Media Madness

by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

This past Friday, the Washington Post printed an article on the first page of the Sports section entitled “This Year, It Could Be March Sadness: Area Teams Might Get Shut Out of the NCAA Tournament for the First Time Since 1978.”  Excuse me? How could the Post write such a piece when on the very same day, the University of Maryland women’s basketball team, ranked 4th in the country and 1st in the ACC, was playing its first ACC tournament game after having received the top seed for the first time since 1989. The Maryland women went on to win the ACC tournament and there is no question that they will be in the NCAA tournament, probably as a No. 1 seed.

Unfortunately, the answer lies in the consistent second-class treatment of women’s sports by the media. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, women make up 38-42 percent of all sport and physical activity participants nationwide, yet they receive only 6-8 percent of the total sports coverage. Anyone who has tried to find women’s sporting events on TV can attest to this. It is often easier to find a men’s regular season game than it is to find a women’s tournament or championship game.

Yet record numbers of women are playing sports, attending sporting events, and buying athletic products. Women represent half of the fan base for football and buy more team apparel than men. So women have power as players, fans and consumers, power that they can use that to hold the media accountable and point out when they are relegating women and girls to the sidelines or ignoring them altogether.
 
It is shameful that in 2009, many media outlets continue to act as though men’s teams are the only ones that count. We should not let them get away with it.