On October 6th the Seattle Storm became the 2020 WNBA champions with a dominating 92-59 victory over the Las Vegas Aces. The win over the Aces completed the three-game sweep in a best of five series for the WNBA title. The Storm had an impressive 18-4 regular season record and a perfect 6-0 postseason record to secure the title. The team was led by former league MVP Breanna Stewart and veteran point guard Sue Bird. Stewart had an outstanding finals performance, claiming her second finals MVP and becoming the only player in league history to have a 35+ point, 15+ rebound game in the finals.
Despite this dominating championship run by one of the best professional sports teams today, it was largely overshadowed by the ongoing NBA playoffs. Historically, women’s sport has been largely marginalized in the media and coverage of women sport has been unfairly disproportional compared to the coverage of male sport. Research has indicated that on average there is 88% of media coverage devoted to male sports compared to only 8% devoted to female sports. It should also be noted that a large portion of the already thin coverage involving female athletes involves stories of humorous nonserious sport events and sexual objectification of woman athletes. Sue Bird and the WBNA have been pushing for equality in regard to women sport for some time, and there is still much work to be done.
Although the coverage of women’s sport has improved slightly within the last few years, there are still far fewer female sporting events being televised and reported on compared to male sporting events. So, the question remains, when are woman athletes going to get the recognition and the respect they deserve from the media?
Tonyp99
Sport, Not Games ⚽ 