The US Open 2023 concluded yesterday, and throughout the tournament I kept track of how my newspaper – The Hindu – covered the men’s game vs. the women’s game in their sports pages, to see if there was any bias there. (Previously I covered Wimbledon.)
This is how I kept score: Column space by cm; a point for a headline, a point for a quote, and a point for a “top row” article. (They did away with “the day in numbers” section this time). I did not consider photos, because photos of female athletes are something male journalists are quite happy to publish.
Findings
The overall coverage was 58% male. Disappointing. All categories were male-biased: column space, headlines (nearly even but not), quotes, and “top row” pieces.
An instance of sexism in the report of the women’s final: the writer claimed that “Both players made a slew of mistakes in an error-strewn final”. Rubbish. Sabalenka did make a lot of errors, but Gauff did not: she only made 19 unforced errors in the 25 games. That’s a lower error rate than what either Djokovic or Medvedev made in their final. And the total error rate isn’t that different: 2.6 errors per game for the women’s final, and 2.2 in the men’s final.
The men’s final got a lot more coverage too – nearly double. And that’s after excluding a separate article specific to Djokovic’s record.
Here are the articles themselves:
Frequently Raised Objections (FROs) to Women’s Tennis
1. “Women’s tennis lacks a big 3.”
This comes from this article in The Hindu and this one in the Guardian. Their argument is that men’s tennis has (or had) a Big 3; women’s tennis does not; therefore women’s tennis is lesser. This is a rigged game and it works like this: Whatever men happen to be doing is declared good. If the women aren’t doing that, then that’s bad. If the situation was reversed – if there was a big 3 in women’s tennis winning everything in sight, and men’s tennis was full of competition and flux and unpredictability – the same commentators would still be bemoaning women’s tennis, complaining about the lack of variety, unpredictability and competition. I’m old enough to remember the Graf-Seles years, more so because Seles is my all-time favourite player. From Australian 1991 to Australian 1994, Graf or Seles won 13 grand slams in a row. That same period had 7 different men’s winners. But people back then still gave women’s tennis short shrift. I don’t recall any journalists bemoaning “the lack of a Big 2” in men’s tennis.
This happens due to the characteristic of “identification” in such systems of power: patriarchy is a system that is male-identified, in that men are taken as the standard for human beings in general. Incidentally, the two ESPN links above offer a ready-made example: The link for the men’s history page is https://www.espn.com/tennis/history, while the women’s history page is https://www.espn.com/tennis/history/_/type/women.
Notice that these sexist views aren’t held only by men either – they’re echoed in that Guardian piece by none other than Chris Evert.
2. “Less coverage of women isn’t sexist, it just reflects what people are interested in.”
Sexism is both conscious and unconscious. In a patriarchal society which influences our minds from the day we’re born, it would be very surprising if we weren’t less interested in women’s tennis. We value whatever men do more. I’ve talked at length about this “value gap” in my Year of Grand Slam Data post, so I won’t repeat that here. If journalists, editors and sports fans haven’t had feminist consciousness-raising, then they will prefer men’s tennis. So to say that “this is just people’s interests” is merely a restatement of the problem.
3. “It’s just like doubles.“
An extension of #1 above, this is an argument from analogy that goes like this: “People aren’t that interested in doubles, hence it does not get as much media coverage as singles. Similarly, people aren’t that interested in women’s tennis, so that’s why it does not get as much media coverage.”
As with any analysis of an argument from analogy, we look for any significant and relevant differences between the two objects: in this case, doubles tennis and women’s tennis. I trust you can see there is no patriarchy-equivalent social system that oppresses doubles players.
4. “Five sets vs. three sets”
I’ve covered this in my Year of Grand Slam Data post: in short, the women are willing to play five sets but the ITF has a problem with it; there is also a case for tennis scoring for both men and women to be revamped the way other sports like badminton have done.
5. “Women’s tennis is full of unforced errors/[some other thing].”
This too is covered in my Year of Grand Slam Data post. I can’t find the same kind of aggregate data any more to do a comparison – it looks like the grand slams stopped publishing it. It’s worth keeping in mind how sexism might make us see things that aren’t there, like my “full of unforced errors” acquaintance in that post, who turned out to be wrong. It’s very hard to tell without hard data.
In any case, tennis like most sports was made by men for men; men have a natural advantage; so it’s senseless to expect or demand women’s tennis to be just like men’s tennis.
Previously: Wimbledon 2023. Up next (and last): Australian Open 2024.
Sunil D'Monte 