Gender Stereotypes In Sports

ADVERTISEMENTS & SPORTS

Women face discrimination in different spheres of society and the feminist movements across the globe have fought tooth and nail against this. Sports is one such sphere where women are slowly coming up and are aiming to be at par with men. Nicole Hoevertsz at the UN: “Sport can help break down barriers and challenge gender norms”1. Olympics, the biggest sports event has seen gradual increase in women participation which reached to 45% in Rio 2016 Olympics2. Such a positive change assisting women athletes to breakdown gender specific stereotypes and bringing confidence to showcase their skills and abilities without the fear of being judged by others in sports. But on the other hand, advertisements undermine the player’s achievement by sexualizing them, hyper feminizing them

These Ads create gaps between the real image of athletes and what is being portrayed to the audience. A study shows, television network in U.S.A. give 1.6% of airtime to women’s sports4. Also, in Olympics some sports like rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming which are specifically for women and demand lots of strength & hard work are unfortunately overpowered by beautiful decorative clothes and glitches5. The name used is pretty women in pretty sports. To challenge such stereotypes, an ad campaign was launched in January 2015 to create awareness about gender differences in participation of sports in U.K. & backed by Sport England, a non-departmental public body briefed to build and support grassroots sport, by working with national governing bodies of sport. “The research was done on 13 million women & data shows 75% of women want to do more sport, so the question was: why aren’t they doing so?” The major reason found out was “fear of judgment” -on their ability (or not). So the agency set out to create a campaign to give women the confidence to go out and do sport6. The ad gave a clear message, to get women & girls moving,