Parallel Sessions - Focused Discussion: Room 2
The #metoo Movement’s Influence on Australian Women’s Sports Coverage
Focused Discussion Julie-Ann C Tullberg
The #metoo movement has created a ripple effect in various parts of the globe but in Australia, there has been a significant cultural shift in the reporting of women’s sport. The social media-driven #metoo campaign generated a reactive approach to male leaders, who had taken advantage of women in unbalanced work environments and led to intensive media investigations and follow-up reporting. A number of high-profile Australian male celebrities have fought legal action since the fall of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The emergence of the national women’s Australian football competition in 2017 has also generated an unprecedented rise in media coverage. After years of lobbying and fighting for a slice of the Australian media landscape, women’s sport leaders now have a powerful voice. This paper will show that content analysis of Australian newspapers will reveal the Australian Football League Womens (AFLW), the national women’s cricket team and other women sporting teams have significantly more newspaper and digital news space and air time compared with three years ago. The attitudes of senior sports executives have changed remarkably since the development and presence of strong female leaders in politics and media. With strong support from Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper and broadcast products, News Corp Australia and Fox Sports, there has been a more balanced approach to covering sports of both genders. As a result, the increase in women’s sports coverage has created a sustainable commercialised market, with sponsorship creation for both men’s and women’s sporting teams in major club structures.
Busy Life, Healthy Life: How to Teach an Online Physical Education Activity Course
Focused Discussion Melissa Falen
How can a physical fitness activity course be taught online? Should a physical activity course be taught online? More and more institutions of higher learning are looking for ways to expand programs and increase enrollment, creating an explosion of online programs. For schools that have a general education requirement in physical education, this poses a unique challenge. The easy answer would be to offer a theory based course that does not have an exercise component. However recent data from the CDC indicates nearly 40% of adults and 20% of children in the United States are obese. This presentation will show how to develop an online course requiring active physical participation while encouraging students to explore, develop and share ways to increase physical activity in their daily lives. Particular emphasis is placed on incorporating physical activity into lives that are already "too busy."
Sport and the Sustainable Development Goals
Focused Discussion Melissa Otterbein
To address the increasing global decline in physical activity, the World Health Organization and the United States have created Physical Activity Guidelines. However, it's estimated that 31.1% of all adults and 80.3% of children globally don't meet the recommendations (Lancet, 2012). Meanwhile, In 2015, UN member countries re-envisioned poverty alleviation and empowerment of people and the planet in the transition from the Millenium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This focused discussion will cover the intersection of physical activity and sport as a tool for addressing the SDGs with case examples of successful sports programs addressing each of the 17 goals. Furthermore, this discussion will discuss why the SDGs are relevant to the sport communities (with particular focus on athlete health and climate change) as well as action steps that athletes, coaches, teams, and national sports governing bodies can take to advance and implement key tenants of the SDGs, such as inclusion of often left behind populations, sustainability, and promotion of athlete health while still growing sports industries, teams, and new athletes in a cost-effective manner. As a global industry estimated at $480-$620 billion (A.T. Kearney Inc, 2011), sport has the reach, power, audience, and capacity to use its platform for engaging athletes, fans, and the world in sustainable practices which promote health and peace. This session will equip attendees with frameworks and strategies to implement on the individual, community, national and policy levels.
