Victoria Pendleton's Secrets

Introduction

Sport has always been a sexual battlefield. The issue of gender and the representation of biological difference between the sexes have long been central to our perceptions of sport in society. The media representation of sport is no different and, as this chapter sets out to argue, no analysis of media sport would be complete without an understanding of how patriarchal structures are constructed through media institutions and their coverage of sport.

Equally, no understanding of how patriarchy is reinforced in capitalist societies can ignore the importance of sport in communicating familiar stereotypes of men and women and their physical abilities. Indeed, the historical tendency towards the invisibility of women in media sport has suggested a whole field of public life in which women have been marginalized. To what extent is this critique still valid as we move towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century?