Women in
the United States may still have to contend with a shortfall in their
lifetime earnings and a glass ceiling in the boardroom, but theyve
closed the gender gap in at least one arena the television coverage
they receive as Olympic athletes.
An analysis of coverage by NBC, which has exclusive rights to
broadcast the Olympics, by a University of Delaware researcher found
that the networks decades-long emphasis on male athletes and their
events began to change with the 2012 Games, when women athletes received
55% of the prime-time coverage.
A new study of the 2018 Olympics has
found that trend continuing.
Women are seen more on the screen, heard more in the commentary and
are generally the focus of more coverage, said James Angelini,
associate professor and director of graduate studies in UDs Department of Communication.
His latest research on the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea,
co-authored by Andrew Billings of the University of Alabama, was
published in July in the journal Communication and Sport.
Results show that women athletes received the majority of clock-time
and name mentions during the 2018 coverage continuing a trend toward
increased focus on womens sports and athletics over the two decades of
analysis, according to the article.
Angelini and Billings research shows the gender gap closing to the
point of, if anything, favoring female athletes who now have received
the majority of clock-time and mentions in three of the past four [2012,
2016 and 2018] Olympic broadcasts.
Much of the change in coverage is due to the success that American
women athletes have had in comparison to their male counterparts,
Angelini said, adding that NBCs coverage of the Games has always
focused on U.S. athletes and on successful athletes.
Women are winning more medals, and NBC is following the story, he said.
The paper notes that the analysis of television coverage in any
particular Olympics can be affected by the presence of a superstar
athlete whose performance dominates the Games and the media. That was
the case in 2018 with skier Lindsey Vonn, who accounted for 9% of all
the womens mentions on NBC. But, Angelini said, if Vonn and the
dominant male athlete (snowboarder Shaun White) were ignored in the 2018
analysis, women would still have had the majority of on-air mentions.
Angelini is optimistic that women athletes will continue to be
covered equitably by the media. Although he hasnt studied sports such
as soccer and tennis, he said he thinks the increased attention being
given to women athletes is a trend that isnt going away.
In his future research, he wants to examine how new Olympic events,
including karate, surfing and skateboarding in 2020, will affect the
gender-based coverage.
From here on out, Id hope that the media will feature athletes who
are winning male or female and not just in stereotypically
feminine sports like gymnastics and figure skating, he said.
His next project is a book hes planning about the 2020 Tokyo Games, to be published by Peter Lang Publishing.
Article by Ann Manser; illustration by Jeffrey C. Chase
Published Aug. 12, 2019
