In a USA study ti­tled Gen­der in Tele­vised Sports: News and High­light shows 1989-2014, sport so­ci­ol­o­gists Cook, Mess­ner and Mus­to con­clud­ed that the "quan­ti­ty of cov­er­age of Women's sports in tele­vised sports news and high­lights shows was dis­mal­ly low."

This poor rat­ing came against a back­drop of tremen­dous changes in gen­der re­la­tions and is­sues on Amer­i­can so­ci­ety es­pe­cial­ly since post 1970's. More specif­i­cal­ly, since Ti­tle IX (1972), there have been tremen­dous im­prove­ments in the rates of par­tic­i­pa­tion by fe­males in Amer­i­can so­ci­ety. One of the best ex­am­ples of this growth of fe­males in sports is on foot­ball (soc­cer), which has re­sult­ed in the USA be­ing pow­er­house in in­ter­na­tion­al women's foot­ball.

The ob­jec­tive of the study was to ex­am­ine changes and con­ti­nu­ity over time in me­dia re­port­ing of gen­dered sports. There were sev­er­al re­search ques­tions some of which would be of rel­e­vance if the study was to be con­duct­ed in T&T and the wider Caribbean:

�2 In what ways do tele­vised sports news me­dia cov­er men's and women's sports?

�2 What is the amount of cov­er­age giv­en to men's and women's sports events?

�2 Do the pro­duc­tion val­ues of men's sports dif­fer from that of women's sports?

�2 What is the qual­i­ty of cov­er­age of men's sports vis-a-vis women's sports?

�2 Are women's sports cov­ered in ways that high­light ath­let­ic com­pe­tence or in ways that triv­i­alise women's sports?

�2 Does the cov­er­age fo­cus on com­pet­i­tive as­pects of women's sports, in­clud­ing games/match­es, game high­lights, scores and sta­tis­tics, out­comes and sig­nif­i­cance?

�2 Does the cov­er­age sex­u­alise, triv­i­alise or por­tray women as ob­jects of sex­u­al hu­mour?

Some of the find­ings of the study are:

�2 There have been some im­prove­ments in amount of air­time pro­vid­ed to women's sports but it has been in­com­pa­ra­ble to the cov­er­age of men's sports es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to the Big 3-base­ball, bas­ket­ball and grid iron foot­ball. This was com­mon on ES­PN Sports Cen­ter.

�2 There has been a de­cline in the pre­sen­ta­tion of women as sex­u­alised hu­mour. Ex­am­ples in lo­cal sports will be when peo­ple com­ment about fe­male crick­eters 'hit­ting the ball like a man' or fe­male foot­ballers 'kick­ing the ball like a man.' The com­ments are made in the con­text that some fe­male sport­ing abil­i­ties chal­lenge the dom­i­nant ex­pect­ed view as to how fe­males are to 'be­have' es­pe­cial­ly in sports. As such it is not un­com­mon to hear mur­murs from males and fe­males ques­tion­ing the sex­u­al­i­ty of the fe­male play­ers.

�2 The de­cline in the sex­u­al­i­sa­tion is a re­flec­tion of a greater de­gree of re­spect be­ing shown to fe­male ath­letes.

�2 How­ev­er, at the same time, the find­ings in­di­cate that women were now be­ing viewed for their roles as moth­ers. There is noth­ing wrong with this ap­proach if the same was ap­plied to male ath­letes.

�2 Men sports are pre­sent­ed with greater ex­cite­ment and ex­pec­ta­tions as com­pared to the dull pre­sen­ta­tion of Women's sports.

In terms of rec­om­men­da­tions, the re­searchers had three ma­jor sug­ges­tions di­rect­ed to­ward me­di­al hous­es:

I. Greater eq­ui­ty in the amount of cov­er­age. It does not mean it has to be match­ing minute by minute of cov­er­age, but there must be sub­stan­tial qual­i­ty of the cov­er­age. This would al­low for women ath­letes to be seen as no dif­fer­ent from their male coun­ter­parts in terms of how they are pre­sent­ed.

II. In ad­di­tion to quan­ti­ty, there is need for qual­i­ty. A greater ef­fort has to be demon­strat­ed from pro­duc­tion val­ues to the pre­sen­ta­tion of the sports news and the high­lights shows.

III. In or­der to ac­com­plish both quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty, the onus is on the me­dia hous­es to hire or re­tain sports an­chor per­son­nel who can lead and main­tain the change. The au­thors ar­gue that some­times do­ing the same thing re­li­gious­ly be­comes a tremen­dous chal­lenge to ef­fect change. Fur­ther­more, it will be wise to utilise both male and fe­male per­son­nel who are knowl­edge­able and ob­jec­tive­ly pas­sion­ate about sport­ing eq­ui­ty across gen­der et al.

It is im­por­tant to note that the sug­ges­tion of hir­ing fe­males to cov­er all as­pects of sports will not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­sult in the de­sired change. It has been shown that fe­male sports me­dia per­son­nel may some­times use the dom­i­nant male sport­ing frame­work as their own.

This may take place be­cause they ac­cept this male frame­work as "nor­mal" and it must be per­pet­u­at­ed in or­der to sur­vive in the field of sport jour­nal­ism..

It will be in­ter­est­ing to ap­ply this study re­search ques­tions to the lo­cal con­text es­pe­cial­ly as there have been a growth in tele­vi­sion and ra­dio sports shows. Al­so it will be a good re­search ex­er­cise to as­cer­tain over time, whether or not the cov­er­age of women's sports has re­flect­ed the gen­der changes that have tak­en place in the so­ci­ety since In­de­pen­dence.

I would not be sur­prised if some of the find­ings of this study are man­i­fest­ed in a sim­i­lar na­tion­al study. How­ev­er, such a study would pro­vide a guide as to what has hap­pened in gen­der sports cov­er­age. Al­so me­dia hous­es, re­porters, com­men­ta­tors and spon­sors can use the op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate their con­tri­bu­tion to gen­der eq­ui­ty in lo­cal sports.