Abstract
Women are the Schrödinger’s cats of the so-called major professional sports leagues in North America: They both do not exist (as athletes) and exist as lower-class citizens (as staff members, as journalists, as fans). To escape this dubious status, women instead have formed their own separate leagues, but those come with issues of their own, starting with their reinforcement of sex as binary and their existence within capitalist power structures. What does a better world for women — read: any and all women-identified people (cisgender, transgender, femme, et al.) — in sport really look like? To explore those questions, this paper analyzes news coverage of the recent struggles of the National Women’s Hockey League to hold a tournament in a pandemic “bubble,” which included a clash with controversial sports media company Barstool Sports over social media harassment as well an eventual failure to keep players safe from COVID-19 outbreaks. The framing analysis identifies the problems the league faced as well as their proposed solutions, then compares those problems and solutions to principles of feminist world building. Critical sports scholar Susan Birrell (2000) contrasts “liberal feminism” and its search for equality within the current system with “radical feminism” and its desire to upend that system (p. 62). Through news framing analysis, this paper shows that efforts to bolster women in professional sports in North America remain oriented to liberal feminist goals. This study also offers evidence of more radical possibilities on the horizon.
Presenters
Kate YanchulisPh.D. Student, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, Maryland, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2021 Special Focus—Sport and Society in Crisis
KEYWORDS
Feminism; Journalism; Media; Women's sports
