An examination of the photographic coverage of sportswomen in the Irish print media: a study of an Irish broadsheet newspaper

Abstract

Building on a large body of extant international research, which has consistently found that sportswomen are underrepresented and marginalized in media reporting, this article presents a study examining the coverage of sportswomen over a four-month period in a major Irish broadsheet newspaper, The Irish Times. The findings, which are based on a data-set of 471 pages, reveal that less than 4% of photographs were of sportswomen. These findings indicate that the Irish situation mirrors international research on the topic and reflects a continuation of the status quo in terms of how sportswomen and women’s sports are (under)valued and (under)reported in the media. The implications of these findings are discussed as well as directions for further study. The article makes a useful contribution to the field given the dearth of research conducted on this topic in Ireland to date.

Notes

1. Gaelic football is an indigenous Irish sport played by men and women, but teams are not mixed. It is the most popular sport in Ireland in terms of participation. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) oversees the organisation and running of Ireland’s indigenous Gaelic Games, incorporating the sports of Gaelic football, hurling (men only), camogie (women only) and handball. As the largest sporting organisation in Ireland with over 2,200 clubs spread across 32 countries (six of which form Northern Ireland), the GAA is hugely influential and woven into the fabric of both urban and rural society (Bairner 2005; Cronin 1999). Gaelic football for females is overseen by the Ladies Gaelic Football Association.

2. Gaelic football played by females is officially known as Ladies Gaelic Football (Liston 2006).

3. In the case of hurling, given that is played only by males, this finding is to be expected.

4. Interestingly, research by Liston (2001) found that despite being a competitive, contact sport, camogie was categorized as a ‘hyper-feminine’ sport on the basis that it was invented as a female version of hurling.