Women empowerment in sports: An analysis of the sports coverage of leading newspapers in Bengal with respect to Rio Olympic

Abstract

Purpose: Several studies reported about existence of gender disparity in the sports content of print media around the world. The purpose of the research was to find out whether both female and male athletes of India participated in Rio Olympic had received same importance in sports coverage in print media or not. Methodology: For this purpose the content of the sports coverage related with Rio Olympic in Newspapers on and from 3th August to 23th August 2016 were analyzed from the angle of gender inequality in sports news publication. Ten leading daily newspapers on Bengali and English published in Kolkata, West Bengal were considered for this study. Variables considered in this study were area covered for total news (ACTN) and area covered for photograph (ACPH). Measurement was done by calculating the area in Sq. Cm. of the newspaper using simple geometric scale. Mean and standard deviation was used as descriptive statistics and t-test was used for comparison between the male and female athletes’ sports coverage. All statistical calculations were done using standard statistical software (Excel, 2010). Only 0.05 level of significance was considered for the present study. Results: Results revealed that mean values of ATCN and ACPH for female athletes were higher than the male athletes. Calculated t-values for ATCN (t =2.81) and ACPH (t=2.44) has found statistically significant. Conclusion: From above results it was concluded that female athletes received significantly higher coverage in news writing and pictorial section than the male athletes of Rio Olympic. These findings may be considered as women empowerment in Indian sports scenario.