Status of Women 2003 Abstracts
Commission on the Status of Women
ESPN SportsCenter and Coverage of Women’s Atheletics: “It’s a Boys Club” • Terry Adams and C. A. Tuggle, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Despite growing levels of participation by female athletes at all competition levels and documented fan interest in women’s athletics, media coverage of women’s sports remains inferior to that given male sports. This study is a replication of Tuggle’s original (1997) study to determine whether the existence of two women’s professional sports leagues has resulted in increased coverage of female athletics.
Broadcasting Gendered Sports Portrayals: The Effects of Watching Such Presentations on Attitudes of the Societal Role of Women • James R. Angelini, Indiana-Bloomington • This study examined the effects of viewing televised sports, with either positive or negative tactics used in commentating or production techniques, of both male and female sports, on individual opinions on the roles of women, as gauged on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. Exposure to the positive female sports condition resulted in better attitudes for women’s role in society. Exposure to the other three conditions did not have an effect, either positively or negatively, on these beliefs.
Gender and Journal Productivity: A 15-Year Census on How Women are Doing • Ken Blake and John V. Bodle, Middle Tennessee State and Edward E. Adams, Brigham Young • A census of refereed articles (N=6,535) in 10 primary journalism and mass communication journals from 1986-2000 determined that women have over the time period produced 28.6 percent of the journal scholarship. In recent years (1996-2000) women have produced 38.5 percent of journal scholarship. Women were found to collaborate on research at rates similar to men. Among women, assistant professors produced the most journal scholarship. “Non-faculty” women produced more than either female associate or full professors.
Women Reporters and Managers Make A Difference in Korean Newspapers • Sooyoung Cho, Missouri-Columbia • This study is unprecedented in its objective to examine the effect women reporters and managers have on other journalists in the newsroom and on content in Korean newspapers. Results are that women managers and more women reporters make a difference in the better treatment of women journalists in the newsroom and in the improved coverage of women in newspapers. The study surveyed all the women journalists in Korea’s ten national newspapers and three business newspapers.
Coverage Of Female Athletes In Women’s Sports Magazines: A Content Analysis • Susan Francis, Ohio • The purpose of this thesis was to examine women’s sports magazines to see how female athletes would be portrayed. Historically, female athletes have been under-represented in the media and have been portrayed in traditional feminine roles. A content analysis was conducted examining the three women’s sports magazines, Conde Nast Women’s Sports & Fitness, Sports Illustrated for Women and Real Sports. The results of this study demonstrates that significant improvement in women’s sports coverage is still needed.
Still Photographs of Female Athletes Featured in Sports Illustrated Versus Sports Illustrated for Women • Lauren A. Gniazdowski and Bryan E. Denham, Clemson • This study examines how Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated for Women portray female athletes in still photography. The research builds on existing works that have shown male and female athletes most commonly photographed “in action” and “posing,” respectively (for reviews, see Duncan & Messner, 1998; Kane & Lenskyj, 1998). Although some scholars have analyzed gender-specific publications, existing media studies have focused largely on general sports magazines.
We Must, We Must, We Must Increase our Bust: How College Women negotiate the Media’s Ideal Breast Image • J. Robyn Goodman and Kim Walsh-Childers, Florida • Through focus group interviews, this study examined how college women negotiate exposure to media images of disproportionately large-breasted women. The results showed that media images influence women’s breast satisfaction directly and indirectly, through perceived effects on men’s breast size ideal. However, women’s beliefs did not always correspond to the dominant ideology equating beauty with disproportionately large breasts. Personal experiences, self-confidence, and interactions with men, family and friends influenced their views of the mediated ideology.
Newspapers Transition From Women’s to Style Pages: What were they thinking? • Dustin Harp, Texas-Austin • This research considers newspaper trade articles during the 1970s to determine how industry insiders viewed the termination of-women’s pages and introduction of style sections. Women who constructed these sections dominated the discourse, which focused on a section’s content rather than the name above that content. The discourse also indicates that newsroom constraints, and male editors, prevented women editors of these women’s/style sections from constructing the content they desired.
Jane Grant: “There Would Be No New Yorker Today If It Were Not For Her” • Susan Henry, California State-Northridge • Jane Grant co-founded The New Yorker with her husband, Harold Ross, playing a crucial role in the magazine’s conception, birth, post-partum struggles and early success. This paper describes Grant’s New Yorker work as well as a journalism career that included being the first woman general-assignment reporter at the New York Times. Also examined is her work as co-founder of the Lucy Stone League, which fought for married women’s right to keep their birth names as a sign of their equality with their husbands.
She May Be Fit, But She Must Be Fashionable: Women’s Sports and Fitness Marketing through the Lens of French Feminist Theory • Tara M. Kachgal, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Using French feminist theories, this essay seeks to add a more theoretically-informed perspective for analyzing how female specificity is configured in U.S. sports and fitness marketing to women. In examining whether the visual and rhetorical strategies used by Nike and Reebok can disrupt, or circumvent, patriarchal gender logic, I pay particular attention to higaray’s theories of subjectivity.
Margaret Goss: Pioneering Female Sportswriter and Sports Columnist of the 1920s • Dave Kaszuba, Susquehanna • No abstract available.
Gendered Radio News Discourse: A Social Border Guard • Aliza Lavie, Bar-Ilan University-Israel • Only 10% of all interviewees in radio news and current events programs are women. The exclusion of women as interviewees, the absence of their voices and the compartmentalization of the few female interviewees into pre-defined categories, highlight radio discourse as a social border guard. In the case of Israeli radio, despite diverse social changes, including feminization of the media, several factors identified by media professionals, operate in concert to counteract the effect of gender
Gender-Differentiated Media Coverage of Political Candidates: A Look at the Georgia 2002 Republican Primary for Governor • Rebecca I. Long, Kennesaw State • Women are typically seen as having a disadvantage in the political arena because of stereotypes. While these stereotypes are less prevalent now, these beliefs are apparent in print media coverage. A content analysis of 146 articles from six newspapers indicated that coverage of the Georgia 2002 Republican Gubernatorial Primary differed along gender lines. Given media’s importance, it is critical to examine this differentiation to understand the gender factor in media coverage of statewide politics.
To American Eyes: Cultural Feminist Analysis of an Alternative Representation of Islamic Womanhood • Therese L. Lueck, Akron • This textual analysis examines the widely circulated Muslim magazines Islamic Horizons, and its construction of Islamic womanhood in the two years surrounding September 11, 2001. Informed by cultural feminist theory, this analysis locates sex separation as a conversion strategy. The magazine’s representation of Islamic womanhood mirrored a nostalgic American femininity characterized by modesty and moral superiority, modernizing it with contemporary acknowledgement of diversity and intellectual individualism. Its portrayal of Islamic womanhood did not shift markedly after the September 11 attacks.
Snatched: Gender, Class And Media Constructions Of “The Summer Of Child Abductions” • Leigh Moscowitz, Indiana • This study examines how the news media used assumptions about gender and class identities to construct the major “epidemic” of child kidnappings during the summer of 2002. Through a textual analysis of articles that appeared in USA Today and Newsweek magazine, this paper shows how media coverage of kidnappings reflects societal constructions of family, childhood and sexuality. In doing so, the media play off of-and contribute to-constructions of vulnerability in girlhood, and sexual deviance and violence in masculinity.
Aging Women and TV News • Suzanne Nelson, Minnesota • This research takes a close-up look at women television news reporters and then examines what it is like for women reporters to age in TV. The images of women television news reporters from two periods, 1986 and 2000, are examined and career women reporters are surveyed, revealing their personal experiences with management, audiences, and consultants regarding appearance (one reporter was told, in effect, that it would be good if she were taller) and regarding age.
Perfect Little Feminists: Resistance, Femininity, and Violence in the “Powerpuff Girls” • Spring-Serenity O’Neal, Indiana • This textual analysis explores how the Powerpuff Girls cartoon offers opportunities for resistance reading. Although the text contains violence, there are numerous instances where the three lead female characters gain empowerment through positive social messages from peers and each other. In depicting strong female characters engaging in unusual activities, the Powerpuff Girls offers an alternative view of the “perfect girl” that scholars have found in many Disney productions.
Did Women Listen To News? A Critical Examination Of Landmark Radio Audience Research (1935-1948) • Stacy Spaulding, Maryland • This paper critically analyzes the generalizations researchers made about women’s program preferences and the quantitative data used to support these assumptions. This research suggests that in analyzing their own data, researchers were blinded by pre-conceived notions of what programs women preferred. In particular, early research published in 1935 in The Psychology of Radio boldly called discrimination against women’s voices a product of societal prejudice, but failed to break with conventional wisdom about what programs women actually enjoyed listening to.
The C-Cup Norm: Exposure to Media Ideals and Desire for Larger Breasts Among College Women • Kim Walsh-Childers and Robyn Goodman, Florida • This study examined the relationship between exposure to media images of large-breasted women and women’s breast dissatisfaction. Female undergraduates viewed images representing women with small, medium or large breasts. Exposure to larger-breasted images was more likely to increase women’s ideal breast size, ideal cup size, perceptions of men’s ideal breast size, acceptance of a large-breast norm and likelihood of using artificial means, other than implant surgery, to increase breast size or make their breasts appear larger.
Black Womanhood: A Content Analysis of Essence and its Treatment of Stereotypical Images of Black Women • Jennifer Bailey Woodard, Indiana State-Bloomington and Teresa Mastin, Middle Tennessee State • This content analysis examines whether or not Essence works as a feminist text that dispels stereotypical images of Black women. We hypothesize that (a) there will be more evidence to dispel the stereotypes than to perpetuate them and (b) that of the four major African American women stereotypes – mammy, matriarch, sexual siren, and welfare mother/queen – the matriarch and sexual siren stereotypes will be dispelled more frequently. Results support hypothesis (a) entirely and hypothesis (b) partially.
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