Focus falls on gender in sport
Posted on 6 March 2012
Attracting speakers and delegates from across the world, the conference on Saturday, 10 March, will discuss issues ranging from avoiding clichés in sport to football hooliganism to masculinity and femininity in bodybuilding.
This conference is about highlighting the study of gender for a day and celebrating the achievements of women in sport.
Amy Pressland
The conference takes place in the wake of the backlash against the all-male shortlist for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year Award, which failed to recognise top female athletes such as triathlon world champion Chrissie Wellington.
The one-day conference at the Berrick Saul Building has been organised by Amy Pressland and Geneva Murray, PhD students with the University’s Centre for Women’s Studies.
Amy Pressland, a keen sportswoman, is researching gender inequality in sports media coverage of athletes by the British print press, examining the quantity and type of media coverage awarded to sportswomen in five British Sunday newspapers. She is particularly interested in the discussion of sexism in sport, as seen recently in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award competition.
She said: “The lack of recognition of female athletes in the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year Award should come as no surprise when you consider that only two per cent of the media coverage in sport goes to women.
“This conference is about highlighting the study of gender for a day and celebrating the achievements of women in sport. There will also be papers on sports which are not considered ‘mainstream’ such as korfball and roller derby, and themes like disability in sport more regularly made ‘invisible’ by the sports media.
“We think this an important conference in this Olympic year in the UK and hope to inspire academics and the local community to think about the way in which sport, gender and the media intersect in 2012.”
The event will begin with a presentation on women’s football by Dr Stacey Pope from the University of Bedfordshire, “Who could name an England women’s footballer?”
Other speakers will include Irene Dioli from the University of Bologna who will discuss Italian swimming star Federica Pellegrini and Gordon Tait from Newcastle University who will explore “Weekend warriors: Football hooliganism, the carnival and a zone of remasculinization”.
More information on the Sport, Gender and Media Conference is available at www.sportgendermedia.blogspot.com. The event on Saturday, 10 March at the Berrick Saul Building runs from 9am to 6pm and costs £15 (£10 York students) including lunch and coffee. Visit http://tinyurl.com/sport-cws to book tickets.
Notes to editors:
- For further information on the Sport, Gender and Media Conference visit www.sportgendermedia.blogspot.com.
- For further information on the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York, visit www.york.ac.uk/inst/cws
Contact details
Keep up to date
Subscribe to news feeds
