Sociology of Sport International Review for the

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Women in the Discourse of Sport Reports Marie-Luise Klein International Review for the Sociology of Sport 1988; 23; 139 DOI: 10.1177/101269028802300205 The online version of this article can be found at: http://irs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/2/139

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Women in the Discourse of Sport Reports * MARIE-LUISE KLEIN Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Fakultät für Sportwissenschaft, 4630 Bochum, FRG Abstract

Sport reporting in the media presents a discursive field which not only reflects social gender differentiation, but also strengthens these differences through the use of particular language and graphic styles. Detailed analysis of 3000 sport reports and photographs from 4 national West German newspapers showed that the press functioned as a normalising agent in the discourse of sport, which, amongst other things, legitimises the marginal position of women in sport by invoking the apparently natural differences between the sexes. Discursive strategies include exclusion of women from reports, as well as numerous mechanisms restricting the crossing of group boundaries into previously male domains, e.g. trivialising women’s sport, making them into "non-sport", or use of irony. These could be interpreted as a means of controlling or a reactive strategy to the discourse of emancipation.

Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses A large number of studies on the image of women in the mass media has revealed overt and covert discrimination against women in the press, radio, TV and in advertising (summarised in Schmerl, 1984). This study fits into this framework: it examines how in sport reporting in the daily press the previously fairly neglected theme of women’s sport has less coverage than and is handled differently to men’s

sport. It is generally evident that sport reporting in the media conveys or constructs a special field of knowledge about the topic &dquo;sport&dquo;. This can occur by limiting coverage to only the most popular types of sport as well as by simply neglecting

whole

themes, such

as

school

or

leisure sport. Since

as a

rule the sports media

depend public, they must also take account of its (supposed) tastes in their choices regarding content. Moreover, literary and graphic styles and how they are used and presented employ a common set of symbols or symbolic on a mass

constructions that is shared by the wider public. The exclusion and selection processes that are constantly used in reporting remain, however, largely unnoticed. Since the sports media constitute a field of publically shared language use, Michel Foucault’s deliberations on the construction of discourses provide a suitable theoretical framework within which to analyse how women are treated in sport reporting. In the theoretical works, &dquo;The Archaeology of Knowledge&dquo; (1974) and &dquo;Die Ordnung des Diskurses&dquo; (1977), Foucault discusses how fields of knowledge in institutions are constructed and what strategies are employed in * A shortened version of this paper was presented at the Jyvaskyla Congress on Movement and Sport in Women’s Life, 1987 (Finland). Int Rev for Soc

© R

of Sport 23/2 (1988) Oldenbourg Verlag GmbH, D-8000 Munchen


140

doing so. He maintains that &dquo;objects&dquo; or &dquo;facts&dquo; cannot exist independently of their commonly accepted linguistically given names and classifications. Discourses always produce these &dquo;objects&dquo;, and are to be understood as constituting one form of the social. Through their mechanisms of including and excluding subjects and themes, they exert power (Foucault, 1976). The sports discourse of the media reflects culturally existing gender relationships, particularly with respect to the status of women in sport reports. The mechanisms of excluding women from reports or treating them differently to men are simultaneously expressions of the power relationship between the sexes, as well as the means whereby it is perpetuated or manipulated. I postulate that social gender differentiation is not only reproduced by the sports media, but moreover it is particularly subtlely perpetuated by the physical nature of sport. Sport seems predestined to act as a vehicle by which cultural patterns of relations between the sexes take on concrete (sport-specific) forms of feminity and masculinity, since the biologically imposed differences between male and female

sport achievement can be seen as a type of &dquo;natural&dquo; sex differentiation. The following examines to what extent sport reporting in the daily press

discursively, i.e. via stylistic elements and graphic representation, and by what means women in sport are relegated to &dquo;their proper place&dquo;. converts these sex differences

Methodology complete year’s issue (1979) of each of four national West German daily newspapers, the Frankfurter Rundschau (FR), Die Welt (Welt), Bild-Zeitung (Bild) and the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), were analysed with regard to all sport reports on women.’ The data were updated by two random samples in August 1985 and May 1987. The levels of discourses and the strategies used in sport reports on women were examined qualitatively by analysing examples of textual and graphic material and how this is used, as well as quantitatively by a computer-based content analysis of 3000 articles and pictures. The content analysis comprised all articles (except very short notes) and photographs dealing with sportswomen from the four newspapers, as well as a random sample of the same size of articles and pictures of sportsmen, for comparison. From the beginning, it was clear that articles on men far outnumbered those on women. A

These articles and photographs forms. Criteria examined included:

1)

2) 3)

were

evaluated

using

standardized

coding

The formal and contextual structuring characteristics of the articles (such as placing on the page; ratio of graphics to text; area covered by the articles, pictures and headlines; whether articles reported on men and women in separate articles, or together; style; how current the report was; the extent to which the content was restricted to sport or not); the type of sport reported upon; how performance and success werejudged;


141

4)

how the person was treated as subject of the report (how one was addressed; how descriptive attributes were treated, like age, appearance, sexuality, behavioural expectations; private and social domains); types of pictures;

5) 6) picture motives; 7) body language of the person in the photograph.

Results How the discursive field on women’s sport reporting in the press is constructed.

Women and Achievement women are included in sport reporting at all, then it is predominantly in competitive sport, where they are accepted, just as male athletes, as unusually talented. Entering the world class niveau can raise the social status of a sportswoman. The athlete belongs to the &dquo;world elite&dquo;, has achieved an &dquo;absolute triumph&dquo;, is called &dquo;the Queen of high jump&dquo;, or is simply &dquo;the best giant slalomist in the world&dquo;, a rating which cannot be surpassed. The central maxim of achievement ideology - that only the best will win - holds for both men and women in sport. Sportswomen, too, must be extremely self-disciplined, develop

If

ambition, be confident and, for example, should not lose &dquo;the desire to achieve,

despite setbacks&dquo; (WAZ, 14.2.79, Ü2). They are also expected to ignore physical pain, e.g. &dquo;Annegret, our little golden girl, continually won against her pain&dquo; (Bild, 12.2.79, p.1), as well as to cope with defeat, &dquo;It’s also a sign of bigness to know that you can’t win, but to compete just the same&dquo; (WAZ, 5.2.79, U4). The basic structure of media sports reports was more clearly apparent in articles on women than in those on men, especially the trait of concentrating on unusual achievements and successes. All newspapers showed statistically significant differences in the level of competition (national or international) considered worthy of reporting on for men and women: except for the FR, reports on sportswomen referred to a higher level of competition than for men (see Fig. 1). This confirms the tacitly accepted rule that in the public domain, women must achieve more than men to obtain the same positions or to get the same recognition. Furthermore, explicit mention of success and performance was significantly higher in articles on women’s sport (for 86,2% of all sportswomen mentioned) compared with men’s sport (for 72,3% of all sportsmen mentioned). For women to be included in sport articles, they not only had to achieve some extraordinary success, but this also had to be high in the achievement hierarchy. A relatively new phenomenon in sport reporting on women is the increasing use of metaphors depicting sport as a fighting arena. Thus, newspapers reported on the &dquo;undaunting fighting morale&dquo; of the table-tennis player Ursula Hirschmuller, who gave her opponents &dquo;short shrift&dquo; (WAZ, 22.1.79, LT3), or the &dquo;duel&dquo; between two opponents was eagerly looked forward to (FR, 5.2.78, 1), or a tennis player was said to have a &dquo;killer instinct&dquo; (WAZ, 6.1.79, LJ1). The WAZ, for example, chose the nickname &dquo;Bomb on Skis&dquo; for a skier, &dquo;aggressive,


142

*

100% comprise the categories mentioned for men, for women and &dquo;not classifiable&dquo;.

Figure

1. Sex distribution in articles

mentioning

level of

competition,

per

newspaper* explosive and with untamable strength&dquo; (7.12.79, Ü1). Recently, top tennis player Martina Navratilova remarked &dquo;For my match against Sabatini, I’ve left my weapons at home, and I think that Steffi Graf will be Numer One in 1987 anyway. But the accounts are to be settled only in December&dquo; (Welt, 11.5.87,18). This historically new use of warlike and fighting metaphors as a stylistic means of dramatising women’s sporting events also indicates the ambivalence with which record breaking by women is regarded. By participating in sport forms that were previously male preserves, women are now subject to the same discursive mechanisms that described sport as &dquo;typically masculine&dquo; because of its competitive and fighting nature. It is, however, remarkable that although the idiom of sport as physical competition between partners and opponents, as a fighting arena, was used linguistically, it was not used in photographic presentation of women’s sports (with the exception of the FR).

Sport as Reflection of &dquo;Natural&dquo; Sex Differentiation Sexual division on the basis of biological sexual characteristics into the mutually exclusive groups women and men, on which our western culture is based, is apparent as a general structural characteristic on all social levels. This principle is also anchored in everyday knowledge. In our culture, differentiation between the sexes is taken to be unambiguous, natural, and ultimately unchangeable. At the same time, sex differences are used to create social inequality (Hagemann-White,

1984).


143

Embodiment of

Sexual Division in Sport

Since the body is the centre of every sport action, sport provides an extremely good means of making sex differences visible in a quasinatural way. The body is, by its very nature, a sexed body; but it is also simultaneously a carrier of ideology in that it symbolises cultural ideology on sex differences. The female body is associated with nature, because of its ability to reproduce; the male, on the other hand, symbolises culture, the master of nature (Kulke, 1985, 55ff.). Sport reports ascribe various characteristics to each sex. Besides remarks on size and weight, comments, often with a sexual connotation, were sometimes made about particular parts of the body or its contours, such as &dquo;long legs, feminine curves, slim and willowy&dquo; (Bild, 13.11.79, 4). Comments on an athlete’s withdrawal from competition because of pregnancy or low form before or during menstruation imply that women are governed by nature. The different physical limits to achievement for women and men are sometimes made visible by direct comparisons between the two - for example, a comment from Bild on Marita Koch’s world record in sprinting: &dquo;In the German championships she would have come seventh - in the men’s races!&dquo; (12.9.79, 1) or by qualifying a sportswoman’s success negatively, such as, &dquo;Thus she succeeded in shooting a goal from 40m. Jolly good for a girl&dquo; (Bild, 16.11.79, 4) on a female football player’s success. Should a sportswomen’s achievement have reached or excelled what is accepted as normal for males, admiration was expressed, but also often amazement if not embarrassment: &dquo;Teenager wins Gallop Grand Prix! ... Behind her, a team of 5 top English jockeys, who were specially flown in, disgrace themselves ... ’This is a catastrophe&dquo;’ (WAZ, 18.9.79.U1). Men, then, set the standards in competitive sports, setting norms against which women are measured and ranked. When women break records, thus crossing into male domains, not only discursive but also defence mechanisms are set into action at sport meetings. For example, in horse riding, where women have established themselves as permanent competitors to male jockeys, the fences have been raised so much that sportswomen hardly ever manage to reach the finals (cf. WAZ, 5.1.79, Rl). Visible physiological changes of a woman’s body through sports training, and thus development of a partial similarity to male body form, have been criticised publically since the beginning of women’s sport, and have played a large role in perpetuating the myth of the &dquo;masculinisation of women&dquo; through sport. Both the muscular and very thin body forms of many sportswomen blur the boundaries that enable men, as well as women, to recognize and accept the sportswomen as a woman. Concentrating on or emphasising her physical deviations from the female &dquo;norm&dquo; corroborates the effectiveness of the aesthetic control.

norm as a means

of social

Psychological Image of Sportswomen Furthermore, the press constructs a psychological modality for sportswomen,

a

special psychological disposition, i.e. recurring (genetically governed) characteristics, which serve as implicit justification for how natural sex differentiation in sport is.


144

Sport reports on women mention a type of behaviour that has its roots in the description of female hysteria (Schuller, 1982), i.e. the state of their nerves. &dquo;Sport is a matter of nerves&dquo; is a maxim from everyday knowledge that hence apparently is particularly applicable to sportswomen. However, there were not only negative connotations in press reports, such as &dquo;Claudia Kohde-Kilsch has weak nerves&dquo; (FR, 18.5.87, SP3), but also reports accrediting many sportswomen with strong nerves. The WAZ, for example, characterised Cornelia Hanisch as &dquo;the girl who has often proved her mettle&dquo; (21.8.79, Ú1). The skier Annemarie Moser-Proll was called &dquo;the crazy woman&dquo; (Welt, 20.3.79,10) , which, although expressing praise, nevertheless implies contiguity with the field of deviance in psychiatric discourse., Sport reports give an image of female behaviour which is explained and simultaneously excused by the idea that women are in the broadest sense dependent on nature. For example, WAZ exclaimed about some female tennis players, &dquo;Heaven only knows what sometimes leads to the ladies’ indisposition&dquo; (7.9.79, Ü1). Here, the connotation &dquo;woman equals uncalculable nature&dquo; is clearly evident, which in our highly technical and rationalised society can be interpreted as being backward and passe. traditional

Sportswomen are also considered to be emotional in both success and defeat: pain and anger were in young Marianne Zechmeister’s eyes&dquo; (FR, 20.1.79, 6), or WAZ, on another skier:&dquo;She was a sympathetic girl because she &dquo;Tears of

natural: she cried in her hour of success, and rewarded the pleasure of the a hearty laugh and sparkling eyes&dquo; (6.12.79, Ü1). Sports photographs especially supported the image of female emotionalism. Over 40% of sportswomen in press photographs were shown smiling or laughing (in comparison to 18,9% of the men). Sportsmen, on the contrary, were most often depicted with a concentrated, fighting expression. was so

others with

psychological traits were supplemented in reports by others, for example passiveness, emotional dependence on people, passion, dedication, rivalry amongst sportswomen, etc. All these characteristics are typical of an image of femininity which seems to confirm the psychological &dquo;otherness&dquo; of women in sport as well, whereby this image makes use of the notion of the &dquo;female nature&dquo;. A combination of semiotic markers for women is used, which provide associations with a traditional image of women as uncalculable, cyclical, not direct, etc., and which are either partly negative or ambivalent in the discursive Such

system.

Aesthetics and Sexuality

Change in the kind of normative control of sexuality from more restrictive control (via doctors, educationalists, religious leaders) in the nineteenth century to a new definition of sexuality in terms of arousing control - &dquo;get undressed, but be slim, beautiful, tanned&dquo; (Foucault, 1976, 107) - in the twentieth century has also led to the construction of a new female image in sport. The arousing nature of the body and intensification of pleasure are central enunciative motifs of modern sexual strategies (Foucault, 1979; Haug, 1983), which also occur in reports on women’s sport. Linguistically, sexual connotations are evident in descriptions of body


145

build, character, and in emphasizing the aesthetic components of women’s sport. If sportswomen happen to correspond to current ideals of attractiveness, then very often the report concentrates on their appearance. For the WAZ, the gymnast Annette Michler was, for example, &dquo;graceful and certainly one of the prettiest top gymnasts in the world&dquo; (10.12.79, U1). Bild wrote on a Soviet gymnast: &dquo;The most beautiful is also the world champion: Nelli Kim -pretty legs, The face, beneath black hair in page-boy style, is a mixture from Asia and Europe. Slightly slanting eyes, little snub nose. The Russian Nelli Kim has always been the most beautiful of the gymnasts, but now she’s also the best&dquo; (10.12.79, 7). Normally only reports on women contain references to beauty; at the most, a man can be a &dquo;pretty boy&dquo;, implying

mouth-watering figure.

homosexuality. The content analysis confirmed that when sportswomen are mentioned in reports, their appearance was described much more often than for sportsmen. This is especially true for the popular newspaper Bild (Fig. 2).

Figure

2. Sex distribution in articles newspaper

mentioning personal

appearance, per

pictorial level, some sports photographs can directly evoke erotic in (male) readers through such motifs of the female body as barely covered nakedness in skin-tight sport’s clothes, graceful poses, fully stretched bodies, legs wide apart. Here sportswomen have been degraded to mere sex objects; patriarchal dominance is clearly evident. Although this sexualising On the

phantasies


146

strategy governed mostly the popular newspaper Bild’s reporting (cf. Klein/

Pfister, 1985), it also occurred in the &dquo;serious&dquo; newspapers. For example, focussing the reader’s gaze to bottom, bosom or legs was used 89 times in Bild in 1979, 24 times in the WAZ, 17 times in the Welt, and 12 times in the FR. Press

photographs of sportsmen do not display such sexual connotations at all.

Which specific exclusion and selection rules operate in public discourse of women in sport? Media reporting makes use of exclusion and restriction mechanisms which function to control and limit discourse of women’s sport.

Exclusion Strategies Exclusion of women from sport reports takes place on different levels: who reports, and how much and what is reported. For the former, there is a &dquo;shortage of speaking subjects&dquo; (Foucault, 1977, 25), in the sense that women are almost completely absent from the production of the discourse of sport in the media. For example, only 4.5% of sport journalists in West Germany were women in 1986 (Sportjournalisten Taschenbuch, 1986). On the latter level, women’s sport is largely cut out of the media’s programme content. A comparison of the amount of space provided for articles on men’s and women’s sport showed that on the average, articles on women’s sport took up between 4.3% (Bild) and 6.7% (Welt) of the total space used for sport. Furthermore, it was shown that seasonal changes in sports led to seasonal changes in reporting: reports on women’s sports acted to fill in the gaps created by a dearth of men’s sports. Whenever reporting on men’s sport reached a maximum, for example in the football season, the area percentage devoted to women’s sport was minimal, and, vice versa, women’s sport was given more attention whenever there was no men’s sport with public appeal and/or no exceptional achievements by or events for men (Fig. 3). Restrictive Strategies

Although in those fields where sportswomen are reported on in the media they are generally treated similarly to sportsmen, there is nevertheless a lot of stylistic and pictorial evidence that they are restricted by the traditional definition of &dquo;woman&dquo;. Although this restriction strategy means that on the one hand women are included in reports in text and graphics, on the other hand, it can also function as a

social exclusion mechanism.

On a metaphorical level the social field of sport was originally defined as a male domain.

&dquo;Marathons for women are no longer just for non-competitive female joggers. The heroic track lost a lot of its masculinity at the latest since the Waitz record&dquo;

(Welt, 13.12.79,10). In sport, women must fight for their place; it is not accorded to them as an obvious right. They must &dquo;force&dquo; their way into male domains, mostly under loud

protest.


147

Figure

3.

Comparison of total area of articles (including photographs) on men’s and women’s sport throughout the year


148

Besides the fact that women’s sporting events are mostly excluded from reporting, women, although present, are also withdrawn from the reader’s perception through the formal structure of reports. Thus a large proportion of comments on women’s sport are merely threaded into or appended onto reports men’s sports. The percentage of mixed reports for women’s sport for the FR 52.1 % , for the Welt 39.6% for the WAZ 41.1 % , and for Bild 0%. Hereby it must be noted that the total number of reports on women is in any case very much less than for men. The surprising result of no mixed articles being found in Bild does not imply that this paper is more liberal towards women, but rather that this provides the opportunity for other strategies to be employed to the full, such as those emphasizing sexuality, or the private sphere. on

was

In only a very few of the &dquo;mixed&dquo; reports was the part on women’s sport longer than that on men’s. Furthermore, the titles did not always indicate that the following article also treated women’s sport. Hence women’s sport is easier to overlook. In addition, it has become evident that the participation of women in sport is often disguised by using the male form of the word, since in German, nouns and adjectives denoting women have a different grammatical ending to those for men. Whereas subsuming women under male grammatical forms is the rule, to do the opposite, i.e. using female forms for men, is socially unacceptable. The linguists Senta Trömel-Plötz (1982) and Luise Pusch (1984) have shown impressively for German how this phenomenon of the use of a male-oriented language stretches across the entire German vocabulary, and that this language usage makes it more difficult for women to build up their own identity. This, of course, holds for other

languages too.

Making women’s sport &dquo;non-sport&dquo; is another strategy used. The content analysis showed that generally reports on women’s sport contained less actual sport-specific information, such as the course of the competition, training condition, results, than articles on men’s sports. On the contrary, the report gave detailed descriptions of their appearance, or nervous state, or commented on their social or private lives. For example, up to or more than three quarters of the length of 55.6% of the reports (including &dquo;mixed&dquo; articles) on women’s sport contained specific sport information, whereas for men, this was 66.2%. However, the proportion of reports whose sport information content comprised only or less than a quarter of the length was 13.3% for sportswomen, but only 22.8% for

sportsmen. of men had a sport motif much more often than those of Whereas about three quarters of the photographs of sportsmen showed the subjects in a sporty setting, such as during a competition, being crowned as victors, only 56% of the photographs of sportswomen did so. Press

photographs

women.

Photographs in women’s sport reports were mostly portrait photographs or did any recognizable sport situation (with the exception of FR). Photographs from men’s sport depicted their high activity potential through the dynamic effect created via lots of action shots. Although sportswomen were not depicted as inactive, the use of so many posed photographs implicitly created an image of passiveness and restraint, neither of which is a sporty characteristic. not have

Trivialising forms of address used in women’s sport reports, not only for very young sportswomen, such as &dquo;sweetie&dquo;, &dquo;princess&dquo;, &dquo;doll&dquo;, &dquo;little one&dquo;, frequent Downloaded from http://irs.sagepub.com at Stanford University on March 17, 2009

149

of first name or even nickname, clearly further illustrate the dominance between men and women in sport reporting. In 13.8% of all cases where women were mentioned, the subject was addressed by her first name or nickname, whereas this occurred only in 4.4% of all cases for men. use

structure

Members of women’s teams were often treated as minors deprived of the right of expressing their views in sports articles, in that, for example, only their male trainer was questionned or cited, and who spoke of &dquo;his girls&dquo; or &dquo;his protegees&dquo;. Calling adult women &dquo;girls&dquo;, which in German, unlike in English, is not acceptable, is, however, typical of all sport media. The media have not been able to disregard completely the demands of the women’s movement: the discourse of emancipation can no longer be totally ignored. Some critical commentaries and analyses on the position of women in sport are also to be found in sport reports. However, some articles did more to bolster the attitude of not taking women’s sport seriously, through the type of comparisons and the supposedly witty ironic distancing in style that they employed. Moreover, there are also &dquo;jokes&dquo; about sportswomen which directly

induce severe reservations about women’s sport in the reader. One example: a women’s boxing match was announced as a &dquo;ladies’ tea party&dquo; (Welt, 4.7.79, 8). This discursive praxis was supported on the visual level. On 15.6.1984, e.g., Welt published a caricature of women’s football. The cartoon showed goals decorated with curtains and flowers, the goal-keeper was busily sweeping it clean while three bored players passed the ball.

Conclusions The discursive strategies and tactics employed in sport reporting analysed above indicate in what way the power struggle between the sexes is currently carried out on a micro-level in the media. Women who play sport are no longer more or less excluded from reports, but although they can form the subjects of reports, they often remain invisible. Prohibitions are now toned down to aesthetic principles, while open prejudice has been replaced by the call for an emancipation whose actual superficiality is indicated by the use of irony. Extraordinary sport achievements by women are often complemented with an emphasis of &dquo;typical&dquo; female characteristics, thereby relegating a champion to the mediocrity of a &dquo;normal woman&dquo;; appropriate female hehaviour receives positive sanctions, whereas women who resemble the male image either physically or psychologically are negatively sanctioned. All in all, many semiotic and graphic elements exist which act to define the sportswoman as a woman and to ensure that she is recognized and accepted as such. The image of women in sport thus becomes the antipole of the male image in the male discourse of the sports press. Although male actors are also represented as limited in their actions, the ideology is different. Achievement orientation, competitiveness, emotional reactions, etc., are common to both sportsmen and sportswomen, but how these attributes are described for women reduces them to the &dquo;typical women&dquo; level, which is associated with inferiority. Whenever reports


150

and women are similar, descriptions of women’s sport take on the same style as for men’s, e.g. the increasing use of fighting metaphors in women’s sport

on men

articles. It is to be assumed that

a

form of

norm

construction and maintenance takes

place through the type and form of content of media reports, which is based to a large extent on male ideas. In the discourse of sport, men are taken as representatives and controllers of the norm, whereas women, on the contrary, must by definition deviate from this norm. Not only are sportsmen the main protagonists in reports and photographs, but, in addition, most sport reporters and specialists are men, meaning that men communicate their knowledge and perception of sport - including women’s sport - through the media, men define what is to be seen as sport, and (subconsciously) uphold and protect the existing mythology surrounding sport. Historical developments are thus turned into natural facts. The discourse of sport on the everyday level contributes to masking enunciative modalities of sex inequality, which have arisen as a result of or expression of patriarchal structures, so enabling this inequality to survive. What conclusions can be drawn from this for a feminist (anti)discourse? An important first step would be to recognize sport, or at least the functions of media discourse, as being part of the social relations of power, and to indicate the functions of these discursive strategies and their ideological concomitants. Changing the discourse of sport to serve women requires not least some form of strategy. Using a sport methaphor, Foucault wrote: &dquo;As in judo, the best response to the opponent’s manoevre is not to retreat, but to make use of it for one’s own benefit as the first step in the next phase&dquo; (Foucault, 1976,125). The currently dominant discourse already shows signs of change induced by the influence of feminism on the way women are depicted in the media. This chance must be exploited, whereby one must not overlook the fact that the sex differentiation used in sport reporting is only one factor of the discourse of gender. It is part of the &dquo;microphysic of power&dquo; (Foucault, 1976), effective on all levels of society, which produces, reproduces and legitimates the relations between the sexes.

Notes 1 Contrary to most examinations of sport reporting in the press, this content analysis is not restricted to a specific time or event (e.g. the Olympic Games). This study rather attempts to examine the daily form of reporting throughout a calendar year. The four newspapers selected represent a differentiated spectrum with regard to regional or national distribution, readership and political or ideological background. They are listed below,with their circulation size in 1979: Frankfurter Rundschau: ca. 200000 (liberal-left wing) Die Welt: ca. 220000 (conservative) Bild-Zeitung: ca. 4890000 (popular) Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung: ca. 1210000 (liberal-popular) 2 cf. Klein 1986 for the detailed results


151

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FOUCAULT, Michel (1977): Die Ordnung des Diskurses. Frankfurt/Berlin/Wien: Ullstein.

FOUCAULT, Michel (1979): The History of Sexuality. London: Tavistock. HAGEMANN-WHITE, Carol (1984): "Thesen zur kulturellen Konstruktion der

Zweigeschlechtlichkeit". In: Barbara Schaeffer-Hegel & Brigitte Wartmann (eds.): Mythos Frau. Projektionen und Inszenierungen im Patriarchat. Berlin: Publica, pp. 137139.

HAUG, Frigga (ed.) (1983): Frauenformen 2. Sexualisierung der Korper. Berlin:

Argument. KLEIN, Marie-Luise (1986): Frauensport in der Tagespresse. Eine Untersuchung

sprachlichen und bildlichen Bochum: Brockmeyer.

Prasentation

von

Frauen in der

zur

Sportberichterstattung.

Gertrud PFISTER (1985): Goldmädel, Rennmiezen und Turnküken. Die Frau in der Sportberichterstattung der BILD-Zeitung. Berlin: Bartels & Wernitz. KULKE, Christine (1985): "Von der instrumentellen zur kommunikativen Rationalität patriarchaler Herrschaft". In: Christine Kulke (ed.): Rationalität und sinnliche Vernunft. Frauen in der patriarchalen Realitat. Berlin: Publica, pp. 55-70. PUSCH, Luise F. (1984): Das Deutsche als Männersprache. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. SCHMERL, Christiane (1984): Das Frauen- und Mädchenbild in den Medien. Leverkusen: Leske & Budrich. SCHULLER, Marianne (1982): "’Weibliche Neurose’ und Identität. Zur Diskussion der Hysterie um die Jahrhunderwende". In: Dieter Kamper & Volker Rittner (eds.): Die Wiederkehr des Korpers . Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, pp.180-192. Sportjournalisten Taschenbuch,1986. Essen: Coca Cola Co. TRÖMEL-PLÖTZ, Senta (1982): Frauensprache: Sprache der Veränderung. Frankfurt: Fischer.

KLEIN, Marie-Luise &

L’image de la femme dans les reportages sportifs R6sumg Les

reportages sportifs dans les medias constituent

un

champs discursif qui reproduit les

figures sociales de la difference entre les sexes tout en renforçant cette differenciation en se servant d’un

langage particulier et de styles expressifs. analyse d6taill6e de 3000 articles sportifs et photos de 4 journaux nationaux en Allemagne de l’Ouest fait apparaitre que la presse fonctionne en tant qu’agent normalisateur du discours sportif, lequel, entre autres, 16gitime la position marginale de la femme dans le sport en 6voquant les differences apparemment naturelles entre les sexes. Ces strategies discursives impliquent aussi bien 1’exclusion des femmes des comptes rendus sportifs que de multiples mdcanismes empechant aux femmes de franchir les fronti~res entre les groupes et d’acceder aux domaines prealablement reserves aux hommes, par exemple par la banalisation des sports feminins, decrits comme 6tant des &dquo;non-sports&dquo;, ou le recours a l’ironie. Ceci peut 6tre interprete comme un moyen de pression et de controle ou encore comme une strat6gie en reaction au discours d’emancipation. Une


152

Frauen im Diskurs von Sportmedien

Zusammenfassung Die Sportberichterstattung der Medien stellt ein diskursives Feld dar, das die soziale Geschlechterdifferenzierung nicht nur widerspiegelt, sondern die Unterschiede durch sprachliche und bildliche Stilmittel verstarkt. Eine Auswertung von 3 000 Sportberichten und -fotografien aus vier bundesdeutschen Tageszeitungen weist den Sportdiskurs der Presse als Normalisierungsmacht aus, der u.a. durch Ruckgriff auf scheinbar naturgegebene Geschlechterunterschiede die Randposition der Frau im Sport legitimiert. Als diskursive Strategien sind neben der Ausgrenzung von Frauen aus der Berichterstattung zahlreiche Mechanismen der Eingrenzung wirksam, wie Entsportlichung des Frauensports, Infantilisierung, Ironisierung usw., die als Kontrolle des bzw. Gegenstrategie zum emanzipatorischen Diskurs interpretiert werden konnen.

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Sociology of Sport International Review for the

Sociology of Sport International Review for the

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