Is some Olympic commentary sexist?
By Claire Bates, 11 August 2016
According to a recent study by Cambridge University Press. Researchers
analysed millions of words relating to men and women and Olympic sports
in the Cambridge English Corpus (CEC) and the Sport Corpus - massive
databases that include news articles and posts on social media.
The study revealed common word combinations for female athletes
included aged, older, pregnant and married or unmarried. In contrast, top
word combinations for male athletes included fastest, strong, big and great.
It also found that the language around women in sport also focussed
disproportionately on appearance, clothes and personal lives.
It’s not just language where there is a difference in attitude - female Olympic
athletes are still garnering far fewer column inches and given less TV airtime
than their male counterparts. Researchers found men were mentioned twice as
often in the CEC and three times more often in the Sports Corpus.
However, some things are changing. The proportion of female athletes
competing at the Olympics has increased with every games since 1964 when
it was 13.2%. By 1988, 26.1% of competitors were women and in Rio 2016 it
is 45%.
(Adaptado de www.bbc.com - acesso em 11/08/2016)
Segundo o estudo apresentado no texto, as referências a atletas femininas: