Where's The Sweat Equity?

by Cherry Crayton

By the time you read this, we'll know whether Laura Gerraughty, a senior at Carolina, won a medal in the shot put at the 2004 Summer Olympics. But even if the winner of the U.S. Olympic Trials did win a medal, you still probably did not see her performance during NBC's prime-time coverage of the Olympics, says C.A. Tuggle, associate professor of journalism and mass communication.

"She is a woman, and women are relegated to certain roles in sports," Tuggle explains. "For sports in which women have to grunt and sweat and exert physical power, this falls outside of the small range of what's considered to be socially acceptable for female athletes."

Tuggle bases this statement on his series of studies of broadcast coverage of women's athletics. His analysis of NBC's prime-time coverage of the 2000 Summer Olympics published in Mass Communication & Society reveals that "women who competed in sports involving power or hard physical contact received almost no attention." Such power and contact sports, as defined by Tuggle, include the shot put, discus, javelin, hammer, canoeing, kayaking, rowing, weightlifting, Taekwondo, and judo.

Take for example NBC's coverage of the throwing events, including the shot put. During the 2000 Summer Olympics, NBC aired ten minutes of the men's throwing events during prime time; the women received no coverage. Granted, Tuggle reports, two U.S. men medaled in the throwing events, while no U.S. woman did. But also consider NBC's prime-time coverage of weightlifting. NBC devoted twenty-four minutes to men's weightlifting, though no U.S. man medaled in the event. In contrast, two U.S. women earned medals — a gold and a silver — in the inaugural female's weightlifting competition; these medal winners received no coverage.

Laura Gerraughty, a senior at Carolina, tosses the shot put. But don't expect to see this U.S. Olympic athlete, and other female athletes in power sports, on prime-time television, says C.A. Tuggle, associate professor of journalism and mass communication. Photo by Jeffrey Camarati. Click to enlarge.

According to Tuggle, this coverage of female power athletes contrasts with the overall coverage of U.S. Olympic female athletes. Women, who made up nearly 41 percent of the 2000 U.S. Olympic athletes, received 44 percent of NBC's prime-time coverage. At first glance, NBC's coverage appears to be equitable in terms of the participation rate of female athletes, Tuggle says. But the majority of the coverage went to females competing in noncontact and nonpower sports such as swimming, diving, tennis, and gymnastics.

So, Tuggle says, women athletes are presented in a narrowly defined way. He attributes this narrow perspective to broadcast management.

"Women are making great inroads in sports journalism but not in upper-level management," says Tuggle, a former sports producer. "There still exists what some have called a boys' club in management. And the male managers seem to have this mind-set that people don't want to see women in a sport that's not considered feminine, even though it has been shown that the television audience does not necessarily drop off when they do broadcast power or contact sports featuring women."

"But it's not even a conscious decision," Tuggle adds. The management, he says, fails to recognize the discrepancy in coverage due to societal norms that relegate both genders to certain socially accepted sports.

"For now, it's just business as usual," he says. "...And we don't see some winning performances because of it."

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