ever televised. That was back in the day before cable and all of those things. We certainly didn't have computers, so we didn't have YouTube and all of those kinds of things either. There has clearly been a shift over the last few years in terms of how female athletes are portrayed, where I think those who market and promote women's sports are finally starting to get it in terms of what really works. So if you look at the WNBA, for example, in the early years of the WNBA, WNBA is a very important sport. They promoted the whole notion of being feminine, being classy, even the whole issue of playing up the notion of motherhood, not that there's anything wrong with motherhood. Then there's Tamika Dixon. Not Tamika is tough. But that they focused on those kinds of off-the-court characteristics rather than on-court competence. But if you look at how female athletes in the WNBA are portrayed these days, if you look at their commercials, If you look at their marketing campaigns, are about female competence on court, in action, at the most elite levels of competition. For one trophy. And if you look at ESPN and how they've shifted their coverage over the last four years when it comes to March Madness and women's basketball, they cover, and here's a surprise, Women's basketball the same way they cover men's basketball. The UConn Notre Dame rivalry is so great because just the tenacity. There's always a battle. Two great programs fighting it out. We've really overcome the intimidation factor that they have on a lot of teams. I'm seeing in the newspaper now a lot more photographs of really great action photographs of women athletes. Not so much of them just sitting on the bench or standing on the sidelines as we frequently used to see, but a lot of photographs of women. and just sweating and throwing elbows and really getting into the action of the heat of the game. It's very satisfying when I take the time every few months to go through some of the letters people send and hearing some of the stories of how I motivated them. or encourage them or how our team inspired them to do something and it's it's definitely a great feeling to know that what we're doing here on the court is bigger bigger than basketball. I feel like the Lynx and the WNBA here with our with our success is really really grown and you can just feel it every year our momentum and our energy in the building is is great and I think you know last week we had our camp day here we broke a record for the attendance with you know, 16,000, over 16,000. I know a lot of those were, you know, grade school boys and girls and maybe their first game ever at a WNBA game. So I feel like we put on a good show and kind of gave them someone to, you know, you know, I want to be like Maya Moore. I want to be like Simone Augustus. Everybody is a role model in a sense. We all have an effect and a presence on each other, whether it's your neighbor, whether it's your teacher, whether it's someone younger than you or older than you, we all have the ability to influence each other. Girls who are born today have never known anything other than having a WNBA, anything other than playing hockey with their brothers. And so those are just norms to them. And so when they get into the workforce, they're going to want to show that representation just how they know it. And so that's when I think it will really change. My favorite moment by far was Glory Johnson from the Tulsa Shock in warm-ups just decided to show us what she's been hiding. I think she's been hiding it because I had no idea she could get up like that and she jumped off of two feet, cocked the ball back and just dunked it right in the front of the rim. And I pretty much lost all control of my body and it just just fell to the ground in amazement of that show, that display of athleticism. I think she needs to do that more, you know, in the league. I think that if she, well not against us, but you know against the other teams. Media coverage and female athletes is a Minnesota partnership co-production of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota and Twin Cities Public Television

Transcript for:Media Representation of Female Athletes

Transcript for:
Media Representation of Female Athletes