Sexism In The Olympics Essay

Sexism in the Olympics Introduction

Seen as one of the many hot button issues in politics today, sexism was prevalent in the 2016 Olympics, which did not go unnoticed in the media. Newscasters were accused of making sexist remarks, magazines featured articles on “the most sexist moments in the Olympics,” and women were categorized by marital status and their appearance. The focus was drawn away from the athletic achievements of these ladies and placed on their physical appearance or the men in their lives. We hypothesize that if a male receives an award, whether it be equal or lesser to a female’s award, then the language congratulating the male will be more enthusiastic and less critical.

These issues were previously addressed in the article

The article talks about how Douglas made a stand for the racism and sexism portrayed through the media not paying attention to the fact that the athletes were two completely different people. It also discusses how certain athletes are talked about in reference to their race or gender. The article titled “The Most Egregious Sexist Fails at the 2016 Olympics” discusses several cases where the media was sexist towards some of the Olympic athletes, such as when Katie Ledecky won a Gold in the 800-meter freestyle, but somehow Michael Phelps’ tie for a silver medal got a bigger headline. In the article “The Hotly Contested Olympic Medal Table of Sexism,” gold, silver, and bronze medals are given out for the most sexist, insulting, and stereotypical discussions of the athletes in the media. For example, the gold medal for “most insulting attribution of a female athlete’s medal to her husband” is given to Dan Hicks, who, when Hungary Katinka Hosszu took gold and beat the world record, pointed to her husband and said “and there’s the man responsible.” The article “Is Olympic Coverage Undercutting Women’s Achievements?” talks about, again, a lot of sexist references to the female athletes and their husbands, and a lot of stereotypical references such as referring to female athletes gathered

We analyzed the use of he/she pronouns, present focus, sexual language, and perceptual processes using a system called LIWC. We expected to find that, when a male receives an award, no matter the similarity to a female’s award, the language congratulating the male will be much more enthusiastic and much less critical than the language associated with the female’s achievement. Our results were consistent with our hypothesis, but we found that the language surrounding the achievements of both men and women athletes in the 2016 olympics were not only more enthusiastic towards the males, but were also full of gender bias, primarily the inferiority of women in comparison to the achievement to men in their event and/or their spouses as well as the presence of perceptual focus in articles discussing the history of gender bias in the Olympics. In hindsight, delving deeper into other aspects like tone, comparisons, anger and social aspects of the articles. These results can be applied to how we view women in our society, and if shared, these results can help us to make a change in how we perceive women’s success so that the media can take steps toward equal recognition. We were limited to articles from this year and if we were permitted to pull past articles into the research our findings could provide a clearer picture of the full extent of sexism in the