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Does achieving gender equality only benefit women? Are gender quotas thwarting meritocracy? Are women more risk averse than men? If you think you know the answers to these questions, then think again! Busted is an audio podcast series that busts prominent myths surrounding gender and the economy by teaming up with leading experts in the field. We uncover the origins of each myth and give you the tools to bust each myth yourself!
Busted is a GATE audio series production from the Institute for Gender and the Economy.
Perception often becomes reality. Right? It's self fulfilling. So if decision makers believe women's sport is less valuable, they allocate fewer resources. And then I think that can mean, you know, less media coverage, fewer sponsorship opportunities, lower salaries, reduced development pathways, fewer professional opportunities for athletes.
Dr. Katrina Monton:I think then that translates sort of into this lack of visibility that can get interpreted as, you know, evidence that people aren't interested.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Women's sports get a lot less attention than men's. In Canada, data show that over 90% of print and online sports media coverage focuses on men's sports. You may have heard people say that this is because women's sports aren't as exciting as men's or that they just don't make as much money. In this episode, we're gonna bust this myth and talk about how those perceptions are shaped by unfair assumptions about who gets to play sports, who gets attention, and who's worth investing in. I'm doctor Sonya King, academic director at GATE.
Carmina Ravanera:And I'm Carmina Ravineira, senior research associate at GATE. Welcome back to Busted, our podcast that debunks myths that hold back progress on equality.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Today, we'll be talking about perceptions of women's sports. If you follow sports, you've probably noticed that men's teams and male athletes tend to get more media attention, funding, and investment than women's teams.
Carmina Ravanera:Although some people may think this is because women's sports aren't that exciting, the lack of attention on women's sports is actually linked to something much bigger. Who has historically been allowed to play, compete, and be taken seriously as an athlete?
Dr. Sonia Kang:So who did you talk to when busting this myth?
Carmina Ravanera:I spoke to doctor Dunya Antunovich and doctor Katrina Montan. I'll let them introduce themselves.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:So my name is Dunya Antunovich. I'm an associate professor at the University of Minnesota's, School of Kinesiology. I'm also an affiliate scholar with the Harvard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and I, do research on media representations of women's sports. And, I also do some cross national analysis of how the Olympics and Paralympics are produced in different countries.
Dr. Katrina Monton:My name's Katrina Montan. I'm an organizational psychologist. So I did my PhD at Columbia University in the social organizational psychology program, and now I'm an assistant professor of organizational psychology at Rutgers University. Before academia, I spent more than a decade as a member of the Canadian National Women's Water Polo team, so competed for Team Canada internationally for, yeah, many, many years representing them on the international stage, of course. After I retired from sport, I actually also hold a degree from McGill University in counseling psychology.
Dr. Katrina Monton:So I think that lens of, you know, well-being and, you know, mental health generally is something that I still carry sort of into my work today. My research and practice really focuses on high performance cultures. So I've worked with sport, medicine, and other kind of demanding environments, really looking at how cultural norms shape experiences in sport around well-being, performance, inclusion. And then I often work kind of at the intersection of sport and organizational psychology, but, again, have worked in other sort of high performance domains, but in, you know, consulting capacities and and then also on some advisory initiatives with athlete welfare. So I'm on the Safe Sport Athlete Advisory with the US Center for Safe Sports.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Let's get into the myth. The idea that women's sports aren't as exciting or worth watching as men's has been challenged in recent years. We're seeing a lot more buzz around women's sports than ever before. But where did this perception come from in the first place?
Carmina Ravanera:A lot of it has to do with the history of sport and who's seen as belonging there.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:It comes from a lot of different places. So all those factors kind of come together to create this very, obviously, false narrative around the the sort of excitement and and the athleticism also of women's sports. So one reason why that myth exists is because, historically, when women tried to play sports, they were excluded in many contexts, and this is true in different ways in different countries, of course. But historically, women just haven't had the opportunity to play sports, especially professional sports. And when these opportunities came about, they often encountered a lot of barriers from governing bodies from different organizations.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:And so the professionalization process for women's sports has really been much slower and happened much later than it has for men's sports. And so what this means is that often the investment in women's sports, the sponsorship, the media coverage is less prominent than it has been for many men's professional leagues, especially if we look at, for example, in The US and Canada. Of course, we see kind of some main men's professional sports that get a lot of a lot of media attention, a lot of sponsorship, a lot of fan engagement. And compared to that, if we look at the equivalent women's leagues, they started much later, whether it's basketball or hockey or even soccer.
Dr. Katrina Monton:But I think that this perception comes from, you know, history more than reality. So, you know, if we look back in some of my early work, I kind of was looking back at the history of sport to think about kind of the gendered nature of some of the cultural norms that we see today. And so, you know, for generations, men's sport was sort of treated as the default version of sport. Right? We know that men that sport was really created by men for men initially.
Dr. Katrina Monton:It really was actually the the first Olympic games were actually prepared that were actually designed to prepare men to go to war. So I think, you know, what we see with that kind of rich history and long history is that men's leagues receive, you know, more investment, more media coverage, more sponsorship, you know, more storytelling that I think helps to fill that fan engagement. Whereas, you know, what we see is women's in sport, we were only, I think, included in sport in the late nineties. And in my sport, actually, equal numbers of representation of male and female teams only happened in 2016. So we're seeing the changes, but this is still very recent.
Dr. Katrina Monton:And so I think what we see with that type of a history is that, you know, we refer to sport men's sport as sport. We refer to women's sport as women's sport. So in that, innately, you can kinda see that bias show through. And so I think when people say women's sport is less exciting, what they're often comparing is, you know, a century of investment in men's sport to women's sport that have only recently sort of begun receiving that meaningful kind of resource and and the resources and and visibility. And I know in my own work, especially recently, I've sort of written about what I call the invisible architecture of high performance systems.
Dr. Katrina Monton:And so what we see is in many institutions and sort of professional identities, kind of broadly speaking, including sport, were really designed for men, for men by men, for men at the time when women's participation in work and sport was really limited and actually actively excluded. And so I think some of those, like, assumptions become embedded in those systems and often normalized about what we kinda stop noticing or or start or are noticing. And so I think as women's spark grows, we're not simply adding women into an existing system. Right? We're sort of confronting this invisible architecture that shaped whose achievements have been celebrated historically, whose stories have been told, and what performances were considered kind of standards against which everyone is judged.
Dr. Katrina Monton:So, you know, I think one thing that we know from psychology, obviously, that's my background, is that, you know, familiarity often shapes preference, and so people may tend to value what they've been exposed to repeatedly. But if you've grown up seeing, you know, if you've grown up seeing men's highlights, men's rivalries, men athletes on TV every day, those sort of become our reference point for what sport is supposed to look like. So the perception isn't necessarily about the quality of competition. I think it's often about what legacy systems have taught us about what sort of expected of sport or what a sport holds or is meant to be in the first place.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So men's sports were professionalized earlier, and there's a longer history of men's participation in sport. Women athletes have often been excluded and marginalized from sports entirely, which means the system or architecture, as Katrina says, has been set up by and for male athletes.
Carmina Ravanera:Right. And with that comes a longer history of investment and sponsorship. And another big thing here is media coverage. Media determines not only what people see, but also what they are taught is exciting.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:When we look at media coverage specifically, which is my area of research, what media production practices actually create this perception around, less of an excitement. So, historically, you know, there have been instances, for example, in women's hockey where, the media coverage entailed somebody kind of just putting the the, video feed on social media with, you know, one little phone just kind of swirling around. You couldn't see the puck. You couldn't see anything. You know?
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Whereas men's sports often have multiple cameras, multiple angles. Women's sports, broadcast sometimes only had one commentator as opposed to two commentators or, you know, color commentary or more context or more information about different players. So, you know, these production techniques, really create a very different experience for audiences when it comes to women's sports. Certainly, we've seen a lot of changes, but often, maybe audiences don't realize that when they're watching a professional men's sports events, there's so many extra cues they got. Then those are often missing from women's sports production just because of lack of resources.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:And so in terms of media production, those are some of the factors that actually create a perception that women's sports are less exciting.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Media reinforces who's seen as a professional athlete and who gets to have their stories told. And when women athletes are sidelined, people assume it's because there's nothing to see, when in fact, that sidelining reflects media bias. So what are the consequences of this? What happens when we set up sport as primarily for men?
Carmina Ravanera:Well, first off, women athletes are treated unfairly, whether we're talking about their working conditions, their resources, or their pay. Katrina shared an example from her own experience.
Dr. Katrina Monton:When I went to Pen Am Games in Toronto, actually, in 2015, it was such a big moment for us to play in front of our families. It was a big, big international competition that was happening on home soil. And I'll never forget. We were being outfitted, and it was sort of like the outfitting was, like, men's uniforms and then, like, these very small sort of, like, dainty, like, women's uniforms. But most female athletes, like, they're not, you know, the typical type of female body.
Dr. Katrina Monton:And so there was no out there was no kind of outfitting for our bodies, so it was almost like we had to wait to see if there was men's sizes left over. So that's just kind of a metaphor, I think, how I kinda wanted to start this is, like, I think it it obviously, there's ripple effects of how this, you know, perception actually affects women's sport, and I think it really runs deep.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:These limitations and these kind of structural conditions really shape women's And I know your podcast deals a lot with workplace cultures and opportunities and and the economy. And, of course, you know, the working conditions for women athletes have not been ideal, and there's still there's still a lot of room for improvement even though we're seeing a lot of changes in terms of funding for women's sports, especially professional women's sports. You know, often, you know, women's pay is obviously not not enough to sustain them, you know, for those very shorty, you know, years of their career when they're able to play professionally, health care, something, you know, like health insurance and all those other kind of perks that are maybe kind of intuitive in men's sports. If the investment is not there, then then those working conditions are also significantly worse.
Carmina Ravanera:Women athletes also struggle for coverage and often have to promote themselves or do something exceptional to be noticed. While men are more often treated as automatically worthy of attention and adoration.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Well, if we look at specifically at sponsorship, broadcast rights, and media coverage, you know, often women's sports leagues and athletes have had to kind of do the work on their own to promote their own events without the backing of of national and local media. Much of my research focuses on media coverage of women's sports, and I've done some studies with collaborators. And I'm currently working on studies where we've interviewed journalists. And about ten and fifteen years ago, you know, when researchers asked journalists, why aren't you covering women's sports? The journalist had that attitude that women's sports are just less exciting.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:And because of that, women's sports don't merit coverage as opposed to having this sense that maybe it is also the media organization's responsibility to, a, cover women's sports because they're there in the market and also in some ways to build audiences. And so even now, I'm, you know, I'm talking to some journalists. I'm interviewing journalists, and you all are the first to hear data from that study. But, you know, I talked to one journalist, and I said, you know, how are you responding to the fact that you have new women's sports teams in your market? And they said, well, call us when you're good.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Right? And so this idea that women's sports have to do something exceptional to merit coverage because the default is that journalists will be covering men's sports. And we see that a little bit with the Olympics too. Right? That and and I think on the kind of international sport level, some of the coverage is a little bit more equalized just because women do tend to win medals for their countries.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:But often, you know, women's sports have to do something exceptional to be to kind of counter that myth that that they're not exciting contest. And so and then we see the kind of flip side arguments, right, where if there is kind of an imbalance where one of the women's sports teams is particularly good and they're winning it by a lot, then that's not exciting enough because that that there is a lack of competition. So it just it seems like it's very hard for women's sports to actually kind of counter that myth. And as I said, we we have been hearing that perception from journalists as well.
Dr. Katrina Monton:The consequences, I think, are significant because perception often becomes reality. Right? It's self fulfilling. So if decision makers believe women's sport is less valuable, they allocate fewer resources. And then I think that can mean, you know, less media coverage, fewer sponsorship opportunities, lower salaries, reduced development pathways, fewer professional opportunities for athletes.
Dr. Katrina Monton:I think then that translates sort of into this lack of visibility that can get interpreted as, you know, evidence that people aren't interested. When in reality, you know, audiences can't engage with what they rarely get the chance to see. So, you know, I think we we've seen evidence of this sort of in these in these newer women's sporting events when broadcasters, sponsors, leagues actually invest in coverage promotion of audiences. So I think one of the most obvious examples is the WNBA. So the league has seen kind of record attendance, record viewership, unprecedented engagement.
Dr. Katrina Monton:Last year during the WNBA finals, you know, the games were sold out. So they sold out the Barclays Center in New York City. So millions and millions of viewers, you know, turn tuning in nationally and internationally. So, you know, I think, you know, this wasn't obviously created overnight. It's the result of sustained sort of investment storytelling media attention, you know, giving fans the opportunity to become connected with athletes and teams.
Dr. Katrina Monton:It challenges the assumption that interest in women's sport doesn't exist. And in many cases, you know, the interest was there. The visibility wasn't. So from my lens, you know, I often think of this as sort of that issue of it's not a demand issue. It's sort of an access exposure and investment issue that we're seeing.
Carmina Ravanera:The lack of attention to women's sports becomes self fulfilling. If the media doesn't cover them, people don't know what they're missing out on, so organizations think there's no demand, which also translates to fewer opportunities and resources for athletes. Then the media continues to not cover them, which starts the cycle over.
Dr. Sonia Kang:But at the same time, as Katrina says, we know that people are actually really interested in women's sports. A global survey from 2024 found that 50% of people around the world say that they watch women's sports. And here in Toronto, we're seeing a huge buzz around women's sports, including the new WNBA team, the Toronto Tempo, and the PWHL team, the Toronto Scepters.
Carmina Ravanera:Exactly. We're definitely seeing institutional change around women's sports because fans and athletes are demanding more.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So what needs to change for perceptions around women's sports to shift even more?
Carmina Ravanera:There are a few big factors. First off, media and journalists' perspectives need to shift so we get more equitable and nuanced coverage of women's sports. There's a huge opportunity for media to tell more and better stories about women athletes.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:I think the journalist perceptions has changed quite a bit. And even though I obviously mentioned some examples where where journalists are still waiting for women's sports to do well, I do think there is a very strong among many journalists that, it is their responsibility to cover women's sports. And, and they also I mean, they face some serious structural limitations in terms of their own ability to cover women's sports teams because, resources at many media organizations are declining while the markets are expanding. But but I think there is a recognition that women's sports deserve coverage, that the product is very, very good, that it is their job, the journalist's job to tell the story in an exciting way. And and I think the continuity in media coverage is really one of the challenges right now that often, you know, we see a lot of coverage of women's sports during the Olympics, for example, or we see a lot of coverage of women's sports maybe during playoffs.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:But that regular coverage, that investment is still kind of missing. And and I think when the stories become more complex, when there is more depth where the audiences understand kind of the dynamics of the sporting, get to know the players, those are some of the things that really, I think, create excitement. And we see this in in quite a few markets. I'm not sure what the situation is in Toronto. I heard that there is quite a bit of excitement around women's sports, but for example, in in Minneapolis, there is, you know, the a lot of the events sell out.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Folks Folks do show up there. You know, you run into people wearing women's sport jerseys on the street, and and so I think media organizations are recognizing that there is an audience out there. So now it's kind of their decision how they approach that audience. Right? Do they do they try to kind of cater to the audience in terms of the types of stories they write, or are they trying to maybe highlight local communities and and give women's sports coverage, you know, some attention maybe outside of the sporting event?
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:So I think those are some strategies, but we've definitely I I've definitely observed based on my research over the last fifteen years that there is a shift in how journalists are approaching women's sports. I think one of one of the questions that I I still have, and I'm not sure I will be able to answer this in my research, is what does it look like to have high quality women's sports coverage? Right? Is that coming from, you know, newspapers, national newspapers? Is that coming from public service television?
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Right? For example, where in in Canada, the the sports coverage is structured a little bit differently, I think, than in The US, or is it coming from perhaps digital platforms that focus specifically on women's sports? We've seen a rise of those as well. And so where where where did can folks go for high quality women's sports coverage? It's not just about the games, but that's also providing insight into, the economic factors, right, the cultural aspects, the kind of issues related to women's sports.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:We'll we're keeping an eye on that.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Right. And beyond high quality coverage, sports organizations can also create better opportunities for women athletes through more resources, more investment, and better working conditions.
Dr. Katrina Monton:I think investment matters, so better facilities, you know, more funding, more resources, coaching, marketing, professional opportunities, obviously, creating better conditions for athletes to strive thrive, and I think more equitable conditions. Right? Like, if we compare often often what even university systems or professional sport or amateur sport are offering, you know, their male athletes compared to their female athletes, we see that there are, you know, a big kind of a difference there. So really investing consistently and equitably, I think, in women's sport.
Carmina Ravanera:Katrina talked to me about how being an athlete is a job. And like in any other job, the workers deserve fair, dignified, and equitable environments. And all of this is connected to more representation. When there's more representation of women athletes, women's sports can grow, and more girls can see a future for themselves in sport.
Dr. Katrina Monton:And I think the last one I would highlight is really representation. So we know that representation matters in other spaces. Obviously, as an organizational psychologist looking at more workplaces, like, we know that that matters in terms of leadership potential, engagement, motivation, performance, all these different things. Right? So I think when young people grow up regularly seeing women as elite athletes, coaches, commentators, leaders in sport, it changes what they perceive as normal.
Dr. Katrina Monton:It changes what they perceive as possible. It motivates folks to get involved in sport in the first place. And I think from a, you know, like, social, you know, perspective, sport is can teach young people a lot, and it can promote a healthy lifestyle. And so, obviously, yes, there's athletes at the top of that, you know, that range, in that top tier of, you know, global performers and top performers in the world. But there's also grassroots sport, and I think representation, that's where, you know, that matters.
Dr. Katrina Monton:Right? We want, you know, women and girls to stay in sport. I think girls leave sport around age 12 at, like, huge numbers. The participation really drops at around 12, 13 years old. So keeping women in sport, having more you know, having women be more of a focal point of sport in general, I think, would help that.
Dr. Katrina Monton:And I think, you know, these things are all interconnected. Interconnected. Right? So they really reinforce one another. Right?
Dr. Katrina Monton:So increasing visibility drives interest. Interest attracts sponsors. Sponsors create investment. Investment improves the product and expands the opportunities.
Dr. Sonia Kang:So knowing all of this, how are things looking for the future of women's sports?
Carmina Ravanera:Well, Dinya mentioned that organizations seem to finally be seeing the data showing that fans want to see women's sports. And because they're seeing growing markets and basically a business case, things are starting to change.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Often, media organizations and sponsors and also leagues, frankly, have made, some some assumptions about, audiences that weren't quite, accurate. Now there is more data on on women's sports and kind of what what the fans are looking for. And I think because that data are there and a lot of industry reports are are kind of saying that this is a growing you know, this is not just about supporting women's sports for some sort of ethical reason. Right? Like, there is a lot of evidence out there that speaks to the business case of women's sports, and and there's a lot of kind of evidence that women's sports are profitable.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:So I think that's that's changing the game a little bit that that there is that kind of financial benefit for a lot of folks investing in women's sports. And, of course, there is a lot of nuance here, right, that that might not be the case for every league or every team in every single market. I think if there is a lot of kind of specific factors that might shape how successful league is going to be or even a team. I know there have been some, you know, attempts, for example, at professional women's volleyball in The US now, and I just heard that one of the cities is is kind of suspending their team. So because they didn't quite get the audience.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Right? Obviously, women's hockey has gone through several iterations. So so I think the the funding models, which are beyond my my area of expertise, those are still a little bit kind of influx, and I think there is a need to figure out what what works. But But in terms of media coverage, I I do think that having the data that shows interest in women's sports is is definitely a game changer.
Carmina Ravanera:And Katrina told me about the record growth in women's sports and the kinds of institutional change we're starting to see, including changes in academia.
Dr. Katrina Monton:I think we're living through one of the most significant periods of growth in women's sport in modern history. We're seeing record numbers in attendance, viewership, increased sponsorship, greater media attention across sports. Audience audiences are discovering athletes and and competitions they simply just weren't even exposed to before. So I think what we're seeing what we're also seeing is change beyond the field. So universities are beginning to create programs dedicated specifically to women's sports.
Dr. Katrina Monton:So I think the first example of this is Simmons University now offers it's in Massachusetts, now offers a graduate education program focused on women's sport leadership. So to me, developments like this kind of signal that women's sport is increasing, increasingly being recognized as legitimate area for investment, scholarship, leadership development, professional expertise. So I think that that, you know, that program is sort of an just an example of, that really reflects the value and growing demand of women's sport.
Dr. Sonia Kang:Right. And women athletes aren't just waiting for change to happen. They've been organizing, advocating, and demanding a more level playing field.
Dr. Katrina Monton:As a former athlete myself, I think I would be remiss not to comment on this. But I think one of the most important drivers is athletes themselves, right? So many of the opportunities that we see today are because women have been willing to advocate for themselves, challenge inequitable systems, demand more from sport organizations, sponsors, governing bodies, you know, whether it's pushing for better resources, greater vis visibility, safer environments, equal treatment. I think we've really seen this driven by courageous acts of advocacy from women who are willing to speak up despite sort of personal and professional risks involved. And I think most importantly, when people are actually watching, once audiences engage with, you know, that competition itself, many of those old stereotypes begin to become difficult to sort of sustain.
Dr. Katrina Monton:So, you know, I think we're really seeing women asking for more. I think, you know, you we now have breastfeeding at the Olympic games. Women have mat leaves and parental leaves, which enables them to stay in sport longer and actually pursue it as, you know, a serious career, something that men have been doing for, you know, decades. So I think those are some of the things that that I think I've sort of seen is just, you know, women are have really demanded more from these systems.
Dr. Sonia Kang:That's hopeful to hear. So let's bust this myth once and for all. If someone were to say to me that women's sports aren't exciting compared to men's, what's one thing I can say to challenge this?
Carmina Ravanera:Both of our experts gave me great answers, so let's hear what they had to say.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:Maybe ask them, have they actually been to a women's sporting event? Right? Or have they actually watched it? Because I think that that really changes perceptions. Often, folks who have that assumption are maybe not watching.
Dr. Dunja Antunovic:I mean, not everybody has I mean, I know there is a tagline, right, that everyone watches women's sports. I don't know if that's realistic. But but I think that that a lot of these assumptions come from perhaps not having exposure to especially what the products look like now. The the professional teams are they're incredible, and the the entertainment value is there. The kind of excitement is there, and perhaps folks might just need to find their their niche in terms of which women's sports teams teams or women's sports events are kind of appealing to them and try it
Dr. Katrina Monton:out and and see if if they can still make that claim because I I think, certainly, there is a lot of excitement at events. I guess for me, the question isn't whether women's sport is exciting. It's whether, you know, women's sport has been given the same opportunity to be seen. And so as someone who competed internationally, I think I can speak from experience that the intensity, the commitment, the pressure, the skill are absolutely real. And if you've never watched, I would encourage you to spend one, game paying attention before deciding.
Dr. Sonia Kang:And with that, this myth is busted. Make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. We'll be back soon with a new episode.
Carmina Ravanera:In the meantime, happy myth busting. Gates busted podcast is made possible by generous support from BMO. If you liked this episode, please rate and subscribe to busted. You can also find more thought provoking podcasts from the Institute for Gender and the Economy by searching Gate Audio wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in.