Hypothesis Grading: I expect you to complete at least 3 actions each week. An
action can be a question, a comment, an answer, some context you looked
up and wanted to add – each of these is an annotation, and therefore an
“action”. Additionally, each of your “actions” should be:
● Constructive: It’s made in good faith to build up and add value to the
people reading the text. It can be a question, answer, or informative
comment. Good questions cannot be answered in a few words and
might help someone else with a similar question or another student
looking to make a comment. Good answers are thoughtful. Good
arguments are productive, allowing for the possibility of
misunderstanding on all sides, creating spaces for further
understanding
● Considerate: At no point will a student be the target of a dismissive or
otherwise negative comment; a failure to respectfully engage in this
process will negatively impact your grade.
● Substantive: It is more than a very short reply. “I agree,” or “Why?” will
not count toward your three actions, though you can post any number of
smaller annotations as you would like. They just won’t count for your
“three actions.”
Additional suggestions for your annotations
● Answer a question from the instructor or another student
● Pose a question for other students to answer
● Identify a key term and provide a definition; the definition can be
paraphrased or quoted from the current reading, paraphrased or quoted
from other course material (cite the source), or paraphrased or quoted
from outside sources (cite the source)
● Identify an idea you find interesting or surprising (and tell us why)
● Identify an idea you agree with (and tell us why)
● Identify an idea you disagree with (and tell us why)
● Identify a concept or point that you do not understand (first tell us what
you do understand and then ask for clarification on what you do not
understand)
● Provide information or a link that would enhance other students’
understanding of the material (images, memes, GIFs, and other links to
outside sources are encouraged!)
Additional instructions
● Make exactly three annotations
● Each annotation should be about one to three sentences long. If you
post an image or link, just give a one sentence description of how it
relates to the text you highlighted
● Each annotation must be substantive, adding to our collective work of
understanding the reading (e.g. “I agree” is not a sufficient annotation)
● An annotation can include annotating a new segment of text and
annotating it OR replying to a question or comment in an annotation
from the instructor, TA, or another student
● If a comment or question has already been addressed, you can still give
another answer if you are adding something new
● Comments must be respectful to individuals and groups.
● We are all here to learn. Please “call in” rather than “call out”
misinformed and/or offensive comments by explaining the issue to the
original poster (and to other students who will read the comment).
Annotation Grading Rubric: You can earn up to 10 points each week
Full 10 points: You make 3 different, high quality actions that connect to other
course concepts or materials, and you have substantive annotation comments that
meet the above expectations. While it is okay to express your opinion or thoughts
in these posts, people earning full credit on the assignment will spend more of
their posts talking about key concepts, making connections to other readings, or
posing thoughtful questions to their peers.
7-9 Points: You can earn partial points on these weekly reading assignments and
if you earn 7-9 points, you made 3 annotations, but did not make in-depth or more
detailed points in each of your 3 posts.
4-6 Points: You did not make 3 total posts, but you did make 1-2 posts that had
some amount of detail or connection to other course readings. If you earn 4-6
points you may have provided very short answers to the questions posed by other
students, or you mostly included your own opinion in you post.
1-4 Points: You did not make 3 total posts, and had very short answers or were
mostly reliant on your opinions, rather than course materials, in your responses.
Title IX has dramatically increased the number of sport
opportunities for girls and women in educational institutions.
According to data collected by the National Federation of State
High School Associations, in 1971 (just prior to the passage of
Title IX), 294,105 girls participated in high school sports. By 2009-
2010, that number had grown to 3,172,637. R. Vivian Acosta
and Linda Jean Carpenter, authors of an ongoing, longitudinal
study, found that female participation at the collegiate level has
increased six-fold, from 30,000 in 1977 to more than 180,000 in
2010. In short, girls and women comprise nearly 40 percent of
all interscholastic and intercollegiate sport participants.
Progress is also evidenced in other sporting realms not
directly impacted by the Title IX mandate. Today, women are
participating at the professional level in sports that seemed
beyond reach 40 years ago—including professional football
(the Independent Women’s Football League). The growing
popularity of the Women’s National Basketball Association
(WNBA) and the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) league is
an important phenomenon in itself. Indeed, the visibility and
excellence of female athletes and women’s sport have helped
create a broader cultural context in which female athleticism
has become “normalized,” and in many cases, celebrated.
Sport and female athleticism have become inextricably linked to
the empowerment of girls and women—as in the “Girl Power”
movement in the 1990s, which led to the proliferation of repre-
sentations of strong, athletic women in popular culture.
Yet, despite this progress, we are far from a world of gen-
der equality in American sport. Compared to their male coun-
terparts, major inequities and shortcomings remain for female
athletes—especially in terms of media attention and opportu-
nities to coach and lead in the world of sport. In this article,
we examine some of the sociological research that documents
and helps account for these shortcomings. This work speaks to
the multifaceted nature of an institution as large as sport, the
persistence of sexism and male dominance, and the challenges
entailed in making social change.
media
Fans of women’s sports today find more social media sites
with a primary focus on female athletes; they might, for example,
look to WomenTalkSports.com, an online blog network. More
media outlets broadcast women’s sport and in higher broadcast
quality than in the past. Research has shown that the produc-
tion values (such as the number of camera angles, use of slow
motion replays, graphics, and quality of commentators) have
also improved dramatically over the past 20 years. Still, there is
a lack of coverage of women’s sport in the mainstream media.
Although televised broadcast coverage of female sport
Title IX of the Educational Amendments to the Constitution
states
that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex,
be
excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be
sub-
jected to discrimination under any educational program or
activity
receiving federal assistance.” In the nearly 40 years since it
passed,
this provision has played an important role, both directly and
indi-
rectly, in girls and women’s sport participation in the United
States.
Photo by Lori Fowlkes (lorielizabethphotography.com)
Contexts, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 42-46. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2012 American
Sociological Association. DOI 10.1177/1536504212436495
participation has improved in both quality and quantity, these
gains have not translated into increased coverage in newspa-
pers, magazines, or televised news and highlight shows. For
example, in 2003 ESPN began broadcasting the entire women’s
NCAA basketball tournament on its sister station, ESPN2. How-
ever, in a longitudinal study released in 2010 by the University
of Southern California’s Center for Feminist Research, sociolo-
gists Michael Messner and Cheryl Cooky found that ESPN—the
dominant sports network in the United States—dedicated 100
segments and over 3 hours on the men’s tournament, and only
11 segments and 6½ minutes on the women’s; most of the
women’s tournament coverage was relegated to a small, scroll-
ing ticker at the bottom of the screen. Messner and Cooky also
found that televised news media coverage of women’s sport
was at its lowest level in 20 years—it accounted for less than
two percent of televised news coverage in 2009.
Perhaps even more problematic is that when female ath-
letes do receive mainstream media attention, it is typically in
sexualized ways that trivialize their athleticism. For example,
one of the more disturbing trends that we have observed is
the growing number of female athletes featured in “lad mags”
like
FHM, Maxim,
and
Playboy.
Audiences are more likely to see
a female athlete in her swimsuit lounging on the beach than
in her uniform on the field. Since the early 2000s,
Sports Illus-
trated
has featured female athletes in the annual “Swimsuit
Issue”—its best-selling issue every year. The issue has boasted
top female athletes such as Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova,
Danica Patrick, and Amanda Beard (and far more often than
they’ve appeared in any other issue of
Sports Illustrated
). Race-
car driver Patrick and Olympic swimmer Beard have also been
in
FHM
, posing in ways that resemble soft-core pornography.
And this past summer, the German U-20 women’s soccer team
showed up in the German edition of
Playboy,
just days before
the 2011 Women’s World Cup, to help “promote the sport.”
As sociologist Mary Jo Kane recently argued in a column for
The Nation,
such images “sell sex” but do little to legitimize
and promote female athleticism. Stereotypical representations
of this sort would not be so troubling if media images of female
athletic competence were commonplace.
There are certainly far more female athletes, professional
leagues, and female athlete superstars today than there were
20 or 30 years ago. So, why does the media continue to
silence, ignore, trivialize, and hyper-sexualize female athletes?
Scholars argue that the ways in which male and female ath-
letes are represented in the media maintain existing gendered
hierarchies, uphold sport as a male preserve, and reaffirm the
masculine norms and values that are dominant in the wider
society. The ways female athletes shape their own images and
representations are also part of the package, along with the
choices of media producers, journalists, and audiences to pro-
duce and consume these images. All of
these choices, of course, are made within
a broader context—where ways of seeing
privilege men and masculine ideals.
Some argue that in order to com-
bat the trivialized and hyper-sexualized
images of female athletes, we need more
women
in
positions
of
power
within
media organizations who could challenge
embedded sexism and masculine ideals. Yet women are con-
sistently underrepresented in such positions of power in main-
stream media organizations—and beyond.
taking charge—or not
Many of those who fought for Title IX assumed that a
rise in female sports participation would automatically trans-
late to increased leadership opportunities for women in sport.
This expectation has not been borne out. Despite the fact that
female athletic participation is at a historic high at all levels of
sport, women are a scarce minority in positions of power within
sports organizations. For example, Acosta and Carpenter have
shown that the percentage of women in coaching and admin-
istrative positions in women’s sport has actually declined, from
over 90 percent to roughly 40 percent, since Title IX passed—
and this percentage is lower than at any time in history except
in 2006. In fact, in the most visible and arguably most impor-
tant positions in sport—head coaches, athletic administrators,
Major inequities remain for female athletes—
especially in terms of media attention, distri
bu
–
tion of institutional resources, and opportunities
to coach and lead in the world of sport.
Photo by Cara Ramsey
