Przeglad Socjologii Jakosciowej (Feb 2020)

Guardians of the Hegemonic Structure of Sports? Women’s Sports as Perceived by Polish Female Sports Journalists

  • Natalia Organista,
  • Zuzanna Mazur

DOI
https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8069.16.1.04
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 1
pp. 48 – 64

Abstract

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The under-representation of media coverage of women’s sports has been a long-standing phenomenon, which can also be observed in Poland (Dziubiński, Organista and Mazur 2019; Jakubows­ka 2015; Kluczyńska 2011). One of the possible reasons for less information on women’s sports is a small number of female sports journalists. Due to the lack of Polish research on female sports journalists, the authors of this article aimed at analyzing their beliefs about women’s sports and the under-representa­tion of media coverage of women’s sports in the Polish media. The analysis has shown that the female journalists perceive women’s sports as inferior to men’s sports and are not in favor of increasing the amount of information about women’s sports. The authors point to the socialization into sport, the pro­fessional socialization of the research participants, their minority status in the profession as well as their perception of masculinity, femininity, and professionalism in journalism as possible reasons for the way in which women’s sport is perceived by them.

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