Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining gender/race representation in ESPN

I chose ESPN because it is my main source for sports news and I thought it would be interesting to examine the gender inequalities evident in the media especially ESPN. I will explore the number of articles written about women and women's sports. ESPN is far ahead of other media outlets when it comes to coverage of female sports. ESPN has set up a site called ESPNW which covers several news stories and major events in female sports. However this ESPNW pales in comparison to regular ESPN which basically strictly covers male sport and male athletes. To keep it simple I chose this past week, (from Monday until today--Friday). I could not come up with an exact number but through a compare and contrast the amount of articles written about men and women differ significantly. Despite ESPN's efforts to create a parallel female site to the original there is just simply way more media covering males than females.

These findings show me that we are still behind in times regarding gender equality, however male sports do have more fans and demand more media coverage than women's sports. The gesture of a female site is good for ESPN's face value and in gaining support from female consumers, but is it really just a lazy effort to give some female coverage and avoid being criticized for not having female coverage?
My findings do support other research on the matter of gender in sport. Female sport and media coverage have always been lesser than their male counterparts and the inequality still exists today. You rarely hear about the WNBA ever on national television until the last round of the playoffs begins. I also feel like during the Olympics I have seen more female names on the front page of ESPN than I ever have before, annual women's sports do not get nearly the same amount of attention.

The things I found regarding ESPN and gender are both encouraging and discouraging. The ESPNW website is great and provides solid coverage of almost every female sport followed in America. And the creation of that site is a step forward for women's sport in the media. On the other hand massive inequalities in the number of cover stories, interviews, and articles in general are still very apparent