Study shows less women’s sports TV coverage today than 25 years ago

A young girl sits with her parents watching a sports anchor on a television newscast. He recaps video clips from athletic events, verbally punching the air: Bingo! Thunderous! Awesome! Every highlight depicts men’s sports. No women’s sports are shown.

The girl soaks in what she sees or perhaps turns away to something “for her.” Does she know she could be a basketball or soccer player and learn leadership, team building, tenacity, and confidence?

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” says founder of the Children’s Defense Fund Marian Wright Edleman. Children observe what is happening around them, determining subliminally what is possible for their lives. If a girl does not see women playing sports, she may not think sports are for her.

A study in partnership with the University of Southern California has shown that there is less women’s sports coverage today than there was 25 years ago, particularly on ESPN SportsCenter and Los Angeles affiliates.

“It seems counter-intuitive than what you might expect,” says Cheryl Cooky, Purdue associate professor of women’s studies and co-author of “It’s Dude Time!: A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows,” published online in Communication & Sport.

In 2014, Los Angeles network affiliates devoted only 3.2 percent of airtime to women’s sports, down from 5 percent in 1989. ESPN’s SportsCenter dedicated 2 percent of its hour-long highlight show to women’s sports, a proportion that has remained flat since the study began tracking the show in 1999.

“The findings seem shocking from the standpoint of the tremendous growth in girls’ and women’s athletic participation in the last 40-plus years,” Cooky says. “There has been an increase in the number of women’s professional leagues available today than there were in 1989. Also, there’s a definite increase in the interest in fan base for women’s sports over that 25-year period.”

Big contests like NCAA Women’s Basketball or Women’s World Cup Soccer championships are covered. It’s the mainstream television sports highlights that often exclude women. “Networks know that women’s sports are happening because they are broadcasting those tournaments and matches. Yet, when you look at the flagship premiere highlight show for ESPN, SportsCenter, if you just turned on that show and that was your only indicator of what was happening in the world of sports, you would come to the conclusion that women aren’t playing sports.”

“I’m not surprised,” says Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White (LA’99), who played for the Fever and Purdue. White is also a broadcaster for the Big Ten Network, ESPN, and FOX Sports Indiana.

“I think we constantly do ourselves a disservice to the coverage because of the time that we air women’s sports, or because we continually change the time of when we put it on. You have to give women’s sports time to build and maintain an audience in order to create a higher rating. I wish it wasn’t all about instant gratification, and that we could do women’s sports justice and give it an opportunity.”

On the morning of July 6, 2015, the day after the US Women’s National Soccer Team won a historic World Cup for a record third time and the first since 1999, the home page of SportsCenter.com featured a “Must Watch” video about Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning the Daytona Coke Zero 400. Of the 12 thumbnail videos on the page, one highlighted a woman’s sport — tennis. A visitor to SportsCenter.com had to search to see video of the American women winning the World Cup.

“ESPN shuttles these stories to their espnW site,” says Cooky. “The coverage of the Women’s World Cup on ESPN’s website was spotty at best. And while ESPN may defend this by saying they covered it on their sister website, I would argue that most people are not aware of espnW as a website, and most avid sports fans and casual viewers will know ESPN, and this may be their ‘go to’ for finding out information about sports. If women’s sports are not covered there, it is likely that only the diehard fans will continue to click, search, scan, and scroll for the coverage of the game.” 

In contrast, the Big Ten Network featured the Women’s World Cup on its homepage with a photo of Carli Lloyd and the headline: “Rutgers Product Carli Lloyd Scores 3 Goals to Propel US to World Cup Title.”

In 2010, when espnW began as a brand marketed to women, Cooky’s co-author Michael A. Messner said, “Yes, it’s going to give women’s sports fans a place to go, but it might ultimately ghettoize women’s sports and kind of take ESPN off the hook in terms of actually covering them on its main broadcast.”

Emily Fogle, Purdue swimmer and graduate research student for Cooky’s study, says, “It’s just sad. I can’t think of a better word. I know the work and the amount of time and effort it takes, and to not see women’s sports in the mainstream news is really unfortunate. We need more people like Professor Cooky to show that this is such an important issue.”

In 1977, Beth Brooke-Marciniak (M’81, HDR M’12), global vice chair of public policy at EY (Ernst & Young), was in the first class of Purdue women basketball recruits to receive scholarships. Named six times to Forbes’ list of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women,” she leads the EY Women Athletes Business Network, which studies the link between sports and women’s leadership. “Imagery is always important,” says Brooke-Marciniak. “There is a very strong correlation between success in sports and success in business. Women learn resilience. They learn how to lose. They learn that losing is just feedback. Our research found that 94 percent of the most successful businesswomen played sports. Over half of them played at the university level. Parents with young girls should give their daughters every opportunity to excel in sport for the longterm to reap the benefits.”

If a girl sees mainly men’s sports, does she not aspire to be an athlete and thus, not aspire to be a CEO?

Cooky says, “The media is such a significant institution in our society, and often it’s how we come to know ourselves in terms of our identity. Having better representation — more quality and more quantity of women’s sports — will go a long way in terms of shifting the cultural norms and expectations around young girls and what they can do and who they can be, even outside of the world of sports.”