Jaquelyn Osborne

Women in the Sports Pages

Despite women participating in a variety of sports at an international level, the Australian sports media is dominated by male commentators, male identified sports, and male athletes. Much of the sports reporting in Australia surround high profile male team sports such as rugby league (NRL), cricket, and Australian Rules football (AFL). Women sports do not generally feature heavily in sports coverage in neither print nor broadcast mediums. However, every four years the Olympic Games change this culture somewhat. Over the period of the Olympic Games, during the lead up to the Games and in the weeks post-Games, women athletes can be found in the sports pages. During this period, Australian women athletes are celebrated and awarded space in newspaper coverage, particularly if their athletic performance brings success to the country. This ongoing longitudinal study documents the prevalence of female sports stories in two state (New South Wales) and one national newspaper in Australia, “The Sydney Morning Herald,” “The Daily Telegraph,” and “The Australian,” between 2008 and 2012. In the broader study, newspapers were analyzed for two weeks prior to the Olympics beginning, during the Olympics, and two weeks after the Olympics were completed. However in the current paper, a small slice of this research between 2008-2012 will be analyzed in relation to gender (male, female, or a combination of male and female athletes), the articles relationship to the Olympic Games, and the general content of sports news articles. The content and language used in the newspaper articles are examined using a critical feminist perspective and such a perspective will investigate the ways that women are often ‘feminized’, ‘gender marked’, ‘infantilized’, and ‘heterosexualized’ in the sports media during both Olympic and non-Olympic years.

The Gay Games, Safe Spaces and the Promotion of Sport for All?

In the early 1980s, the creation of the Gay Games and other sporting events for gay and lesbian identified athletes offered an opportunity for such athletes to participate in sports, supposedly free from sexual discrimination. The Gay Games is based on participatory discourses whereby everyone who enters and is allowed to participate, regardless of age, sexuality, race or sporting ability. Notably, the Gay Games culture is often lauded by participants and this event provides a space for participants to compete and socialise and make new friends with like-minded people. Additionally, the Gay Games provides a ‘safe space’ for participants where they do not have to ‘manage’ their identity as gay or lesbian. This sub-culture is examined in this chapter by providing an analysis of the experiences of Australian lesbian-identified hockey and soccer players and their Gay Games participation. Alongside these women’s experiences, this chapter also provides a critique of the ‘accessibility’ of the Gay Games. This accessibility includes both cultural and financial critiques. The cost of entering events at the Gay Games are high; in fact, all participants must pay both a ‘base rate’ for entry into the Games and a cost per sport in which they participate. On top of this expense, the travel costs to attend the Games are substantial and often require international flights and accommodation. Consequently, a large percentage of participants at the Games are middle-class, middle-age to older athletes. Therefore, while the Games provide an affirming space for a number of gay and lesbian participants, a deeper critique of the Games uncovers that accessibility for all is not necessarily the case. In other words, these events are simultaneously inclusive and exclusive, especially in relation to class, sexuality and discrimination.

Social media and the politics of gender, race and identity: the case of Serena Williams

Abstract This study investigates issues of gender, race and identity, as enacted through social media, focusing on the abuse experienced by tennis player Serena Williams during the 2015 Wimbledon Championships. A netnographic analysis of discriminatory or abusive comments relating to Williams were collected from 24 sites on two social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter. These platforms are popular sites commonly used for fan/athlete interaction. Williams identifies as female and African American, therefore intersectionality is adopted to examine the representation of Williams in social media spaces. Several pertinent themes were uncovered relating to Williams including ‘Gender questioning’, ‘Accusations of performance enhancing drugs use’ and ‘Racism’. Such themes showed a simultaneous overlapping of multiple forms of oppression encountered by Williams, reinforcing the notion of the black female athlete as ‘other’ in virtual spaces. Such oppression is perpetuated by the online environment.