She Shoots; He Scores

Fair Play?

For everyone to develop a true sense of the roles women can and do play in the events of the world, the media have to provide us with an accurate report of the way things really are. Yet a new study shows another way in which women are literally left out of the picture.

More American women are playing sports than ever before--a third of all NCAA athletes are female. But you'd be hard-pressed to notice it in the country's top newspaper's. Coverage of women's sports is minimal--and may even be slipping, reports the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles after tallying the number of sports stories in USA Today, the Boston Globe, the Orange County Register, and the Dallas Morning News.

In each paper, fewer than 5% of the stories were devoted to women only. On the whole, articles focusing on men outnumbered those about women by a ratio of 23 to 1. Men dominated the visual images as well, capturing more than 92% of all the photos on the sports pages.

The foundation, headed by Anita L. DeFrantz, thinks the story is even worse than the numbers suggest. "Given the greater number of women playing sports today, the underrepresentation may be even more pronounced than it used to be." Further, the new results exactly parallel findings of a study the foundation conducted last year, when it reviewed television coverage of women's sports.

"We feel the situation must change," says DeFrantz.

Call it foul play.

Photo: NO HURRAHS: Playing in a vaccuum. ((c) Damian Strohmeyer/Sports Illustrated)