By: Rebecca Doser
FEATURES EDITOR
Amy Farrell ’99 won the Ironman World Championship in Kona on Saturday October 11, 2014 in her women’s 35-39 age group. This event includes a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2 mile run. This admirable SLU alumna proved that “third time’s a charm” as she crushed her third appearance at the international event with a winning time of 9 hours, 53 minutes and 2 seconds.
Girls’ participation in sports has grown an average of 50 percent per year over the last half decade, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. Aspiring female athletes do not lack role models such as Farrell, but they do lack one element: attention in the sporting-goods industry and media coverage.
Approximately 40 percent of American athletes are female but only 4 percent of sports media highlights female sports, according to the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota.
Females face a similar problem in regards to their representation among sports brands in the consumer industry.
“Sporting goods is a guy industry,” Matt Powell, an analyst with industry researcher SportsOneSource says. “Women have been extremely underserved by the consumer industry,” he argues.
12-year-old McKenna Peterson, an Arizona basketball player agrees. McKenna spoke out against Dick’s Sporting Goods’ absence of female association with basketball in their 2014 basketball catalog.
In her direct letter to the company, McKenna writes, “There are NO girls in the catalog! Oh, wait, sorry. There IS a girl in the catalog on page 6. SITTING in the STANDS.”
She continues her letter by informing Dick’s that she is a consistent consumer of their basketball shoes, hoops and practice gear. She says she will urge her dad to take her to another store in the future that actually supports girls playing basketball as opposed to merely placing them on the sidelines.
“Women have come to embrace athletics just as well as men, and sports are a huge part of many females’ identities,” a captain of the SLU women’s basketball team, Kara McDuffee’15 says. “However, clearly the image of women in sports is still under question.”
McDuffee and members of S.A.A.C (Student Athletic Advisory Committee) engage with local female athletes across all ages during their annual “Women in Sports” event during the spring semester. It has proven to be a successful event to merge an older generation of successful female athletes with an aspiring younger generation of female athletes all throughout Canton.
When McKenna’s father, Chris, a media sports professional at Phoenix’s NBC12 and AZCentral Sports tweeted his daughter’s letter, the reply he received was enormous. A response of more than 4,800 re-tweets lit up his young daughter’s face, in hopes that her letter would make a difference.
Prior to the catalog coming out, Dick’s Sporting Goods was among many popular retailers attempting to win over girls as a growing market. In August, Edward W. Stack, Dick’s chief executive stated that the company made room for more women’s apparel by taking away space from the golf equipment section of the store.
Unfortunately, publication of the 2014 basketball catalog failed to correspond with this change in the store’s layout. Stack responded to McKenna’s email saying, “we clearly messed up and I can personally guarantee that next year’s basketball catalog will prominently feature female athletes, as it should have this year.” He goes on to say that as a dad and former coach himself, he understands McKenna’s concerns. The company’s tweets in the days following this incident portrayed a flurry of young female consumers and athletes strutting their Dick’s Sporting Goods apparel and gear. How ironic!
“A company such as Dick’s should be promoting female athletes and the fact that so many girls are pursuing such a healthy outlet for positive development,” McDuffee says. “McKenna hit the nail on the head with her letter, and I hope Dick’s Sporting Goods does something to change its image and advertising.”
What is really fascinating is taking a look at how female athletes are portrayed in the media, if at all.
“Athleticism is secondary,” Nicole LaVoi, at the University of Minnesota says. “They’re usually (portrayed as) sexy, pretty, and feminine.”
This seems to be a common theme, as evident in the catalog that McKenna critiqued, in which the only female evident was portrayed merely as a bystander.
If Dick’s wants to follow in the footsteps of large sporting brands such as Nike, who recently recorded a 30 percent growth in women’s sports apparel so far this year, then it should seek out advertising that actually promotes female athletes as opposed to placing them as fans or bystanders.