Introduction
The classification of different actions as feminine and masculine is mostly a social structure anchored on labeled outlooks on the subject of gender and professed gender dissimilarities. Sports have commonly been classified as masculine, while some sports are deemed to be feminine. Implications anchored on hypothetical concerns have been made in relation to the characteristics that may possibly be the cause of the classification of sports as feminine or masculine.
Specific duties and activities have conventionally been consigned to men and others to women, specifically, they have been deemed to be masculine or feminine activities. These classifications are to large sense social structures anchored on individual beliefs on the subject of gender, and on individual convictions that gender groupings are normal, definite, bipolar, fixed, and individual. They are similarly found in individual views of distinctions involving these gender groupings. These suppositions with reference to gender and gender groupings are sequentially anchored on collectively created, historically precise, and cultural images of the social dealings that takes place among gendered peoples by means of their affairs to one another. These notions and structures are in so doing occasionally cause to experience change.
Gender Differences in Sports as Portrayed in Media
Gender has frequently been used in media to portray a particular genre. Serial fiction demonstrates a feminine visual. Nonetheless, purposively male dominated sports, like wrestling, does not correspond efficiently into the scholarly television convention that divides masculine from feminine story form. In the work of Jenkins (1997) he noted that television wrestling functions opposing to such a harshly prearranged characteristic. Its distinguishing theme which reveals the homosocial dealings involving men, the professional field instead of the domestic sphere, the concentration on physical methods to resolve disagreements, is inspired by generic conventions which critics have recognized as typically masculine. Its form of appearance, principally its concentration on numerous individuals and their connection, its rejection of finality, its fascination to viewer assumption and scandal implies genres frequently characterized as feminine. These incongruities may possibly be a sign of wrestling’s edgy position as masculine melodrama.
The celebrated asymmetry of male contribution in sports is frequently enlightened by gendered socialization. Contribution in sports is deemed as a noteworthy manner to build a masculine self-identity. Young men who have trouble with sports are susceptible to criticism as “not real men” (Messner 1992). Adolescents’ partaking in sports is deemed the norm and girls’ involvement extraordinary (Messner, Duncan, and Jensen 1993).
In other studies, Duncan and Messner (1998) discovered that sportswomen were taken pictures in such a manner as to imply admiration to men, at the same time as sportsmen were more probable to be represented in positions revealing ascendancy to women. For instance, males in relation to females were exposed in poses of higher elevation, bigger considerable sizes, and positions of covetousness. Females were depicted in lower physical poses, minor sizes, and with their heads and bodies pious. Females, in general, were exposed in submissive poses even as males were revealed in energetic athletic positions.
Males are characteristically illustrated in the media coverage of sports as possessing power over themselves, their adversaries, and their individual accomplishments. Females, conversely, are portrayed otherwise, being outlined as possessing external elements like fortune and family encouragement determining their accomplishment. Basically, males are shown as active instruments and women as reactive ones (Duncan and Messner 1998). Duncan and Messner similarly indicated that in recounting basketball attempts, location is fairly obvious in female’s games and not so much in male’s matches. In their account they discovered that when a female blew an attempt, the broadcasters would employ first person active voice to express the missed attempt. If males missed, the first person active voice was hardly ever employed, which is a notion Duncan and Messner described as “agentless” framing or secret agent. Fundamentally, a meager and pitiable performance by a male athlete was moved into a positive one; faults were because of unrestrained might or other inevitable conditions. On the other hand, female’s faults were by reason of their individual unadulterated lack of skill (Duncan and Messner 1998, p. 179). These slight differences imply that generating and preserving masculinity as active and femininity as passive carry on in sports.
Conclusion
This paper has presented the gender norms that have prevailed in the realm of sports. Specifically, the presentation of the athletes in the media has dictated how these stereotypical roles are provided in both males and females athletes. In a manner of speaking, media has constantly played a great role in dictating the roles in which both female and male athletes exude. Based on the discussions above, female athletes are portrayed in media differently as compared to their male counterparts. One could assume that this type of representation of women in sports has similarly been culpable in the fear of women to engage in such activities. Thus aside from the physical demands of sports that is required among its participants, one must also be ready to take on the image that comes with such activities.
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