Gender Specific Coverage of Sports Events in Bangladesh: Broadcast Media

Gender discrimination in sports event coverage is a longstanding issue, not confined to a specific culture or region. Numerous studies have substantiated this bias, significantly with women athletes often represented through an unfair framing. This current study significantly analyses the representation of the female athletes in Bangladesh. A content analysis has been conducted on three renowned sports programs from three different television channels, spanning a fifteen-day period. The findings reveal significant contrasts in the framing between male and female athletes indicating that male athletes are portrayed as competitive and deserving of specific airtime in sports programs. On the contrary, women athletes are consistently receiving far less coverage. To understand the reasons behind the gender bias, interviews with open ended question have been followed to find out the disparities in how male and female are presented and factors contributing to its discrimination. This study also focuses on the importance of addressing and rectifying these biases to promote fair and equitable representation in sports media coverage.

In sports, a fan base should be consisted of men and women both gender as women contribute to sports as well. If the number of fans following of male sports was equal or even close to women’s sports in Bangladesh, then the whole scenario would be different. Fans follow their favourite sports show where they can get enough update of their male athlete or male team’s news. When it comes to women sports coverage, broadcast media shows less interest. Bangladeshi female athletes don't get much attention like male athletes [1]. However, Bangladesh women's national cricket team created some hype for the past few years. Apart from cricket, there are some other sports where Bangladeshi women participate successfully. Other games and sports may include football, swimming, archery, weightlifting, and so on. Many Bangladeshi women athletes have been playing these sports and represent the country worldwide. But we may have heard their name once or twice in our media. News media focus on the ‘big three’ men’s sports, football, basketball, and baseball, creating audience knowledge about and excitement for the same sporting events over and over [2]. Meanwhile, women’s sports continue to get short shrift, which is significant when you consider the larger picture of girls’ and women’s efforts to achieve equal opportunities, resources, pay and respect in sports. The scenario is not different in Bangladesh as still women athletes do not get adequate exposure in broadcast media [3]. For instance, in 2016, Mabia Akter Simanta achieved the gold medal in weightlifting in women's 63kg weight class at the South Asian Games. She had a fractured wrist at the time, a fact that she hid from her coach for fear of being unable to participate in the games, and still won the gold medal. Her story is awe-inspiring, yet it did not achieve the media coverage that it should have.

Women’s sport news coverage has always been an insignificant issue in the world. Many studies had shown how there are still gender inequalities in the coverage of women’s sports be it social media or print media. The amount of women’s sports coverage in our country is way too less. The number of coverages for women’s sports is generally low as compared to male counterparts. The most popular sport in Bangladesh is cricket and it is the most played sport. But audience are not enlightened much about women’s cricket as much as they know about men. Women must make some extraordinary win or make a record to be on the sports show limelight. Audience do not feel connected or involved in watching or knowing women’s sports news. A huge revenue from the tickets is not earned from the little number of people willing to go and watch a women's cricket match. Even at home from television, millions of Bangladeshi tunes in to watch men's cricket while most women's matches aside from the international ones do not even get aired on television. The media is partially to blame for this outcome. As people get most of the updates of men’s sports news so they sometimes do not even know about women’s sports updates. The way women players are presented always impact on how audience value their sports participation and contribution in our society. This discrimination in broadcast media makes people more biased towards men’s sports. Gender specific coverage of sports news means is not only the quantity but also the quality. Framing matters while quality issues come. Men’s sports events never get trivialized, marginalized, or sexualized. The same perception should be maintained for women’s coverage as well. This makes the situation asymmetrical. The consequences of asymmetrical representation between men’s and women’s sports are more invasive. When women are given airtime, the coverage is lower in technical quality and production value when compared with coverage of men’s sports, the study finds. Even when social and digital media are considered, women athletes remain at the periphery of sports reporting.

Women’s coverage is absent, largely, of the elements that we know make watching sport highlights compelling and interesting: exciting commentary, colourful, descriptive, animated delivery, and thoughtful, high-production value interviews and game footage. When you compare women’s coverage to men’s, the women’s comes across as quite bland. This in equal attention might be unimportant to some people, but is discrimination, nonetheless. The outcome is spreading our societal stereotype about women more and more. If media deliberately creates the discrimination while covering both gander’s sports news, it means they are telling people to focus on masculinity over gender equality. The media does this concerning sports by portraying it as a male hegemony, but gender role stereotyping is particularly apparent in sports [4]. When gender marking is necessary for clarity, it should be done in ways that are symmetrical and equivalent for women’s and men’s events. If announcers use phrases such as “women’s game” and “women’s national championship,” then they also should refer to gender when discussing men’s sport [5]. If broadcast media continuously play such a vital role in shaping values to women’s sports news coverage, then there must arise a question of media’s existence. The inequalities indirectly act as an obstacle of promoting equal sports opportunity for women. 

There is no specific study in Bangladesh which can be directly related to the gender specific women’s sports news coverage. However, there are some relevant research studies outside of Bangladesh on this issue. These can be used as the relevant literature for this study. Alyoda Ajibua, Oladitan and Oyerinde O.O Bewaji conducted research [6] where their aim was to establish the status of print media coverage of male female athletes in Nigeria. The study adopted quantitative aspect of male and female print media coverage in sports. For the study, they analyzed four national newspapers. The researchers monitored and analyzed one hundred and twenty daily newspaper for four months. According to their findings, throughout the four months for each newspaper, female coverage continued to fall from the first to fourth week of a month. At the same time, they noted that male athletes’ coverage continued to rule on newspaper. Though there were ups and downs in the percentage of coverage for both women and men. The results of the study indicate that male athletes got 71.6% minimum airtime and their maximum airtime was 92.6% whereas female athletes got 7.6% minimum coverage and 28.4% was their maximum coverage. This proves that male athletes are more frequently reported in national newspapers than female athletes in Nigeria. A study pursued by Diman Chattopadhyay was to understand how English newspaper reports framed men and women athletes from India of Asian Games in their coverage. He conducted a content analysis of two leading English language newspapers in India and their coverage of the 2014 Incheon Asian games. The researcher chose two famous English newspapers (The Telegraph and Mid-day) from two of India’s largest cities. The content analysis was conducted between September 9th to October 7th based on all the news that appeared in the two newspapers. The analysis defined news item as written report, visual report, and a combination of both.

Findings show that, news about the successes and failures of India’s women athletes were not only covered fewer times in the two newspapers, but when covered, they were also given second-class citizen status. findings indicate that women are framed as second-class citizens, as less deserving of coverage than male counterparts and when they are covered, such coverage often highlights them in feminine, glamorous, and off-the field avatars rather than as hardened athletes. A study was examined by Kate Petty, Stacey Pope on English newspaper coverage of the English women football team during the 2015 FIFA Women’s world Cup. The researcher employed a content analysis on Five English national newspapers from 24th May to 14th August of 2015. The Times, the Independent, the Guardian, the sun and the Daily Mirror were chosen for the analysis. Quantitative and Qualitative both methods were adopted. Number of articles, location of articles, and frequency of photographs was sampling tool. Their findings show some unexpected result as women got significant coverage of print media during the tournament. Quantitative analysis says that during the World Cup, women’s sports coverage did not get marginalize. Moreover, England women were widely reported on these five newspapers. The study showed that during the tournament, women’s football was not accepted equally to male fellows but was considered equal to male fellows. Indeed, it shows a positive change in media representation of women’s sports news coverage. Awasthi Murari and Amritashbish Bagchi did research about studying on broadcast of women’s spots in India [7]. The was focused on women’s sports broadcasting and the attention women athletes get from media. This paper helps to understand why media create a gap of broadcasting men and women’s sports news in India.

Quantitative method was followed to oversee the study. The researchers followed a questionnaire pattern and selected participants (male & female) from to age group of 18 to 46. The main aim of the survey to know the participants point of view about women’s sports news broadcasting as well as whether there had been any changes of women’s sports broadcasting in India. The survey collected over seventy responses. According to their findings, questions like how often people watch women’s sports coverage got only 44% responses. Ironically, 89% people think that women’s sports are not getting sufficient coverage on television which clearly defines that Indian people blame broadcast media for not holding responsibility of broadcasting women’s sports news. Moreover, responses says that there had been an increase of women’s sports events coverage on television over the years. The study concluded that women’s sporting events do not get equal coverage as men for this, women’s sports do not get promoted and appreciated in India. Since 1989, every 5 years, Messner and his colleagues examine local and national televised news media coverage of men’s and women’s sport, focusing on the amount of coverage, media production values, and how men’s and women’s sports are covered. Cheryl Cooky, Michael A. Messner and Robin H. Hextrum conducted a study [8] about the lack of coverage of women’s sports on TV. The researchers examined a 6-week quantitative and qualitative analysis. The objective of the study was to compare the quantity and quality of televised sports news on men and women. They selected 1989, 1993, 1909 and 2004 for the data analysis.

Findings show that between 1989 and 1999 there was a slight increase in women’s sports coverage. After 1999, the amount of coverage declined. The authors noted that women sports news airtime dropped 1.6% in 2009 which was the lowest by far over the past two decades. This study argues that women’s sports reports was silenced and marginalized on television from the perspective of quality and quantity. By doing so, broadcast media conveys a message that despite the tremendous participation of girls in sports, still sport is a term for men not for women. This paper is different because there is no research paper in Bangladesh on this topic. Other authors from outside of the world conducted study on relatively similar with this issue but mostly did it for print media. But this paper is fully based on broadcast media. The researcher has focused on gender inequalities from the perspective of sports news broadcasting in Bangladesh which is a very rare fact to be highlighted among people. Through this research paper, reader will come to know about the current representation of Bangladeshi broadcast media on covering sports events of women and men.

The purpose of this research is to examine the representative manner of broadcast media on women’s and men’s sports news. There are some specific aims of this paper.

1. To demonstrate how television sports programs portray men athletes in comparison to women.
2. To understand the factors that create difference between men’s and women’s sports news coverage.
3. To discuss gender biasness issues on media coverage from the perspective of sports news programs.

Research Questions

To accomplish the aims of this research, some facts are needed to uncover. These facts will be found through some effective questions. The questions are:

1. What are the aspects do television sports programs maintain to videocast men’s sport news?
2. How does female athletes get framed in sports news coverage of television?
3. Do broadcast media cover women’s sports in ways that highlight athletic competence or in ways that trivialize women’s sport?
4. Are broadcast media consciously or unconsciously increasing gender discrimination through their sports program?

This study is conducted on two theories-one is framing theory and another one is feminist theory.

Framing theory

Framing theory is also known as second level agenda setting theory. Framing theory was prepared by Goffman in his book Frame Analysis (1974) which argued that people “locate, perceive, identify and label” events and occurrences. The theory was also talked about by Robert Entman, Jim A. Kuypers and many others [9]. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson is credited with first positing the theory in 1972. Framing, as a theory of mass communication, refers to how the media packages and presents information to the public. Framing refers to the cognitive process through which news producers make sense of a subject and present it to their audiences, and the way consumers in turn understand these reports [10].

News frames create linkages between very familiar issues and existing beliefs, values, and attitudes [11]. At their most powerful, frames invite people to think about an issue in particular ways. Indeed, news frames function to suggest how audiences can interpret an issue or event. They can exert a relatively substantial influence on citizens’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours [12]. As per framing theory, journalists choose the topics which they will present and decide how they will present it on news. Which topic means defining selective men’s and women’s sports news and here how means their representative manner. Broadcast media decides the facts, values and perspectives which will be stated and given more importance.

This means sports news interpretations packaging totally depends on journalists framing. Broadcast media uses framing tool to whip up or demotivate audience for watching their sports show. Media frames the sports events in such a way where they indirectly make interpretations to audience. This practice reflected as positive or negative impact on audience. The audience is taught to adopt the frames of sports news which is offered by journalists and to assume the perception on men and women’s sports in a similar way. Media frames and coverage of female athletes and women’s sports is often influenced by the gender appropriateness and individual versus team dynamic of the featured sport [13]. These media frames have a negative influence on female athletes and the overall general attitude regarding women’s sports. This one-way interpretation makes the gender inequality generalized.

Feminist theory

We can think of feminist theory as being produced precisely where social norms about gender are contested: whether that contestation takes place in educational settings, in political mobilization or in everyday life and social interaction [14].

This research is highly related with feminist theory. While talking about gender biasness, male female status in society and their equality in media, feminist theory is connected. Men’s sports contributions, achievements get applauded and appreciated on Broadcast media. Because the media, present sports as if there are masculine and feminine sports, aligning with traditional expectations of male and female athletes [15,16], which makes it more difficult to break traditional gender barriers.

Sports shows do not value or appraise for women’s achievement the way media television shows do it for men. Researchers found out that during off season, women do not even get the airtime on these sports shows. This makes the men’s team more dominating and women team oppressing. Not only does the media focus on different features of a female athlete opposed to a male athlete, but some researchers analyzed media coverage of female athletes and reported that women receive poorer quality of technical production, less overall coverage, and are demeaned as “girls” while men are portrayed as “strong and powerful men” that are “historically important”. Therefore, the unequal attention given to female athletes may lead to many negative consequences for women in addition to protecting male privilege in sports [17].

Even if women and girls do not interpret the inequality as discrimination, it can still cause negative consequences because then any kind of negative outcome can be internally attributed which will result in reductions in motivation, self-esteem, and future expectations for achievement [18]. As far as amount of contribution, both gender is playing for their country, so each gender deserves same respect and values from media. Now men’s and women’s sports news coverage are an in equal fact. This conflicting approach is making the men stronger and women weaker in society.

Considering the objectives of the study, quantitative and qualitative both methods have been followed. Because of this, content analysis went for both methods. To achieve the aims of the research questions, framing analysis process was the main technique to run the content analysis. Apart from content analysis, interview tool was conducted to fulfil qualitative method. Interview was used to reveal the perspective of journalists about gender specific sports events coverage in Bangladeshi broadcast media. Only content analysis was not enough to find out the real scenario of sports news broadcasting. This paper needed a different point of view to analyse the issue. Both content analysis and interview could fulfil the core establishment of the research.

Sampling

For this research, a purposive sampling was selected. In the content analysis part, three prominent nongovernment channels from Bangladesh were chosen. Somoy TV, Ekattor TV and Jamuna TV were the selected channels. These channels have their specific sports ptograms which are broadcasted everyday on television on different slots. KHELAJOG (12am), KHELAR SOMOY (1pm) and Jamuna sports (8pm) are the programs which were found to run the analysis. The analysis was carried out for 15 days from 25th September to 10th October. All these programs are fully sports based where all news are covered of men's and women's sports. Total 45 episodes were watched on a regular basis for the analysis. For sampling, here quality meant total number of news, duration and quality counted for headlines, voice over, presentation, content, production quality, photographs. For interview tool, the researcher took in depth interview of four interviewees. Among them two were male sports journalists and analyst, one was female sports journalist, and another was a sports news editor from broadcast media. All these interviews were taken over the mobile phone and telephone (Table 1).

Table 1: Description of the interview sample.

Number and duration

Jamuna sports made an extreme discrimination in their show in case of numbering male and female sports news. From 25th September to 28th September, there was not a single sports news on women's. They did not cover any women's sports news of inside and outside of Bangladesh. A surprising fact was that Indian women cricket team was having a long tour in Australia but Jamuna sports did not cover any news of the tour. Analysis says there was total 78 male sports news. Unfortunately, Jamuna sports reported only 8 sports news for women athletes throughout the 15 days analysis. Male and female mix news was only 3. The duration was 2 hours 11 minutes for men sports news where women got the screen only for 16 minutes. Noticeable fact is, that was the time when women had different games in inside and outside the country, but Jamuna TV was not interested to cover it.

Scripting

On a comparative result, Jamuna sports had a very few sports news about women. When competence and completeness came into the news, men got full of attention and priority from presenter. Their starting could attract audience easily. On 6th October, BCB had president election. Jamuna sports prioritise the event from Bangladesh men's cricket perspective. When Jamuna sports did not have any good contents, they focused on unnecessary men athletes’ news and presenter presented it in a polished way. On 30th September, there was a news of Cricketer Nasir Hossain's marital issue. The report was done in a well-established manner. Only one women's news got best presentation from presenter which was broadcasted on 9th October. The news was about the Premier League arrangement of women's cricket where the presenter put his facts in an impartial way to the audience.

Thematic

Jamuna sports chose mostly unnecessary contents for men’s sports. But that news was full of details. The reporter covered every aspect of news. That news had Voice Over, SOT, Voxpop, Interview and other elements. In case of women's sports only two report got superior coverage. One was from India vs Aus ODI match where an Indian player was not given out by umpire but she left the field. The report was basically shown that Women's cricket is promoting ethics on ground nowadays. It was a good report which carried every details.

There was a report of 9th October where guest speaker showed prominence of women's sports. This program was started with this women's sports news which was quite unusual to watch on TV. The report was for 8 minutes. It was well structured in sentence formatting.

Production quality

Jamuna sports had only 8 special reports on women's sports. Among this 8 news, only two news got high production quality. Other three news had poor image for portrayal. They did not use any videography for covering the news. On 25th September, Bangladesh women's football team had a match with Nepal Women’s Football team, but Jamuna sports covered this important news with only some poor images of players.

Headline

Jamuna sports discriminated men's and Women's sports news on in some of their headlines. When they covered any news of men's cricket, they did not mention the word men for the news but same did not go for Women. On 4th October's news, the headline was - Loyalty in women's cricket. The reporter mentioned the word women for here. When it comes to men, they use the overall term Cricket / Football team.

Sports journalist of Jamuna TV Salauddin Sumon expressed his perspectives about women's sports coverage on television. He said," Men's cricket team or football team get coverage even they do practice but same does not go for women's team. Basically, women's from any sports need to do hard work to get the screen. Geopolitical factors Impacts a lot here. But in 10/15 years women's sports has been getting coverage than before and I hope Bangladesh can also hope to see the change. Because only media can shape audience mind."

Sports analyst of Jamuna sports expressed different angles of this discrimination. "When Bangladesh women's cricket team won the Asian Cup, they did not get the deserved coverage. Most of the channels could not make it the lead news for that time. Here marketing policy works so production house says that put 30 seconds for women's news. Audience do not love to watch women's sports. So, channels do not want to take risks. Two factors work here. One is (1) Women's sports is not prosperous. (2)  Audience is not interested. So, the ratio always remains 80:20. When they do not have any important news to cover, they just use unnecessary contents of men's sports. PV Sindhu, Sania Mirza, Sania Nehal get coverage because their audience have broad mentality. India is doing well in women's sports coverage in Asia. But our narrow mentality is stopping us. It's media's responsibility to change the perception of audience."

Number and duration

Throughout the 15 days analysis, number of male sports events was 80 and female got the screen for only 10 times. There was 2 mixed news where the report was made on both male and female athletes. But the analysis showed there was an exception on 5th October where a whole news was made on female swimmer. It was a 3-minute report. For the 15 days analysis, the male sports events coverage was around 2 hours 28 minutes. At the same time women got 21 minutes screen time.

Scripting

Khelajog program was presented by one presenter. For men's sports news, the presenter always presented it with great enthusiasm and spontaneous starting. Even though the news was not significant for giving coverage on screen, but the presenter presented it in a catchy way. On the contrary, women's sports coverage does not get such competence and energetic representation on screen from presenter.

Thematic

In khelajog program, reporter of every news presented all the fact with full of details for men's sports. Surprisingly, in case of female athletes there was always lack of information, full of negligence. Unnecessary contents about male athletes and male sports events make the show Khelajog more male centric. Voice over, SOT, Voxpop, interview showed activeness of the show. On the other hand, 10 news of female got dull representation. In spite of being a good theme, the story did not get good recognition as the reporter presented it in less important way.

Production quality

In most of the news of female sports, production quality remained poor. On 25th September's women's football team's coverage, the channel used only images (poor quality). When they used videography to cover, high quality if camera was less to be seen unless long news came. Comparatively, throughout the 15 days analysis it was visible that men athletes always used to get best production quality from Ekattor TV.

Headline

In Khelajog program, some headlines showed biased sentence format for male and female sports content. On every news about Bangladesh men's cricket team, Khelajog used "Bangladesh Cricket team" while skipping the word Men. But in case of Women's cricket news, Khelajog used "Women’s Cricket team" always to differentiate the facts.

Ekattor TV sports journalist put his thoughts on this matter. He said, "It's not the case that men's sports is getting vast coverage because Bangladesh or World has more male centric events. Bangladesh has a lot women centric events which are happening everyday but we are not covering it. In archery games, male female both are doing good but we barely know about it. Other countries are working on it and giving equal respect for women's sports as well. Recently we have seen how Australian cricket board cancelled the Afghanistan men's tour just because Afghanistan administration do not want to pursue women's cricket. That's call beauty and respect of games. But we only focus on men's sporting events. At the same time, we are blaming audience that they do not want to watch Women's sports news. If media cannot shape audience perception, then there's no need to cover men's sports as well. Media smoothly follows audience rather than change their mind."

Number and duration

Unlike two other sports programs of other two channels, Khelar Somoy had a little coverage of women's sports news Khelar Somoy reported only 6 news about women's sports which was comparatively very less from other two channels. For the 15 days analysis, Khelar Somoy covered total 75 news of male athletes. The duration of male sports news was 2 hour 20 minutes and female sports coverage was 7 minutes. The discrimination was extremist here.

Scripting

Khelar Somoy presented all facts of men's sports with highest preference. Presenter presented every news item of men with great enthusiasm. On 8th October, Bangladesh men's football team lost the match against Maldives, but the presenter presented it in a defending way. Unnecessary contents like cricketer Nasir's divorce issue were presented in an exciting way. On the contrary, 29th September's Bangladesh women's football team's selection news of the Asia cup, the presentation was not engaging or inspirational.

Thematic

Khelar Somoy brought out the insignificant contents of men's sports news mostly. On 3rd October, had one news on "How cricker Riyad Spend time in free time". 5th October, there again Nasir Hossain content on the show. Surprisingly, all these news had full of details. On 26th September, Khelar Somoy reported a news on Afghanistan women's football team which was a good report because it was an adapted report. On 29th September, Bangladesh women's football team had a match against Nepal and the report had no details. From 3rd October to 9th October, Khelar Somoy invited guests to discuss about different men's sports. Visibly Women's sports news was lack of coherence and competitiveness.

Production quality

As the analysis showed, Khelar Somoy had only two high quality news based on women. On the contrary, men's sports news was high quality based. For most of the news, they used videography (inside the country). When it came to women's sports news production, one of the news got high quality production. On 27th September, there was a news based on Afghanistan women's football team. The report got good quality like men because it was an adapted report. Surprisingly, on 29th September news on Bangladesh women's football team's Asia cup selection, the production quality was very poor. They used video and image both. But the camera was continuously shaking.

Headline

On 26th September’s program there was a news of Bangladesh men's football team but the headline was written-" National Football Team". Same thing happened on 28th September's news where they used -"National Football Team is prepared for SAAF Championship". On 29th September's program, Khelar Somoy repeatedly used national team term. They never mentioned men's football team to enlighten audience that Bangladesh have women's football team as well.

Somoy TV sports journalist shared her different perspective on this issue. "Women’s sports players are extremely neglected in broadcast media. They do not get the appreciation or promotion from the sports programs. Women's team did not get vast coverage on media after winning Asia cup. Male athletes’ facilities, salary are common issues to make a news but nobody makes news of women athletes’ salary, discrimination. Bangladesh has 33 sports Federations and still women's sports do not get broadcasted. It is a wrong information that women do not have sports every day. They have but we don’t make report.  But as a fourth estate of country, media should step back from here and make a drastic change. Because only media can shape audience mind so there's no point of blaming audience only. Media should work for it. Reporter, editor, production house everyone should change their perception for women (Table 2) [19-23].

Table 2: Production house everyone should change their perception for women.

To bring out the first research objectives, one visible fact emerged that television channels of Bangladesh cover men's sports events more than female events. The coverage is so significant and unavoidable for men's sports. Every success and failure of men's sports was portrayed in a highlighting manner where men athletes got highest importance and priority. Comparatively, sports programs never focused on women's sports. Even when some female athletes did some great achievements and sporting events were much prominent, those tv programs did not show much interest of covering it. TV sports programs showed male athletes more athletic and stronger in every report. On the contrary, women players were portrayed as weak and less competitive in sports.

The second result which emerged for the second objective is, TV programs create a huge difference of men's and women's sports while considering some factors. Findings show that in-spite of having adequate women's sports in numbers, TV programs broadcast only men's sports news in vast numbers. Not only in quantity, for quality these programs-maintained headlines, syntax, word selection, script, production always higher and organized for male athletes. For female sports coverage, numbers of news, space on screen, headlines, syntax, word selection, script, production every factor showed inferiority, discouragement, uncompetitive. Every news of women, they got less significance from the perspective of all factors comparatively to men.

One finding has been identified from the above discussion is that TV channels run their sports programs with biasness. These programs show that sport is meant for male only and their male athletes deserve more attention from their audience. It does not matter how many women athletes are rising and growing in their sporting zone for TV programs.

Interviews of the sports journalists, analysts clearly stated that this biasness and discrimination is acutely visible. Even media houses know about this, but they are not rectifying their activities to maintain balance for men and women. Audience interest and policy making these two are the main reason for what TV channels are not focusing on the coverage of women sports events. Broadcast media believes that if they even try to make equal treatment for both genders, the show will get negative response from audience. TV channels are not willing to break the stereotype of society as they need to hold their regular audience. They continue the biasness practice to keep audience satisfied.

The underreporting of women's sports has always been a trend in Bangladesh compared to their male counterparts. This has increased the stereotype of "Sports is not meant for women" stronger. The male bias in sports coverage encourage the society to be more male centric and dominating in this sector while many women are not even getting any chance to explore the sporting quality. Media, society, and audience are not even taking the problem, but the consequence is huge. As the fourth estate of Bangladesh, it is media's responsibility to enlighten the audience about women's sports and make an equal treatment for both genders. Even if audience are not interested, media's role can change the perception towards women's sports. Media sets the agenda for people so media should establish the gender equality for society. Broadcast media should start the practice with the example of setting up a benchmark in society while covering non-discriminating news of female and male athletes.

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