Are Women Sportscasters Credible?

Bad news for female sportscasters. Your audience still prefers it sports news delivered by a man, because they think men know more about sports than you. And, you'll have trouble getting other women to stand up for you, because they give the male sportscaster even more credibility than men in the audience.

That's the result of a new study published in the latest issue of Communication Research Reports, a publication of the Eastern Communication Association.Two professors from Valdosta State University. Assistant professor Laurence Etling and professor Raymond Young collected the responses of 244 students who listened to an audio sportscast that included sports stories, game scores, and an editorial on the use of steroids in baseball.

One group of 119 (54 men, 65 women) listened to a woman deliver the sportscast. Another group of 125 (54 men, 71 women) listened to the same coverage, but delivered by a male sportscaster.

As expected, men thought the male sportscaster was more authoritative than the woman. Somewhat surprisingly, though, women also thought the male sportscaster was more authoritative. Further, their ratings for the male were even higher than the ratings from the male fans.

To verify their findings, Etling and Young conducted another statistical test, using regression analysis, to see what attitudes were behind the responses. The problem, they discovered, was the sexist attitudes of the respondents.

The researchers concluded that sexism is still alive in the world of sports, at least in terms of sports fans. In spite of an increased number of women in sports broadcasting, "women still face the obstacle of listeners' perceptions that they lack credibility," Etling and Young wrote.

Further, they noted, "the results raise the questions of why they are not considered experts, especially by other women, and what they need to do to establish credibility."

The researchers noted there were limitations with their study. It only looked at an audio sportscast, for example; visual cues might change the results for a television broadcast.

The sample was also limited to college students. Perhaps the results would vary for a more diverse age population.

Further, most of the items in the sportscast concerned male-dominated sports. Perhaps a woman's perspective would have been more respected on coverage of women's sports.

Regardless, the bottom line, they concluded, is that sexist "barriers toward women in sports broadcasting still exist, and it raises the question of when and how . . . women can expect to truly be accepted onto the broadcast playing field."

References
Etling, Laurence, & Young, Raymond (2007). Sexism and the authoritativeness of female sportscasters. Communication Research Reports, 121-130.