Women in sport in Australia.

WOMEN IN SPORT

Media representation reflects the cultural values and attitudes of Australian society with to a huge degree but not completely.

Australia's sporting attitude has a big impact in the way women's sport is represented as it focuses on men's sport. Australians have interest in more men's sport because they display more skill and are more exciting to watch. For that reason women's sport is a lot of the time, ignored by the media and therefore, the public.

However there not all of Australia societies have the same cultural values and attitudes. Although the media rarely reflected on their achievement women have still worked hard and excelled at their sport. They have had support and encouragement from other factors beside the media. The 2000 Olympic Games is a good example of Australian women's strength in a number of sports. While Australian men won only 20 medals, women almost doubled them by winning 36.

Chicago girls at Sokol Sports, Prague, Austria (L...

Ian Thorpe

English: A collection of a few books about women's...

It was during this time that media finally treated women with respect and equality. However, it was short-lived. As soon as the hype surrounding the 2000 Olympics died down, the media quickly dropped their constant appraisal of women in sport.

The inequalities between the sponsorship of men and women in sport exist because of the huge degree of popularity of men's sport. The media sets this level of popularity by the amount of coverage men and women's sport receive on television, in the newspaper and on the radio. Because the majority of this sport coverage if men's sport, obviously they will obtain more sponsorships than women.

Also, most of these inequalities occur simply because companies want to sponsor the top athletes so their product is associated with the best and they overlook the majority of women who have the potential to...