The modern Olympic Games are the world's leading international sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are considered the world's foremost sports competition, with more than 200 teams, representing sovereign states and territories, participating. By default, the Games generally substitute for any world championships during the year in which they take place. The Olympics are staged every four years. Since 1994, they have alternated between the Summer and Winter Olympics every two years during the four-year Olympiad.
A gender role, or sex role, is a set of socially accepted behaviors and attitudes deemed appropriate or desirable for individuals based on their gender or sex. Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of masculinity and femininity.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and 1 in Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The headquarters is located in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Sociology of sport, alternately referred to as sports sociology, is a sub-discipline of sociology which focuses on sports as social phenomena. It is an area of study concerned with the relationship between sociology and sports, and also various socio-cultural structures, patterns, and organizations or groups involved with sport. This area of study discusses the positive impact sports have on individual people and society as a whole economically, financially, and socially. Sociology of sport attempts to view the actions and behavior of sports teams and their players through the eyes of a sociologist.
Women and girls have participated in sports, physical fitness, and exercise throughout history. However, the extent of their involvement has varied depending on factors such as country, time period, geographical location, and level of economic development. The modern era of organized sports, with structured competitions and formalized activities, did not fully emerge for either women or men until the late industrial age. This shift marked a significant change in how sports were structured and practiced, eventually leading to more inclusive opportunities for female participation.
Loughborough University is a public research university in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. It has been a university since 1966, but it dates back to 1909, when Loughborough Technical Institute was founded. In March 2013, the university announced it had bought the former broadcast centre at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a second campus. The annual income of the institution for 2023–24 was £363.2 million, of which £47.8 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £251.6 million.
Jackson T. Katz is an American educator, filmmaker, and author. He has created a gender violence prevention and education program entitled 'Mentors in Violence Prevention', which is used by U.S. military and various sporting organizations.
The Olympic Games have been televised in the United States since 1960. It has become one of the most popular programs on USA television every four and then two years. The Olympics has been exclusively broadcast on NBC and NBCUniversal's TV networks in the United States since 1988 for the Summer Olympics and 2002 for the Winter Olympics. American television companies are one of the major sources of revenue for the IOC.
The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) was founded in 2003 and is a non-profit membership association for scientific purposes in the field and discipline of cultural studies. Located in Chicago, IL, USA, the CSA is headed by an executive committee of American academics who guide the association's efforts to promote the exchange of ideas between scholars, hold annual conferences, and publish an educational journal.
Sport is a form of physical activity or game. Often competitive and organized, sports use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills. They also provide enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Many sports exist, with different participant numbers, some are done by a single person with others being done by hundreds. Most sports take place either in teams or competing as individuals. Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure one winner. A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament format, producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs.
Andrea Lee Press is an American sociologist and media studies scholar. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Media Studies and Sociology, and Chair of the Media Studies Department, at the University of Virginia.
Women's sport in Australia started in the colonial era. Sport made its way into the school curriculum for girls by the 1890s. World War II had little impact on women's sport in the country. After the war, women's sport diversified as a result of new immigrants to the country. In the 1990s, the percentage of media coverage for women's sport on radio, television and in newspapers was not at parity with male sport. Basketball is nominally professional in Australia but players do not earn enough from the sport to compete full-time. Some Australians have gone overseas to play professional sport. Many television spectators for Australian sport are women. In person, netball has large percentage of female spectators. The Australian Federal and State governments have encouraged women to participate in all areas of sport.
Sports communication is a field of communication studies that specializes in the elements of communication in sports. Sports communication can be defined as "a process by which people in sport, in a sport setting, or through a sport endeavor, share symbols as they create meaning through interaction". This field encompasses the study of interpersonal and organizational communication among participants within a sport, fans, and the media. Researchers also examine the way that sports are represented and communicated in the media. Many careers in the sports industry are involved in the interpersonal and organizational communication process. These range from technological occupations, like media and marketing, to team psychologists who focus on relationships between players.
Adam Christopher Earnheardt is an American academic and author, sports and communication researcher, and social media critic. He is professor and former chair of the Department of Communication at Youngstown State University, located in Youngstown, Ohio. He researches the effects of communication devices and social media on society, and studies the media uses and psychology of sports fans and families. Earnheardt was a columnist with Mahoning Matters, a news outlet with the Google-McClatchy Compass Project where he wrote about family and parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Earnheardt was a weekly columnist for The Vindicator and Tribune Chronicle newspapers from 2014 to 2021, where he focused on the impact of technology and media on relationships and society.
International Olympic Committee Athletes' Commission is a majority elected body that serves as a link between athletes and the IOC. The mission of the IOC AC is to ensure that athletes' viewpoint remains at the heart of the Olympic Movement decisions, representing future, current and recently retired Olympic athletes. The IOC AC aims to provide athletes with a platform to share their voice and experiences, and be part of change and decisions shaping the future of sport.
Gender plays a role in mass media and is represented within media platforms. These platforms are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media.
The participation of transgender people in competitive sports, a traditionally sex-segregated institution, is a controversial issue, particularly the inclusion of transgender women and girls in women's sports.
The rate of participation of women in the Olympic Games has been increasing since their first participation in 1900. Some sports are uniquely for women, others are contested by both sexes, while some older sports remain for men only. Studies of media coverage of the Olympics consistently show differences in the ways in which women and men are described and the ways in which their performances are discussed. The representation of women on the International Olympic Committee has historically run well behind the rate of female participation, and long missed its target of a 20% minimum presence of women on their committee. As of 2023, 41.1% of members are women. The 2024 Paris Olympics were notable for being the first to have the goal of achieving gender parity between men and women.
Toni Bruce is a New Zealand sociology academic, specialising in the sociology of sport. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. She gained her Masters and PhD degrees at the University of Illinois in the USA. She previously worked at the University of New Hampshire (USA) University of Canberra (Australia) and University of Waikato. While teaching at the University of Auckland Bruce participated in many fields of research. Her main topics involve sports media, gender issues, nationalism, race/ethnicity and disability. Bruce is an expert in many different topics including journalism, media analysis and theory, and the impacts of sociological aspects of identity on people's experiences. She supervises students throughout the Masters and the Doctorate programs that include her main topics of research.
Gender pay gap in sports is the persistence of unequal pay in sports, particularly for female athletes who do not receive equal revenue compared to their counterparts, which differs depending on the sport. According to the research conducted by BBC, "a total of 83% of sports now reward men and women equally". However, it does not mean that the wage gap in sports has narrowed or disappeared. In 2018, Forbes released the list of the top 100 highest-paid athletes, all of them being male athletes. A similar situation also occurred in 2017, where there was only one female athlete – tennis player Serena Williams — who joined the list and ranked No.56. Billie Jean King brought awareness to the issue of unequal pay in the early 1970s, when she was awarded $2,900 less than her male counterpart at the Italian Open. The timeline of the gender pay gap in sports displays the significant events that have occurred since the 1970s
