Gender inequality involves unequal treatment and opportunities based on gender, notably in sports through pay gaps, limited resources, underrepresentation, stereotypes, and sexism. Despite progress, women in sports lag behind men in attention, promotion, wages, and media coverage. When recognized, they face biased portrayals and gender discrimination. Media plays a crucial role in perpetuating these disparities, often focusing on women athletes' appearance, age, or family life rather than performance. Women's sports receive less coverage, and female representation in sports journalism is minimal, with few women in broadcasting or as weekday radio hosts.
Efforts by organizations like the International Olympic Committee, UN Women, and the Council of Europe aim to improve the fair portrayal of women athletes, but more action is needed in visibility, training, and awareness.
The POWER project aims to address the issues of gender inequalities in sports journalism and media and to contribute to the promotion of an unbiased and non-stereotypical representation of women athletes in media.
The project has duration of 24 months and it is structured in 5 work packages
- Project Management and coordination
- Research on the portrayal of women athletes in media
- Strategy formulation and development of guidelines for fair representations of women athletes in media a in press
- Development of training materials for journalists, journalism students, media professionals, bloggers and content creators on how to adopt the updated guidelines and promote the gender equality in sports through their work and conducting of trainings
- Dissemination of the project and its results and raising awareness regarding the fair representation of women athletes and challenge any gender stereotypes that exist in the sport industry.
The project is funded by Erasmus + Sport and it is implementing in 6 European Countries (Gr, BG, IT, HU, BU, ES) by 6 organizations.
Start date: 1/11/2024
End date: 31/10/2026
