GENDER PORTRAYAL IN ENGLISH TELEVISION COVERAGE OF THE 1994 OLYMPIC GAMES

1996

Executive Summary

The Olympic Games represent the pinnacle of athletic excellence, placing women and men of all nations on an equal competitive footing. Television coverage gives concrete expression to the symbolism of the Games, and doing so, makes a powerful statement not only about athletic excellence, but also about gender.

This research documents the portrayal of women and men in Canadian coverage of the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic Games. The major focus is on CTV's coverage, but extends to ads within this coverage and to reports on the Olympics in regular news and sports casts on CBLT and CFTO. The sample includes 148 hours of broadcasting, virtually all CTV coverage between 6 am and midnight during 15 days of the Winter Games.

1. Coverage of Women's and Men's Events:

The amount of coverage given to women's and men's events is a primary measure of gender balance in coverage of the Games. There are, in fact, more men's events than women's events. Women do not compete in bobsled, ski jumping and several other events. If television coverage reflected the distribution of medal events, 41 percent of broadcast time would have gone to women's events, 56% to men's events and 3% to the two mixed skating events.

In fact, men's events received considerably more coverage than this (64%), and women's events received less (26%). Extensive hockey coverage is the main reason for this imbalance.

2. Interviews:

In all, 806 athletes, spectators and others were interviewed. Fewer women than men were interviewed. 32 percent of all interviews were with women and 68 percent were with men. In addition, interviews with women were shorter than those with men. As a result, 27 percent of all interview time went to women and 73 percent to men.

3. Canadian Athletes:

Canadian athletes and coaches were the focus of the CTV coverage, ad they accounted for 71 percent of all interviews.

Canadian women were interviewed proportionately less often than women of other nationalities. Among Canadian athletes, women accounted for 28 percent of interviews, while among athletes of other nationalities, women accounted for 41 percent.

3. Announcers:

The analysis recorded the journalists present in each segment of programming. "Segments" correspond to natural breaks in programming. A new segment begins with each change in location, such as from the studio to on-site coverage, or each change in program format, such as between programming and commercial breaks.

Across the entire 148 hours of Olympic coverage analysed, CTV staff and commentators appeared in more than 1800 program segments. In 70 percent of these, only men were present. In 9 percent, only women were present, and in 21 percent, both men and women were present.

5. Voiceovers:

"Voiceovers" are anonymous voices supplying narration over video of various sorts; 17 percent of these used female voices and 83 percent used male voices.

6. Language:

Gender bias in language has been a topic of controversy in coverage of previous Olympic Games. Commentators for U.S. television of the Los Angeles Games, for example, were criticized for describing female athletes in terms of their physical appearance, makeup, and costumes, in such a way as to belittle their athletic accomplishments.

No such practices were observed in CTV coverage. Commentators used similar language to describe male and female competitors, and disparaging references to gender were absent.

7. Commercials:

Commercials filled 20 percent of Olympic broadcasts, showing 3,255 plays of 235 different ads. The gender balance is similar to that found in previous Canadian research - men form a slight majority of characters in ads, and a huge majority of voiceovers.

Similar to results of previous Canadian studies, male characters are older than females, and are more often portrayed in paid work roles.

Ads in Olympic coverage depart from traditional gender patterns in two notable ways. Similar proportions of female and male characters (about 20 percent of each) have speaking roles as opposed to non-speaking roles. Second, women and men are associated to similar degrees with higher priced products. In the 1980s, high-priced products such as cars were typically associated more with men than women.

8. News and Sportscasts:

Two CBC news programs, CBLT Evening News and the network Prime Time News, devoted approximately one hour to Olympic coverage. This material included 61 reports on Canadian athletes, 28 of whom were female and 33 male. This balance (41 percent female), accords well with medal results and with the overall balance of female and male events in the Games.

The CFTO late evening newscast devoted 1.75 hours to Olympic coverage, about 6 minutes on a typical day. It reported on 81 Canadian athletes, 34 of whom were female and 47 male. This balance (42 percent) is also within the bounds suggested by medal results and the balance of female and male events.

9. Conclusion:

This under-representation of women has been a fact of television programming and advertising since the 1950s. In this sense, coverage of the Olympics is simply television as usual. The Olympics presented an opportunity to break with television's traditional gender imbalance. The Games themselves ran parallel competitions for women and men, and so presented an opportunity to treat women and men equally. This did not happen, whether in the coverage of events or among the commentators who presented them or in feature presentations, or even in advertising.

On the positive side, CTV avoided the blatantly sexist blunders that have occurred in coverage of some previous Olympic competitions. There is still, however, a discrepancy between television coverage of the Games and the ideal of equitable portrayal of women and men in Olympic competition.