Female Athletes And Male Athletes

It’s pretty clear that in today’s society males are the dominate figure in sports. Unlike female athletes, men receive a tremendous amount of media attention than female athletes. Young boys grow up watching television bombarded with heroic images of male athletes. They have something to look up to, while young girls do not receive the same images. Male and female athletes have many equal opportunities when it comes to playing and succeeding in sports. Yet it seems that male sports happen to catch more of the limelight when it comes to the media and the publicity they receive for the athletics performances. Women have been fighting this battle against the media for many years now. The problem is that women athletes are portrayed as sex symbols and are not taken seriously as athletes. Female athletes make up 40 percent of sports participants nationally, but only received 8 percent of the entire sports coverage. With that being said, this literature review examines how the sports portray the female athlete compared to how the media represents them. Since the 20th century, female athletes have made enormous strides to improve their status. Prior to these efforts and achievements, female athletes had to play in much poorer facilities under different rules and with stricter dress codes than male athletes. Society also ignored and discriminated against female athletes. This discrimination portrayed them as masculine rather than feminine due to the sport they play and the pictures
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