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England Women’s 2015 FIFA World Cup Campaign: Online Media Perspectives

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LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media

Abstract

The FIFA Women’s World Cup 2015 in Canada was a pinnacle and historical achievement for the England Women’s National Football Team. However, equality between women and men within sport has yet to be reached, especially when examining media representation of women’s involvement in football. Female footballers are typically portrayed negatively in relation to their ability as a professional athlete, with the concentration usually focused on their femininity and personal lives. In this chapter, we conduct a media content analysis of British newspapers’ coverage of the 2015 Women’s World Cup before, during, and after the tournament. We show that, despite significant improvements, sexualization and stereotyping are still largely evident in the media’s coverage of women’s football.

Charlie Pitkin is an Independent Academic

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These six newspapers were The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Sun, The Telegraph, The Independent, and The Times.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Sport, Health and Social Sciences, Solent University, Southampton, UK

    Tracey Bourne

  2. London, UK

    Charlie Pitkin

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  1. Tracey Bourne
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Correspondence to Tracey Bourne .

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  1. Solent University, Southampton, UK

    Rory Magrath

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Bourne, T., Pitkin, C. (2019). England Women’s 2015 FIFA World Cup Campaign: Online Media Perspectives. In: Magrath, R. (eds) LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00804-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00804-8_8

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