Two Kicks Forward, One Kick Back: A Content Analysis of Media Discourses on the 1999 Women’s World Cup Soccer Championship

Abstract

The 1999 Women’s World Cup Soccer Championship serves as a particularly good site for examining both the social construction of gender and the structure of contradiction surrounding women’s role in sport and society. We conducted a content analysis of 576 American newspaper articles reporting on the 1999 Women’s World Cup Soccer Championship. Contradictory messages surrounding women and sports were present, as past research has suggested. An analysis of more qualitative aspects of our data reveals the structure of these contradictions and provides substantial depth to this analysis. We discuss how the media actively promoted or constructed certain gender ideologies and how these gender ideologies contributed to the popularity of the event.

Negotiating Gender in Professional Soccer: An Analysis of Female Footballers in the United States

“…With soccer, while there are exceptions (e.g., World Cup of '99) and there are positive signs in terms of spectatorship and participation (Di Lorenzo, 2013;Kelley & Carchia, 2013), the sport is often marginalized by the US media and the present situation in female soccer may serve as an example of this. According to the interviewees, the popularity of female soccer documented in prior research (e.g., Christopherson et al, 2002;Knoppers & Anthonissen, 2003) has somehow faded away. Melissa, Grace, and Yanique felt that media had little interest in the present league and their achievements.…”

“…Past research on women's soccer from sociological and psychosocial approaches include investigations of gender differences and relative age effect (Vincent & Glasser, 2006), mediated constructions of contemporary females athletes (Shugart, 2003), intersections of gender, masculinity, social class, and sexuality (e.g., Cox & Thompson, 2000;Fasting & Pfister, 2000;Knoppers & Anthonissen, 2003), women's soccer and American exceptionalism NEGOTIATING GENDER IN PROFESSIONAL SOCCER (Markovits & Hellerman, 2003), ethnic subcultures' construction of unique cultural identities through sport and integration into multicultural national identities (Van Rheenen, 2009), content media analysis and discourses (Christopherson, Janning, & McConnell, 2002), perceptions of stress and coping (Holt & Hogg, 2002;Kristiansen, Murphy, & Roberts, 2012), the challenge of dominant notions of "appropriate" female sports (Scraton, Fasting, Pfister, & Bunuel, 1999), and international feminism and soccer (Barlow, 2000). Despite this body of research on sport, gender, and media, more directed research is needed on the gender dynamics and experiences of professional female footballers (Liston, 2006) in a US sporting landscape that has faced challenges in building and sustaining women's professional soccer leagues.…”

Re-establishing the ‘outsiders’: English press coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup

“…Burroughs (2014: 166) details that 'The newsprint media … remains an important institution that has the ability to wield considerable influence through ideologically infused discourses'. However, when women's sport is reported, it is often via discourses that are ambivalent about the role of women in sport and wider society (Christopherson et al, 2002) and which rely on conventional representations of heteronormative femininity (Pfister, 2015). Jakubowska et al (2016: 413) argue that 'these tendencies undermine both the visibility and significance of women's athletic embodiment, reducing its potential to challenge sexist discourse'.…”

“…With regard to work which has considered women's football (Caudwell, 1999;Harris, 2005;Scraton et al, 2005) and its media coverage (Christopherson et al, 2002), this article will consider how improvements to English women's football were reflected in newspaper coverage of the English team's success, especially as this occurred at a time when conventional narratives of the women's game were being challenged and/or reinforced. By way of examining how gendered 'boundaries are continuously negotiated, since social actors engage in struggles over social categories and distinctions' (Duemmler, 2015: 4), we draw upon Elias and Scotson's (1994) established-outsider perspective in order to explore how newspaper coverage of the English team served to frame established views on football, gender and sport.…”

The case of the Women's United Soccer Association : explaining the rise and fall of a social movement organization.

“…The initial groundwork was laid in 1972 with the passage of Title IX and the issuance of guidelines for its implementation 3 years later. Title IX opened doors for women in athletics and from that time forward, women continued to stake their claim on the field (Blumenthal, 2005;Christopherson, Janning, & McConnell, 2002;Liston, 2006;Spencer, 2000).…”