Media Coverage of Emergent Women’s Leagues Within Mainstream Sports: Exploring Intersecting Hegemonies
Date
Authors
Fujak, Hunter
McLeod, Joshua
Wymer, Sarah
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Abstract
This study adopts agenda-setting theory to examine how emergent Australian women’s professional sports leagues have impacted the distribution of media coverage between genders and sports. In doing so, it assesses how these leagues have simultaneously challenged and reinforced hegemonic cultural structures that shape leisure choice. Quantitative newspaper content analysis from 2019 to 2023 produced 21,129 entries, equating to 8,690 pages of content. Logistic regression revealed a modest rise in overall women’s sport coverage, driven by high-profile international events. In contrast, domestic women’s leagues exhibited limited coverage growth. However, coverage is redistributing between women’s professional leagues, with those aligned to culturally dominant and historically male-oriented sports growing their visibility. This shift exhibits leisure implications, as media hierarchies shape societal perceptions of which sports are valued. The emergence of new women’s sport leagues thus presents a paradox: their growth has created opportunities for women but done so by marginalizing historically female-oriented sports.Description
Keywords
3504 Commercial Services, 35 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, Women's Health, 1504 Commercial Services, 1506 Tourism, Sport, Leisure & Tourism, 3508 Tourism, Agenda Setting Theory, cultural oligarchies, hegemonic masculinity, media representation, women’s professional sport leagues
Source
Leisure Sciences, ISSN: 0149-0400 (Print); 1521-0588 (Online), Informa UK Limited, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), 1-19. doi: 10.1080/01490400.2025.2577198
Publisher's version
Rights statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.