Many women and girls will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Title IX this year by hitting the court, fields or pool. On a sunny weekend afternoon in practically any community in the country, you can find women who are competing or training for any number of athletics endeavors. In the fall, you might see women playing soccer or volleyball at the local university, where they are a part of the nearly 150,000 female intercollegiate student-athletes in the country.

Where you will not likely see these women -- or the more than 2 1/2 million girls who participate at the high-school level -- is in the sports pages of your local newspaper.

Since the passage of Title IX, which opened the doors for many girls and women in sport, there have been tremendous gains in opportunities in sports for women. Those gains in participation, however, have not been matched by gains in media coverage. Over the past several years, researchers have consistently found that media coverage of women's sports is low.

Participation but not coverage

"Participation rates have skyrocketed and attendance has skyrocketed," said Mary Jo Kane, who directs the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota and is a professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. "But you'd never know that by looking at much of the media."

Judith Jenkins George, professor of health and physical performance at DePauw University, released a study last year that showed media coverage had increased only slightly in the past 10 years.

George's study analyzed The New York Times and The Indianapolis Star. Her 1989 study showed the women received 2.2 percent of all sports coverage in the Times, while the Star allotted 2.7 percent.

Her 1999 study, released last year, showed that women received 6.7 percent of all sports coverage in the Times and 8.6 percent in the Star. Photographs of female athletes accounted for 8.9 percent of the sports photos in the Times and 9.8 percent in the Star.

According to NCAA statistics, during that same 10-year period the number of women participating in intercollegiate athletics rose from about 90,000 in 1988-89 to nearly 150,000 in 1999, when women also represented 40 percent of the student-athlete population. That same time period saw the addition and subsequent growth of professional leagues in women's basketball (WNBA), and women's soccer (WUSA), and an increase of nearly one million female participants on the high-school level.

"At this point in our history, with women making up so many of the participants in sports, why do men receive more than 90 percent of the sports coverage?" Jenkins said. "Media coverage of women's sports has a long way to go. (The media does) a respectable job around the time of the Olympics. The rest of the time we forget about women."

Myths to overcome

Ray Begovich, assistant professor in the Pulliam School of Journalism at Franklin College, has observed and written about the trends in sports coverage over the years.

"There is no doubt that there has been great improvement in the coverage of women's sports over the last 30 years, yet there's no doubt it is still light years away from where it should be."

Begovich coordinates the advertising and public relations sequence at Franklin, and he's also a former newspaper reporter.

Begovich offered reasons for the disparity in the coverage of men's and women's sports.

"There are two myths driving it," he said. "One is the unspoken myth. It's what you'll never hear said, yet it's what some people think. There is this ridiculous belief that the women's games aren't as good."

That myth translates into a supposition that somehow the women's games aren't worthy of coverage, Begovich said.

"The second myth is the spoken myth, and this is the one you will actually hear. And it is that the coverage decisions are really driven by the audience and not by the sports editors."

In other words, Begovich said, the editors say they are simply offering up what they think people want to read and see. Begovich dismisses that reasoning as well.

"The reason people are interested in men's athletics is because the media have created that interest through decades of coverage," he said. "Journalists don't realize what power they have. If you cover something, you create even greater interest in it. And, the more you cover it, the more people are interested."

Minnesota's Kane disputes that no one is interested, particularly in today's society. She points to recent attendance records in many women's sports as a sign that the market is there.

"The University of Minnesota went from 500 fans a game (for women's basketball) to 10,000 to 13,000 a game," she said. "And there is a natural market out there that's desperate for information about women's sports, and that's roughly half the population."

So given that the environment may or may not be receptive, what's an athletics administrator supposed to do to help increase coverage of their women's sports?

Kane and Begovich both agree that media outlets that devote coverage to women's sports can reap tangible benefits, so that might be a place to start.

"It's important to persuade the media that coverage of women's sports is in their own self-interest, especially with the tremendous growth of women's sports in the wake of Title IX," Kane said. "If (the media) don't actively promote women's sports, they're ignoring a market. One of the things Title IX has proven is that if you build them a cultural 'space' and make it societally acceptable for women to participate in sports, they will come. And women have come to sports in record numbers."

Begovich says covering women's sports is "not only the right thing to do, but it's also a good business decision."

Newspapers in particular have become concerned about losing readers, Begovich said, but sports remains a niche where newspapers continue to be strong.

"People still turn to newspapers for in-depth coverage of sports, and by increasing the diversity of your sports page you can attract more readers and also keep more readers," he said. "And, niche markets can be really attractive from the ad revenue standpoint.

"If you're truly making a business decision, then you've got to consider that the players, for example on a girls' high-school team, have just as many parents and grandparents and friends in a community as the boys' team does. You put their pictures in the paper, too, along with the boys, and you're going to sell more papers."

Kane also points to some sports as those that would permit market segmentation and specialized advertising.

"When you cover women's sports, you're also growing a market," she said. "And there's already a market there in sports like women's basketball, volleyball and soccer, and in some parts of the country it's there in softball and women's ice
hockey."

In terms of changing the ways the media does business, Begovich notes that sports information directors and other administrators are more likely to have productive results if they take a positive, rather than accusatory, approach.

"You're not going to change the situation by whining at the media," Begovich said. "Look at what you can do. For one, I would look to provide more media training for coaches. Coaches so often are the ones who deal with the media, and it's helpful if they have been trained and have some knowledge about the ways the media work, the deadlines and other pressures the media are under, in addition to how to give good quotes for a game or preview story."

Begovich also encourages nontraditional thinking. For example, he said, look to tout feature stories if you're not getting any game coverage. "Find those interesting and compelling human-interest stories and pitch those," he said.

Begovich also advises keeping an eye on the school newspaper and radio station. "If they're covering more men's games than women's games, you need to tell them to stop it. Or more likely tell their faculty advisor. It's our responsibility in journalism schools to start changing the way future members of the media see women's sports. We need to be breaking those myths."

As often is true of so many things, the best opportunity to effect change is at home.

"We're not going to change the media overnight, but we can change what we do at our institutions," Begovich said. "We should be committing the same amount of personnel and the same amount of resources to promoting the women as we do for the men. In a lot of (athletics) programs, the men get more of the time and the effort. We should commit the same number of resources to the women and see what happens."

In the past, there has been a sense that athletics departments may not devote adequate resources to promoting women's sports. Some recent studies seem to confirm that concern.

A survey of conducted by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) and released last summer showed that 25 percent of the men's basketball programs in Division I use 76 percent or more of the sports information staff's time. It also showed that 13 percent of the men's basketball programs use 91 percent or more of the promotional staff's time.

In a study published in the Sociology of Sport Journal in 2000, researchers at Texas A&M University, College Station, studied 52 Division I-A Web sites to see if the institutions devoted the same effort to softball as they did to baseball.

The study looked at the sites at the beginning of the season and weekly during the middle of the season. Baseball teams were far more likely to have biographical information on coaches and players, press releases, updated statistical data and player photos. Baseball coverage outpaced softball in almost every category the researchers surveyed.

The researchers chose baseball and softball to compare because the two sports have similar scholarships, assistant coaches and budgets, Sagas said.

About 93 percent of baseball teams had updated news releases, compared to 86 percent for softball. Eighty-nine percent of baseball sites were updated after games, compared to 79 percent of softball sites. About 65 percent of baseball sites had player bios and updated statistics, compared to 46 percent for softball

"The results show two things: that some women's sports are still not getting equal attention from their own schools and that there could be possible Title IX violations occurring," Sagas said. "You're obviously treating baseball as more important, but the question is why?"

The answer isn't necessarily that the baseball teams were more successful, either, Sagas said. "Our findings showed that 18 softball teams (among the 52) finished the season in the top 25, compared to 13 baseball teams," he said. "So it wasn't that the women's teams weren't winning or weren't competitive."

Sagas assisted with a follow-up study done by George Cunningham, formerly of Texas A&M and currently a doctoral student at Ohio State University, that was published recently in the International Sports Journal. That study showed athletics departments' Web sites were likely to offer and maintain similar Web sites for men's and women's basketball, a finding that Sagas finds encouraging.

Sagas, who plans to continue with future studies, brings an interesting perspective to the work. He is a former baseball student-athlete, and his wife, a former softball student-athlete, is a current softball coach.

"I think there's an ethical imperative here. It's grossly unfair (to treat the genders differently.) You're really letting a lot of people down if you don't try to do the right thing by both genders," he said, noting that athletics Web sites provide information to parents and friends of student-athletes as well as serving to inform potential recruits and others.

Sagas noted that unlike the private media, institutions -- including sports information departments and campus newspapers and radio stations -- are bound by Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in higher education.

"It could very well be a Title IX violation," Sagas said. "But above all that, the attitude of doing more for the men is unfair and unethical and not what we should be doing in a university setting. It's unacceptable that this should be occurring on the Division I level. The resources are there; it's how you allot them."

Toward equity

"Media coverage is cost-effective and it also has what we call 'status conferral,' " he said, noting that the status conferral can result in higher attendance at games, as well as more media coverage. "Coverage also has value to (athletics departments) in that it helps achieve measurable results in ticket sales and in recruiting."

Scottie Rodgers, NCAA assistant director of the Division I Women's Basketball Championship, says some athletics departments do not understand the numerous benefits of promoting women's sports the same way they promote men's sports.

"I found that at a lot of places, they don't treat sports the same in terms of process," he said. Those differences often result in less coverage for women's sports and men's Olympic sports, he said.

"You get better results when you establish a process and treat all sports similarly," Rodgers said. "You have to treat cross country the same way you treat football. Have information in media guides that the media can look at. Maybe your budgets are different, so you have limits, but be sure that the essential information is in there. Work with the coaches of all sports and educate them about the media in general and also as to who the media are in your area. Generally, the football coaches know and the others do not. Make all of your coaches media savvy. If you don't have the budget to bring in an outside person, see if professors in your communications school would be interested."

Rodgers, whose primary focus at the NCAA is media relations for the Division I Women's Basketball Championship, previously was associate director of media relations for the Southeastern Conference. He got his start as a journalism student at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, where he worked in the sports information department promoting women's soccer.

"I think it's important to get students involved. I worked with women's soccer," he said, "and here many years later I'm still a women's soccer fan."

Rodgers advises thinking creatively as well.

"When the guys would come in for a football press conference, I gave them a schedule of the women's soccer games and game notes," he said. "If you have a football or basketball coach's show, suggest a segment highlighting another sport or see about having another coach come on as a guest. Take advantage of those opportunities you do have to promote your women's teams and your men's Olympic sports."

When it comes to your department's commitment to women's sports, Rodgers advises working from the top down.

"Start with your athletics director. Convince him or her that your office needs the tools to succeed," Rodgers said. "And above all, be creative."

Begovich also said to assume that people have the best intentions, even if the coverage or support are lacking.

"In many cases, it's about the way things have been done before and it's ingrained in people. It's not necessarily malicious," he said. "But try to control the things you can, like how much you support efforts to promote your women's sports."