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Sex Roles, Vol. 50, Nos. 11/12, June 2004 ( C© 2004)

Gender Representation in the NCAA News: Is theGlass Half Full or Half Empty?

George B. Cunningham,1,3 Michael Sagas,1 Melanie L. Sartore,2

Michelle L. Amsden,2 and Anne Schellhase1

The purpose of this study was to provide a reexamination of the NCAA (National CollegiateAthletic Association) News and the extent to which the publication provides equitable cover-age to women and women’s teams. To do so, 5,745 paragraphs and 1,086 photographs from 24issues (12 issues in 1999, 12 issues in 2001) were coded for (a) gender, (b) size, (c) location, and(d) content. Results were then compared to a standard (i.e., the proportion of female athletescompeting in NCAA intercollegiate athletics). Results indicate that coverage in the NCAANews was more representative, with respect to the amount of text and number of photographs,than it was in 1988 and 1991.

KEY WORDS: media coverage; gender differences.

The media (i.e., television, print, radio, Internet)have a significant influence on individuals and the cul-ture in which they live. Indeed, Kane (1988) suggestedthat “the mass media have become one of the mostpowerful institutional forces for shaping values andattitudes in modern culture” (pp. 88–89). Kane, Taub,and Hayes (2000) echoed similar sentiments nearlya decade later, as they argued that the media shapeunderstandings of society, interpreting what is “right”and “important” (see also Greenberg & Hier, 2001).Thus, the media frame, at least in part, our thoughts,attitudes, and behaviors (Kane et al., 2000). In ad-dition, the mass media, in concert with one’s peersand family members, acts as a socialization agent, inthat it shapes the emotional and moral developmentof youth (Moore, Raymond, Mittelstaedt, & Tanner,2002). For example, Rintala and Birrell (1984) arguedthat the media provide girls with possible role models.In this way, if girls and women are not represented in

1Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.2Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.3To whom correspondence should be addressed at Laboratory forDiversity in Sport, Department of Health and Kinesiology, TexasA&M University, TAMU 4243, College Station, Texas 77843-4243;e-mail: gbcunningham@hlkn.tamu.edu.

an equitable fashion by the media, then girls are notafforded the necessary exemplars to emulate.

The importance of the media is also seen in sport.Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, there has beena dramatic increase in the participation of girls andwomen in sport (see Acosta & Carpenter, 2002). Infact, spurred by the accomplishments of women andwomen’s athletic teams, Mediaweek deemed 1996 tobe the “Year of the Woman” (Gremillion, 1996). How-ever, despite these advances, there has been little im-provement in the media coverage of women’s sportsince Title IX (Coakley, 1998; Lumpkin & Williams,1991; Theberge & Cronk, 1986). The poor cover-age serves to marginalize women and women’s sportteams. As Kane (1988) noted, “How female athletesare viewed in this culture is both reflected in and cre-ated by mass media images. Thus, it becomes criticalto examine both the extent and the nature of mediacoverage given to female athletes” (p. 89).

Indeed, research on the coverage of athleticteams has demonstrated inequitable and biased rep-resentation of women’s teams. Researchers have in-dicated that the media portray sport as a mas-culine venture (Cramer, 1994; Duncan, Messner,Williams, & Jensen, 1994; Lumpkin & Williams,1991; Tuggle, 1997). Further, women who participate

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in traditionally “feminine” sports (e.g., golf, ten-nis, swimming; see Kane & Parks, 1990) are fea-tured more frequently than are their counterparts in“masculine” sports (e.g., soccer, rugby; Cramer, 1994;Fink & Kensicki, 2002; Lumpkin & Williams, 1991).When women do receive media or press coverage,they are often portrayed (a) as sex symbols, as op-posed to as “powerful, talented athletes” (Fink &Kensicki, 2002, p. 331) and/or (b) in supportive ratherthan participating roles (e.g., cheering on the contes-tants; Cuneen & Sidwell, 1998; Tuggle, 1997). There isalso evidence that television especially “reflect the so-cial conventions of gender-biased language” (Duncanet al., 1994, p. 267).

Additional research has also indicated thatwomen and women’s teams receive considerably lesscoverage than do men and men’s teams (Coakley,1998; Cuneen & Sidwell, 1998; Fink & Kensicki, 2002;Kane, 1988; Lumpkin & Williams, 1991). For exam-ple, substantial analyses of Sports Illustrated (Fink &Kensicki, 2002; Kane, 1988) and Sports Illustratedfor Kids (Cuneen & Sidwell, 1998) have consistentlyindicated that men receive more coverage than dowomen. Coakley found that coverage of women’ssport in big-city newspapers has not increased overthe past 25 years. Finally, in a study of broadcastmedia (i.e., ESPN’s Sports Center and CNN’s SportsTonight), Tuggle found that women and women’ssports received only 5% of the coverage. These studiesillustrate that women receive less coverage, and, whenthey do receive coverage, it is often in a marginalizedmanner.

It should be noted, however, that one commontheme among all of these investigations is that me-dia from the for-profit, rather than the not-for-profit,sector were investigated. This is an important distinc-tion because for-profit media must cater to the wantsand needs of their consumers (Sagas, Cunningham,Wigley, & Ashley, 2000; Steinem, 1990). This is con-sistent with the resource-dependence perspective (seePfeffer & Salancik, 1978), whereby environmentalentities upon which the organization is dependentexert considerable influence (e.g., the possible pref-erence for coverage of men’s, rather than women’s,sport) on the organization. Messner and his associates(Messner, 1988; Messner, Duncan, & Wachs, 1996)recognized this, and suggested that economic andpolitical forces might shape the representationof women’s sport more than patriarchal ideology(Duncan, 1990) or other institutional forces (Kane &Greendorfer, 1994) do. On the basis of this perspec-tive, it is possible that consumer demands and pref-

erences dictate the amount and type of coverage ofwomen’s sports among for-profit media sources, suchas Sports Illustrated.

Given the dependence upon consumers and con-sumer preferences among for-profit media sources, analternative approach is to study the representation ofmen and women in not-for-profit media outlets, suchas university newspapers, athletic department Inter-net Web sites, and/or the NCAA (National CollegiateAthletic Association) News. As Sagas et al. (2000)noted, “media surrounding intercollegiate athleticsdo not contend with external economic, cultural, orsociopolitical forces” (p. 199); therefore, conceptu-ally, we would expect these media sources to havemore representative coverage of women and women’steams than other media sources in the for-profit sec-tor. This is especially true for the NCAA and its as-sociated publication, the NCAA News. That is, theNCAA is supposedly a leader in assuring gender eq-uity; therefore, if the NCAA News does not reflectgender equity, then this is a considerable indictment.

Although we might expect not-for-profit mediasources to provide more representative coverage ofwomen’s sport, research has indicated that this isnot necessarily the case. For example, in a study ofuniversity newspapers, Wann, Schrader, Allison, andMcGeorge (1998) found that men’s sports receivedgreater coverage in newspapers from medium andlarge universities. In their study of athletic depart-ment Web sites, Sagas and associates (Cunningham& Sagas, 2002; Sagas et al., 2000) found that women’ssoftball teams received less coverage than did men’sbaseball teams. Finally, in their study of the NCAANews, Shifflett and Revelle (1994a) found that(a) there was less written coverage of women thanmen, (b) articles about women appeared in less de-sirable locations, (c) there were fewer photographsof women than of men, and (d) those photos were inless desirable locations. Thus, even within the NCAANews, a publication distributed solely for the benefitof its membership, differences in the representationof female and male athletics exist.

The purpose of the present study was to rein-vestigate the gender balance in coverage in selectedfeatures within the NCAA News. Such an investiga-tion is warranted for several reasons. First, Shifflettand Revelle (1994a) examined issues from 1988 and1991. In the decade that has passed since those issueswere published, there has been increased attention re-lated to Title IX and gender equity in sports, includ-ing the “Year of the Woman” in 1996 (Gremillion,1996). Therefore, we would expect that the NCAA,

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and those who write for and produce the NCAA News,are more cognizant of gender represenation in themedia now than they were in 1991. Second, since thetime of Shifflett and Revelle’s data collection (1988,1991), the NCAA began hosting an annual Title IXseminar, during which some sessions include informa-tion related to gender equity in the media (“NCAA,”2002). Finally, Malec (1994) criticized Shifflett andRevelle’s study because of the limited scope of theiranalysis (i.e., eight issues). Therefore, a reexamina-tion of the gender representation of the NCAA Newsis warranted.

We posed the following research questions toguide this examination:

RQ 1: Does the NCAA News provide equitablecoverage for men’s and women’s athletics?

RQ 2: Has the coverage of women’s athletics im-proved since Shifflett and Revelle’s (1994a) study?

METHOD

Sample

Data were gathered from 24 randomly selectedissues (one from each month of the year) of the NCAANews from the years 1999 (n = 12) and 2001 (n = 12).These issues were chosen for two reasons. First, theywere published a decade after the issues analyzedin Shifflett and Revelle’s (1994a) study. Second, theNCAA News began to publish issues on a bimonthlybasis in 1999. Thus, in seeking consistency in the issuesanalyzed, we gathered data from issues in 1999 and2001. Following Shifflett and Revelle (1994a), onlyarticles that specifically focused on athletes, coaches,or their teams were included in the analysis. In thisway, articles with a focus on committees, facilities, orother topics were not included in the analysis.

Coding of Text

Consistent with Shifflett and Revelle (1994a),paragraphs within the articles served as the unit ofanalysis. Each paragraph was coded for gender, con-tent, location, and length (in square inches). In theirstudy, Shifflett and Revelle’s gender categories in-cluded male, female, combined, or neither. How-ever, Malec (1994) argued that the “combined” and“neither” categories should be eliminated. That is,if we are concerned with the coverage of men andwomen within the publication, then the analysis

should concentrate on those paragraphs that focuson those two groups. The other categories, becausethey constitute equal coverage (or lack thereof) ofmen and women, should not be considered. In fol-lowing this rationale, the gender categories of thearticles were coded as focused on (a) women, (b)men, or (c) other. In subsequent analyses, we excludedparagraphs coded as other. We followed Shifflett andRevelle’s study for the coding of the paragraph’s con-tent and location. We coded the paragraph location as(a) front page, (b) back page, (c) prime (top) of pagewithin the issue, or (d) other. The content of the para-graphs was coded as (a) factual information related toathletics, (b) factual information not related to athlet-ics, (c) personal information related to athletics, and(d) personal information not related to athletics.

Two researchers (both women) independentlycoded all paragraphs. Latent coding techniques wereused (see Babbie, 1986). Prior to this process, threepilot tests were conducted using previous issues notincluded in the main analyses. These pilot tests servedto clarify the definitions for each category and pro-vide consistency in the rating process. In coding theparagraphs, we followed Shifflett and Revelle (1994a)and examined the semantic validity of the coded para-graphs. In doing so, we read randomly selected codedparagraphs out of the context of the article to ensurethat the coding was consistent with the informationconveyed in the paragraph. For the main study, thereliability (Cohen’s kappa) was high for the coding ofthe paragraphs’ gender, K = .912, p < .001, content,K = .964, p < .001, and location, K = .997, p < .001.The reliability (Pearson-product moment) for length,r = .995, was also high. When differences in the cod-ing did occur, the researchers met with one another todiscuss the differences until agreement was reached.Thus, there was 100% agreement for the final codingof each paragraph.

Coding of Photographs

In following Shifflett and Revelle (1994a), wecoded each picture according to its location, gen-der, content, and size (square inches). The cate-gories for the pictures included: (a) competing athlete,(b) athlete in competitive context but not competing,(c) head shot of the athlete(s) or coach(es), (d) headshot of a person other than an athlete or coach (i.e., ad-ministrator), (e) a group photograph of persons otherthan players or coaches (e.g., committee members),and (f) other.

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Two researchers (one woman, one man) codedall the photographs. A pilot study, using a single issuenot included in the main analysis, was conducted priorto the data collection to examine the reliability of thecategorizations. Of the 50 pictures coded in this issue,100% agreement was reached on every coding cate-gory with the exception of length, where there was dis-agreement concerning the square inches of one photo-graph. Given this agreement, and the less ambiguousnature of coding pictures, as compared to the contentof a paragraph, each researcher was given a separateset of issues to code the photographs. As a subsequentcheck to ensure the reliability in the coding schemes ofthe main analysis, the researchers each independentlycoded two of the same issues from the main study.We then checked the reliability of the classification intwo randomly selected issues (i.e., 100 photographs).Agreement in each coding category reached 100%.On the basis of the pilot testing and the subsequenttests, we also have confidence in the reliability of thephotograph coding.

Data Analysis

Frequency distributions, chi-square analyses, andanalyses of variance (ANOVA) were used in the dataanalysis. Consistent with Malec’s (1994) recommen-dations, in all analyses, we only compared the datathat was specifically related to men or women. Weconducted separate analyses for data collected fromthe 1999 issues, data collected from the 2001 issues,and the combined data set.

One of Malec’s (1994) criticisms of Shifflett andRevelle’s (1994a) study was their failure to com-pare the proportion of coverage women received toa standard (i.e., proportion of female athletes withinthe NCAA). However, in response to this criticism,Shifflett and Revelle (1994b) argued that anothervalid reference point for one to assess media coveragein collegiate athletics would be to consider the num-ber of teams offered by universities for each gender.This point is compelling because it can be reasonedthat athletes likely get media coverage because theyare on a team, not because they are individuals. For ex-ample, a track team would not expect more coveragethan a basketball team, despite being a much largersport in terms of participation. In the current study, weadopted both reference points and compared the pro-portion of paragraphs devoted to women’s sport to theproportion of female student-athletes and the numberof teams offered at NCAA member institutions.

We consulted the NCAA Sponsorship andParticipation Report (Bray, 2003) to attain informa-tion related to gender participation and teams. Datafor all NCAA divisions were gathered because theNCAA News reports on athletics from all divisions. Inthe 1998–99 academic year, a total of 148,844 womenand 211,366 men participated across the three divi-sions. Thus, women represented 41% of all athletes in1998–99. During the same academic year, there were8,374 women’s teams and 8,004 men’s teams partici-pating across the three divisions. Women’s teams thusrepresented 51% of all teams in the NCAA. To checkwhether these proportions changed from 1999 to 2001,we examined data from the 2000–01 academic year.The proportion of female student-athletes (41% and42%, respectively) only slightly differed between theacademic years and the proportion of women’s teamsstayed the same during this year at 51%. In estab-lishing our benchmarks for comparison, we chose thehigher of the two values for the proportion of student-athletes (42%), and the 51% standard for the propor-tion of women’s teams.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Text

In all, we coded 5,745 paragraphs, which totaled13,128.96 square inches of text. The focus of theparagraphs was predominantly on men (n = 2,342;40.8%), followed by women (n = 1,723; 30%), and“other” (n = 1,672; 29.1%). The largest proportion ofthe paragraphs concerned factual information relatedto athletics (n = 1,909; 33.3%).

We followed Malec’s (1994) indicator of(in)equality by comparing only those paragraphsspecifically related to men’s and women’s teams.Table I provides the frequency distributions from1999, 2001, and the combined data. Chi-square anal-ysis indicated that the amount of coverage allottedto women’s teams did not differ from 1999 to 2001,χ2(1) = 3.65, p = .06. Therefore, we interpret thecombined results. Overall, women received 42.4%of the coverage—a proportion similar to the overallproportion of women who were competing in inter-collegiate athletics (42%), but substantially less thanthe proportion of women’s teams in intercollegiateathletics (51%).

In addition, we conducted an ANOVA procedureto determine if the length of the paragraphs (in squareinches) devoted to men was significantly greater than

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Table I. Frequency Distributions of Text

1999 2001 Overall

Men Women Men Women Men Women

Variable N % N % N % N % N % N %

LocationFront page 26 2.1 23 2.7 21 1.9 31 3.6 47 2.0 54 3.1Back page 89 7.2 25 2.9 83 7.6 134 15.6 172 7.3 159 9.2Prime on page 723 58.1 528 61.2 732 66.7 565 65.7 1455 62.1 1093 63.4Other 406 32.6 287 41.4 262 23.9 130 15.1 668 28.5 417 24.2

ContentFactual athletic 458 36.8 371 43.0 461 42.0 410 47.7 919 39.2 781 45.3Factual nonathletic 326 26.2 223 25.8 145 13.2 135 15.7 471 20.1 358 20.8Personal athletic 349 28.1 215 24.9 355 32.5 217 25.2 704 30.1 432 25.1Personal nonathletic 111 8.9 54 6.3 137 12.5 98 11.4 248 10.6 152 8.8

Overall coverage 1244 59.0 863 41.0 1098 56.1 863 43.9 2342 57.6 1723 42.4

those devoted to women. Results indicate that para-graph length did not significantly differ between thoseparagraphs devoted to men (M = 2.25, SD = 2.17)and those devoted to women (M = 2.25, SD = 2.42),F(1, 4063) = .01, p = .94. These results indicate thatthe length of the coverage did not differ.

In addition, we examined the location of para-graphs devoted to men and women (see Table I). Para-graphs devoted to women and women’s teams weremore likely to be on the front page, back page, and/oron the prime position within the issue than were para-graphs devoted to men and men’s teams. Conversely,paragraphs devoted to men and men’s teams weremore likely to appear in “other” locations withinthe issue than were paragraphs devoted to womenand women’s teams. Chi-square analysis indicatedthat these differences were significant, χ2(3) = 16.62,p < .001. Of course, many of these differences arequite small and only differ by a percentage point oftwo, and it is possible that the significance of the statis-tical test was a function of the large sample size. There-fore, a more plausible conclusion is that the coverageof men’s and women’s sport did not differ by locationon the page.

Next, we examined the content of the paragraphsdevoted to men and women (see Table I). Resultsindicate that information in paragraphs that focusedon women and women’s teams was (a) more likelyto be factual information related to athletics and(b) less likely to be personal information of any kind(i.e., related to athletics or not related to athletics).Again, these differences were found to be significant,χ2(3) = 21.00, p < .001. Although it is also possiblethat the significance of the test was an artifact of thesample size, differences in the content were more pro-

nounced than were differences in the location. There-fore, we have reasonable confidence in the practicalsignificance of these results.

As another way of examining the differencesin the content of the paragraphs, we collapsed thecategories into (a) information related to athletics(whether factual or personal) and (b) information notrelated to athletics (again, whether factual or per-sonal). Results indicate that paragraphs focused onwomen and women’s teams were just as likely to con-tain information related to athletics (70.4%) as wereparagraphs focused on men and men’s teams (69.3%),χ2(1) = .57, p = .45.

Finally, we examined differences in the propor-tion of paragraphs devoted to women and women’steams in our study (1999, 2001) as compared to theresults of Shifflett and Revelle’s (1994a) study (1988,1991). To make such comparisons, we first excludedthe paragraphs in Shifflett and Revelle’s (1994a) studythat were not focused on men or women. This resultedin 1,117 paragraphs, of which 26.5% were devoted towomen and women’s teams. During the 1990–91 aca-demic year, women constituted 33% of all student-athletes (Bray, 2003) and women’s teams represented46% of all intercollegiate teams. Therefore, from apurely descriptive approach, the NCAA News did notprovide equitable coverage to women from 1988 to1991.

In comparing our results to those of Shifflet andRevelle (1994a) we see various differences. First, ourresults indicate that women receive more represen-tative coverage than they did in 1998–1991. Specif-ically, when we compared the proportion of para-graphs devoted to women in Shifflett and Revelle’s(1994a) study to the proportion of student-athletes

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in 1990–91, an inequity of 6.5% points existed (i.e.,26.5% of the coverage as compared to 33% of theathletes). However, in the present study, there wasessentially no difference in proportion of paragraphsdevoted to women (i.e., 42.4% of the coverage as com-pared to 42% of the athletes). Similarly, the NCAANews has made improvements in the paragraphs de-voted to women in comparison to the proportion ofwomen’s teams, as a deficiency of 19.5% points existedin the 1990–91 study (i.e., 26.5% of the coverage ascompared to 46% of the teams). In the present study,the deficit of paragraphs devoted to women was 8.6,as women received 42.4% of the coverage and repre-sented 51% of the teams. Second, we see that the over-all proportion of paragraphs devoted to women andwomen’s teams increased 15.9%, from 26.5 to 42.4%,over the past decade. These results clearly suggest thatwomen are receiving better coverage from the NCAANews now than they did more than a decade ago.

Photographs

A total of 1,086 photographs were coded. Ofthese, most featured men or men’s teams (n = 544;50.1%), followed by women and women’s teams (n =358; 33.0%), and “other” (n = 184; 16.9%). Athleteswere most often photographed competing in an ath-letic event (n = 298; 27.4%).

Again, in following Malec’s (1994) recommenda-tions, a more adequate picture of gender representa-tion comes through examination of those photographsdevoted only to men or to women. After eliminat-ing the photographs of “others,” the dataset was re-

Table II. Frequency Distributions of Photographs

1999 2001 Overall

Men Women Men Women Men Women

Variable N % N % N % N % N % N %

LocationFront page 18 8.2 10 7.4 15 4.6 13 5.8 33 6.1 23 6.4Back page 13 5.9 5 3.7 20 6.2 14 6.3 33 6.1 19 5.3Prime on page 85 38.6 68 50.4 112 34.6 83 37.2 197 36.2 151 42.2Other 104 66.7 52 38.5 177 54.6 113 50.7 281 51.7 165 46.1

ContentCompeting athlete 59 26.8 52 38.5 85 26.2 94 42.2 144 26.5 146 40.8Athlete noncompetitive 14 6.4 10 7.4 19 5.9 21 9.4 33 6.1 31 8.7Athlete/coach head 33 15.0 22 16.3 65 20.1 26 11.7 98 18.0 48 13.4Other head 83 37.3 38 28.1 97 29.9 47 21.1 179 32.9 85 23.7Other group 2 0.9 1 0.7 3 0.9 0 0 5 0.9 1 0.3Other 30 13.6 12 8.9 55 17.0 35 15.7 85 15.6 47 13.1

Overall coverage 220 62.0 135 38.0 324 59.2 223 40.8 544 60.3 358 39.7

duced to 902 photographs. Results are presented inTable II. Chi-square analysis indicated that the pro-portion of women featured in photographs did notdiffer by year, χ2(1) = .68, p = .41; thus, we interpretthe results from the combined dataset. Results indi-cate that 39.7% of the photographs featured womenor women’s teams—a proportion that closely mirrorsthe proportion of female student-athletes (42%) butlags behind the proportion of women teams (51%).

In addition, an ANOVA was used to test forgender differences in the size of the photographs.Results indicate that the size of the photographs(in square inches) that featured women was signi-ficantly larger (M = 9.28, SD = 9.54) than the sizeof the photographs that featured men (M = 7.51,SD = 8.59), F(1, 895) = 8.28, p < .01, d = .02. How-ever, the small effect size (see Cohen, 1988) indicatesthat the differences are likely to be a function of thelarge sample. These results suggest that women re-ceive similar coverage in relation to the proportionof female athletes, but less in relation to the ratio ofteams; further, the length of the coverage does notdiffer.

In addition, we conducted analyses related tothe location and content of the photographs. Resultsof the chi-square analysis showed no gender differ-ences in where the photographs were located withinthe issue, χ2(3) = 3.60, p = .31 (see Table II for thefrequency distributions). On the other hand, therewere significant differences in the content of the pho-tographs, χ2(5) = 27.02, p < .001 (see Table II forthe frequency distributions). When compared to pho-tographs of men, photographs of women were (a)more likely to show an athlete competing in an athletic

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context and (b) less likely to show a head shot of oth-ers (e.g., administrators).

Finally, we compared the results of our data tothose presented by Shifflett and Revelle (1994a).Again, we followed Malec’s (1994) recommendationsand excluded the photographs not specifically focusedon men or women. In their study, Shifflett and Revellereported that 34% (n = 49) of the photographs weredevoted to women, a figure similar to the proportionof female athletes in 1990–91 (33%) but well belowthe proportion of teams devoted to women (46%).The current data indicate a 5.7% increase (from 34 to39.7%) in the proportion of photographs devoted towomen and women’s teams from the timeframe ofShifflett and Revelle’s study (1998, 1991) to the datacollection period in our study (1999, 2001).

In addition, based on Shifflett and Revelle’sdata, the average size of the photographs focusedon women was smaller (M = 5.04) than the averagesize of the photographs focused on men (M = 8.25).Our results stand in stark contrast to Shifflett andRevelle’s, as the size of the photographs that featuredwomen was significantly larger (notwithstanding thesmall effect size) than the photographs of men. Theseresults suggest that women received greater coveragein the NCAA News in terms of photographs in 1999–2001 than they did during the timeframe of Shifflettand Revelle’s study.

The Glass Is Half Full in the Coverageof Women’s Athletics

Our data indicate that women were the fo-cus of 42.4% of the paragraphs and 39.7% of thephotographs. Therefore, from one perspective (i.e.,Malec, 1994), the coverage of women is equitable. Indrawing from Malec’s (1994) argument, the propor-tion of coverage women receive should be comparedto a standard. If the standard is the proportion of fe-male student-athletes, our findings support the notionof equity in the coverage of women’s athletics in theNCAA News. Recall that the NCAA News is a pub-lication whose purpose is to report on the activitieswithin the NCAA. Thus, one argument could be thatif coverage were equitable, we would expect the pro-portion of articles and photographs to mirror the pro-portion of female student-athletes. Our data indicatethat this was the case. Further, women and men re-ceived similar length of coverage (i.e., square inchesof paragraphs and photographs). Therefore, it couldbe argued that the answer to the research question re-

garding whether women are receiving equitable cov-erage is yes; women do receive equitable coveragewithin the NCAA News.

Recall that in our second research question, weasked whether the coverage of women’s athletics inthe NCAA News has improved since Shifflett andRevelle’s (1994a) study. In Shifflett and Revelle’sstudy, 26.5% of the paragraphs and 34% of the pho-tographs were focused on women. Our results froma decade later reveal that the coverage of women’sathletics, when compared to men’s, has improved.Specifically, the proportion of paragraphs focusedon women has increased by 15.9%, and the pro-portion of photographs focused on women has in-creased by 5.7%. Not only has the overall coverage ofwomen improved, but the coverage has also becomemore equitable. Specifically, whereas the proportionof paragraphs focusing on women was less than theproportion of female student-athletes in Shifflett andRevelle’s study (26.5% and 34%, respectively), thesedifferences did not exist in the current study (42.4%and 41.0%, respectively). Therefore, we see that thecoverage of women’s athletics has improved since thetime of Shifflett and Revelle’s study.

The Glass Is Half Empty in the Coverageof Women’s Athletics

As Shiflett and Revelle (1994b) argued, attemptsto define equity often result in “occasional contradic-tions and disagreement” (p. 383). Malec (1994) con-tended that equity in media coverage related to col-legiate athletics should be based on comparisons tothe proportion of female to male athletes compet-ing in athletics. However, Shifflet and Revelle (1994a,1994b) made a compelling case for comparing thestandard not to the proportion of athletes, but to theproportion of teams allocated to women and to men.From this latter perspective, we see that NCAA Newsis still failing to provide equitable coverage in twomajor categories to women and women’s teams com-peting in the NCAA.

Specifically, we see that the coverage allottedto women within paragraphs is lacking, as 42.4% ofthe paragraphs and 39.7% of the photographs fea-tured women or women’s teams although womenparticipated on 51% of the teams. Thus, it could alsobe argued that the answer to the research questionregarding equitable coverage is no; women do notreceive equitable coverage within the NCAA Newswhen compared to the proportion of women’s teamscompeting in the NCAA.

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Differences in Not-for-Profit and for-Profit Media

Women received equitable coverage in many cat-egories we analyzed, and they made great strides ingarnering better gender representation in the NCAANews. These findings mark a contrast from otherstudies, where researchers examined for-profit me-dia sources (e.g., Fink & Kensicki, 2002; Kane, 1988;Tuggle, 1997). These differences highlight the impor-tance of considering resource dependence (Pfeffer &Salancik, 1978) in studies of media coverage. Con-sider, for example, the case of Sports Illustrated, whichhas the largest world-wide distribution of any sportsmagazine. According to Fink and Kensicki, men con-stitute 77% of this magazine’s readership. Therefore,in seeking to satisfy their customers’ wants and prefer-ences (which, presumably, is to cover men and men’ssports), Sports Illustrated has tailored its content ac-cordingly (see Fink & Kensicki, 2002; Kane, 1988).Failure to do so would possibly result in fewer sub-scribers and subsequent economic losses. On the otherhand, the NCAA News’ readership consists of per-sons within NCAA-member institutions, and, there-fore, the pressures that face Sports Illustrated are notpresent for the NCAA News. As Sagas et al. (2000)noted, “due to the relative absence of external mar-ket forces affecting decisions . . . the representationand coverage of both men’s and women’s intercol-legiate sport should theoretically be equitable, if notequal” (p. 199). Results presented in this study largelysupport this perspective.

Thus far, we have argued that dependence onexternal actors dictates, at least in part, the cover-age of men and women in not-for-profit and for-profitpublications. However, a recent study by Fink andKensicki (2002) indicated that this might not alwaysbe the case. In their study of Sports Illustrated forWomen, they found that the coverage of women wassuch that it still emphasized the athlete’s femininityand conformed to existing stereotypes about women.However, our results indicate that this was not thecase in the NCAA News. Specifically, when comparedto paragraphs written about men, paragraphs writtenabout women were (a) more likely to contain factualinformation related to athletics (45.3% and 39.2%,respectively) and (b) as likely to contain any informa-tion about athletics (70.4% and 69.3%, respectively).Further, the photographs were more likely to fea-ture women in athletic competition (40.8%) than theywere to feature men in athletic competition (26.5%).Of course, we do not know, based on our analyses, ifthe paragraphs and photographs were more likely to

feature women in gender-appropriate sports (i.e., ten-nis, swimming) than gender-inappropriate sports (i.e.,rugby, hockey; see Kane & Parks, 1994). However,these data do indicate that the coverage of womenin the NCAA News depicts their athletic prowess—afinding not seen in other studies.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

In summary, previous research from Shifflett andRevelle (1994a) indicated that the NCAA News pro-vided inequitable coverage to women and women’steams. The purpose of our study was to provide are-examination of the NCAA News. In doing so,we acknowledged previous criticisms of Shifflett andRevelle’s work (see Malec, 1994) and extended theirstudy by (a) comparing the coverage to standards (i.e.,the proportion of female athletes and teams compet-ing in intercollegiate athletics) and (b) providing amore extensive analysis of the NCAA News. Thereare both theoretical and practical implications fromthe study.

From a theoretical perspective, we previouslyargued that a resource-dependence perspective(Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) was useful in understand-ing the dynamics of media coverage of women’sand men’s sports. That is, we argued that consumers(upon who for-profit media are dependent) and theirdemands and preferences might shape the amountand type of coverage of women’s sport among for-profit media. It was also proposed, based on Sagaset al. (2000), that not-for-profit publications, suchas the NCAA News, did not contend with suchforces and should therefore have more representa-tive coverage of women and women’s teams. How-ever, when the results of this study are examined alongwith previous research (Shifflett & Revelle, 1994a)and the political context of university athletics to-day, it is possible that not-for-profit publications dohave greater dependence on external actors than ini-tially thought (e.g., Sagas et al., 2000). Shifflett andRevelle’s (1994a) initial findings sparked consider-able debate in the academic literature (see Malec,1994; Shifflette & Revelle, 1994b). Further, academi-cians, coaches, and administrators voiced their con-cern to the NCAA News about these findings (DavidPickle, personal communication, January 6, 2003). Inaddition, there were, and continue to be, initiativesby the NCAA to improve gender equity, in terms ofparticipation of, funding of, and media representa-tion of women (“NCAA,” 2002). Therefore, various

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sources upon whom the NCAA News is dependent—administrators, coaches, the NCAA—were all push-ing for greater representation of women and women’ssports. Thus, consistent with the resource-dependenceperspective, preferences and attitudes of these valu-able constituents quite possibly led to the improve-ment of the media coverage in 1999–2001 relative to1988–1991.

From a practical standpoint, our results indicatethat, whereas there were great disparities in coveragein the past (1988/1991), the NCAA News now providesmore representative, and, in some cases, better cover-age for women. However, we recognize that establish-ing equity can depend on one’s perspective; thus, in us-ing the benchmark of teams devoted to women ratherthan the proportion of athletes, some may still cate-gorize the findings in some categories (i.e., proportionof paragraphs and pictures devoted to women) in theNCAA News as inequitable. Therefore, in responseto our underlying question, “Is the glass half full orhalf empty?”, we contend, based on our findings, thatthe glass could be considered “one-quarter empty.”Clearly the NCAA News has improved in many facetsregarding the representativeness of women in inter-collegiate athletics. However, there may be room forcontinued improvement in seeking to represent notjust the proportion of female athletes, but also theproportion of female teams in the NCAA. Giventhat in many categories under study the publicationhas already met this benchmark, remedying thesedeficiencies should be within reach. Furthermore, inrecognizing that the NCAA News does represent anot-for-profit publication, our data do indicate thatimproving media coverage of women is possible. Man-agers and editors can, and should, take steps to pro-vide equitable coverage for all athletes, coaches, andteams.

Finally, there are several avenues for future re-search in the area of gender representation in sportmedia. First, there is evidence that, in general, theNCAA News is depicting women with respect to theirathletic prowess rather than as sex symbols. However,we are unsure whether there are differences based onthe sport played. Therefore, future researchers shouldconsider examining the coverage of women and menin different sports. In addition, we argued it was pos-sible that, in providing more representative coverageof women and women’s sport, the NCAA News re-sponded to the preferences of various groups uponwhich it was dependent. Future researchers shouldconsider this possibility in greater depth. Finally, giventhe high Internet use among sport consumers, future

researchers should consider extending this line of in-quiry to the NCAA’s web site. Such a study couldexamine not only the amount of type of coveragewomen and women’s teams receive, but also the time-liness of the information of the information posted forwomen’s and men’s sport.

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