Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fcss20 Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 08 December 2015, At: 16:25 Sport in Society Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics ISSN: 1743-0437 (Print) 1743-0445 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fcss20 Gender and politics at the 2012 Olympics: media coverage and its implications Jules Boykoff & Matthew Yasuoka To cite this article: Jules Boykoff & Matthew Yasuoka (2015) Gender and politics at the 2012 Olympics: media coverage and its implications, Sport in Society, 18:2, 219-233, DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2013.854481 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2013.854481 Published online: 14 Nov 2013. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 882 View related articles View Crossmark data Gender and politics at the 2012 Olympics: media coverage and its implications Jules Boykoff* and Matthew Yasuoka Department of Politics and Government, Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR, USA As the world’s premier multi-sport event, the Olympic Games present a propitious opportunity to explore the nexus of gender and politics. In this study, we zero in on the role of gender at the 2012 London Summer Games as transmitted through the mainstream mass media in the USA and the UK. We focus on the actions of Olympic athletes and how the media framed those actions. More precisely, we analyse three gender-centric episodes that were covered widely by the media during the 2012 Olympics: (1) the first-ever participation by women from Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and Qatar; (2) the participation of South African runner Caster Semenya and the issue of sex testing; and (3) women’s beach volleyball competition and gender norms. Deploying frame analysis and feminist critical theory, we offer quantitative and qualitative analysis of these three episodes, and draw out wider political implications. Introduction ‘The mass media’, writes Olympic scholar Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, ‘undoubtedly play a central role in keeping the Olympics in the news and disseminating information on Olympic issues’ (2008, 4). Furthermore, she argues, media ‘are largely responsible for the social construction of the lasting images and memories that audiences retain after the Games are over’ (22). Many media commentators championed the 2012 Summer Olympics in London as the breakout Games for women athletes. USA Today unequivocally declared, ‘Women were the big winners’ at London 2012 (August 13, 2012). In a New York Times op-ed titled ‘Women’s Time to Shine’, columnist Frank Bruni remarked that at the London Olympics ‘Girl power gets its sweaty, sinewy due’. He admired the way the sport festival ‘showcases and celebrates the athleticism of women almost as much as it does the athleticism of men’ (July 22, 2012). The 2012 London Games brought numerous landmarks for women athletes: women competed in every sport, no countries excluded female athletes, and 4835 female athletes participated in the Olympics, a higher percentage than any previous Summer Games (44%) (Donnelly and Donnelly 2013, 12). The previous time London hosted the Games, in 1948, only 390 women competed (9.5% of all athletes), while in the 1908 London Games, 37 women participated (1.8%) ( The Independent , August 14, 2012). At London 2012, within the US Olympic team, women outnumbered men for the first time, 269 to 261 ( USA Today , July 11, 2012), and brought home 29 of the 46 gold medals won by Team USA. 1 Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), noted at the Games’ Opening Ceremony that ‘For the first time in Olympic history, all the participating teams will have had female athletes, and this is a major boost for gender equality.’ 2 Although Rogge trumpeted ‘gender equality’, a closer look at the event structure told a different, more nuanced story. Almost 16% of the London 2012 programme was q 2013 Taylor & Francis *Corresponding author. Email: boykoff@pacificu.edu Sport in Society , 2015 Vol. 18, No. 2, 219–233, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2013.854481 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 comprised of gender-exclusive events: competitions open only to male or female athletes. The thirty-nine men-only events included the 50-kilometer race walk, the pommel horse and rings in gymnastics, and all seven weight categories in Greco-Roman wrestling. The two women-only events were rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming. Meanwhile approximately 36% of the events in London were both open to men and women and governed by the same rules. Nearly half the events (48%) at the London 2012 Olympics were equal in terms of gender participation, but different in regards to the number of entrants allowed or the rules and structure of the contest (Donnelly and Donnelly 2013). In the Olympic Charter , gender is explicitly referred to only twice, and one of these mentions is an informational note. 3 More substantively, one of the ‘Fundamental Principles of Olympism’ is that ‘Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement’ (IOC 2011, 11). Moreover, a stated facet of the ‘Mission and Role of the IOC’ is ‘to encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women’ (14). Yet, despite these proclamations and the notable strides the IOC has made, Donnelly and Donnelly assert there remain four significant areas of gender inequality including ‘differences in publicity and media representation for male and female athletes/sports’ (2013, 13). In this article, we zero in on such media representations, examining how the press in the USA and the UK covered three specific episodes at the crossroads of gender and the Olympics: (1) the first-ever participation by women from Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and Qatar; (2) the participation of South African runner Caster Semenya and the issue of sex testing; and (3) women’s beach volleyball competition and gender norms. Deploying frame analysis and critical theory, we offer quantitative and qualitative analysis of these three episodes. We also consider the broader political implications revealed by these three episodes. Literature review At the nexus of politics and sports, all too often, gender and sex are conflated. On the terrain of Olympic studies, this derives in part from the approach the IOC has adopted for sex testing, what Lenskyj characterizes as ‘a longstanding preoccupation with sex binaries and gender boundaries’ (2013, 26). Setting this controversial issue aside for the moment, gender is a socially constructed category marked by performativity, contingency, and imitation. It is the constructed interrelation of societal pressures and self-actualization. Individuals tend to conform to socially sanctioned gender scripts and practices that cohere into gendered statuses and social processes. Judith Lorber writes: The gendered microstructure and the gendered macrostructure reproduce and reinforce each other. The social reproduction of gender in individuals reproduces the gendered societal structure; as individuals act out gender norms and expectations in face-to-face interaction, they are constructing gendered systems of dominance and power. (1994, 6) These networks of power naturalize gender in binary fashion and penalize those who transgress the dichotomy. As Judith Butler notes, gender is ‘a construction that regularly conceals its genesis’. She asserts: the tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions – and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them; the construction ‘compels’ our belief in its necessity and naturalness. (1990, 190) 220 J. Boykoff and M. Yasuoka Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 The ossification of gender norms shepherds us down the path of binaries, dualities, and performed ‘normality’, and Olympic athletes are not immune to the social perils of gender transgression. Jennifer Hargreaves asserts, ‘The Olympic movement . . . is a system of power based on gender’ (1994, 222). In the context of the Olympics, discussions of sex are often rooted in physiological differences between females and male as well as in what Butler dubs ‘the heterosexualization of desire’ (1990, 24). But as Lorber notes, ‘Gender and sex are not equivalent, and gender as a social construction does not flow automatically from genitalia and reproductive organs’ (1994, 17). Sports-related investigations of sex tend to revolve around anatomy, biology, and sexuality. Lenskyj observes that sports ‘reflect and entrench hegemonic masculinities and femininities – that is, a narrow range of behaviours compatible with common-sense assumptions about the normal and natural ways of doing gender’ and sex (2008, 25). Yet, Butler points out that there is a ‘radical contingency in the relation between sex and gender’ (1990, 187) and that sex ‘through a misogynist gesture of synecdoche, [has] come to take the place of the person, the self-determining cogito ’ (27). In the sports world, sex can colonize identity. Lorber argues, ‘gendered practices produce the social institution of gender, which in turn constrains social practices; structure and practices simultaneously sustain and are legitimized by the micropolitics of everyday life and the macropolitics of state power’ (1994, 8) Yet, the media are another macropolitical power broker that deserve our critical attention. Mass media constitute a vital social space where ideology and narrative can team up to pilot what Hall calls ‘the slow transformation of what appear to be the most plausible frameworks we have of telling ourselves a certain story about the world’ (1984, 8). Through agenda setting, the mass media tell us what to think about and through framing they suggest how we should think about it. Media coverage of sports is important, writes Bruce: precisely because its stories and images convey information about who and what matters, and in what ways they matter. This means that we need to understand what ‘stories’ the media are telling us, and what vision of the sportsworld they are constructing and reconstructing. (2012, 127) Numerous sports scholars have investigated how the media cover sports vis-a ‘-vis gender and sexuality. These studies of mediatized gender tend to fall into two main categories of analysis: (1) quantity of coverage and (2) quality of coverage. When it comes to quantity, media coverage of women’s sports can be described as the symbolic squelching of female athletes and their accomplishments. One study that analysed CNN and ESPN in the mid-1990s found, ‘In nearly every measurable way, the two programmes portrayed women’s sports as less important than men’s athletic competition’ (Tuggle 1997, 22). In another research project spanning two decades that analysed ESPN’s SportsCenter and three Los Angeles local network’s sports slots, Messner and Cooky (2010) found that by 2009, men commandeered more than 96% of airtime, while women only appeared in 1.6% of the overall TV sports coverage. The gender chasm actually widened after women received nearly 9% of all airtime in 1999 (2010, 8). Print media have demonstrated similar trends. Eastman and Billings found that in a period during 1998 USA Today offered men’s sports almost 5 times as much space as women’s sports, while The New York Times offered a whopping 10 times as much print for male athletes (2000, 202). This gender bias extends to coverage of the Olympic Games. In analysing the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Summer Olympics, Billings found men received more time on the TV screen: ‘Men’s dominance in clock-time was reinforced in each of the three Olympic telecasts’ (2008, 114). The difference should not be overstated, though – he characterizes Sport in Society 221 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 it as ‘relatively meager’ – owing to the prime-time telecast focusing on the final rounds of events regardless of gender. Yet, his analysis of TV coverage of the Winter Games in 1998, 2002, and 2006 found ‘the gap between men’s and women’s athletics’ to be ‘much larger’ (115). This is remarkable in the light of what Bruce refers to as the ‘Olympic Games effect’ whereby we can see a lift in the quantity of women’s sport coverage simply because the global media are already on the scene (2012, 131). Billings sums up the corollary media effect of such media trends: ‘The immense volume of coverage of men’s sports vis-a ‘-vis the substantially lower volume of coverage of women’s sport clearly sends a message to the reader and/or the viewer of media sport that men’s sport is more significant’ (2008, 109). In short, the volume of media coverage afforded women’s sports delivers value cues to the public. The quality of the media’s depiction of women’s participation in sports has also been roundly criticized. Wensing and Bruce (2003, 387 –388) point to key ‘techniques’ or ‘rules’ that feed into larger patterns of gender-biased coverage: gender marking, compulsory heterosexuality, appropriate femininity, sexualization, and infantilization (Bruce 2012, 129). With ‘gender marking’, reporters and sportscasters use ‘women’s’ as a qualifier – as in ‘women’s soccer’ – but do not do the same for men’s sports, thereby positioning men sports as the norm. This process, as Billings notes, ‘reinforces a bias against women by serving as a qualifier of their abilities’ (2003, 61 – 62). With compulsory heterosexuality the media favour women athletes who enact heterosexual gender roles such as wife or mother while simultaneously smothering those with lesbian identities. Related to this, ‘appropriate femininity’ entails journalists spotlighting characteristics in women – such as emotionality and smaller size – to demarcate them from men (Bruce 2012, 129). Duncan views this trend as a slippery slope to imposing ‘hyperfemininity’ on women athletes (2006, 231 –252). Kane and Lenskyj take this a step further, asserting such coverage creates ‘the protective camouflage of feminine drag through which female athletes, gay and straight, are presented (and present themselves) in a hyper heterosexual mold’ (1998, 186 – 201). Relatedly, under the sway of sexualization, journalists foreground women athletes as sexual beings operating within the predominant parameters of sexual attractiveness. Such coverage tends to focus on women’s bodies. Meanwhile, with infantilization, the media depict women as girls; drenched in condescension, female athletes are portrayed as childlike (Bruce 2012, 129; Duncan 2006, 141 –142). In combination, these trends tend to blunt the possibility of challenging male hegemony in the realm of sports. In examinations of the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona and 1992 Albertville Winter Games, Gina Daddario discovered that female athletes were marginalized in TV coverage while a masculinist hegemony was aired and reinforced. This was done through the deployment of condescending descriptive terms, compensatory discourse that blamed athletes for failing to live up to expectations, infantilization, and the foregrounding of female cooperation over competition (Daddario 1994, 275 –288). The media deployed divergent ‘narrative forms’ for male and female athletes, akin to storylines found in soap operas, replete with wrought-iron gender norms (Daddario 1997, 103 – 120). Billings found that in TV coverage of the 1998, 2000, and 2002 Olympics, sportscasters attributed athletic success ‘to the superior skill of men athletes’ much more often than they did for women. Sports journalists also tended to chalk up failure among women athletes to inexperience, while their male counterparts ostensibly lacked skill (Billings 2003, 51 –62). Highlighting the purported inexperience of female athletes had larger repercussions: ‘The magnitude and frequency of such comments constitute a stereotype of young sporting femininity which would have the effect of diminishing the credibility of female athletic performance’ (Billings 2008, 120). It also trends towards infantilization and chimes with 222 J. Boykoff and M. Yasuoka Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 Hargreaves’ observation regarding print media that ‘we constantly see symbols of women’s femininity, rather than pictures of female athleticism’ (1994, 163). In addition, Billings found that sportscaster comments about visual attractiveness ‘were skewed towards women more than towards men’ (2008, 120). He noted that ‘women were not only more frequently defined in terms of heterosexual attractiveness, but also were depicted as being more interested in their own looks’ (120 – 121). In sum, ‘Entrenched notions of gender remain a significant obstacle to offering sportscasts that jointly respect men and women athletes’ (122). Building from previous scholarly research that explores gender disparities and heteronormativity in sports media coverage, we examine how the media covered gender at London 2012. Methodology In this study, we examined eight print-media sources in the USA and the UK. In the USA, we analysed The Wall Street Journal , The New York Times , USA Today – the top three circulated newspapers in the USA – as well as The Washington Post , which sits sixth on the circulation list. 4 We also analysed four mainstream British newspapers: the Daily Mail , The Guardian , The Independent , and The Telegraph Aside from tabloid newspapers, these print-media sources are among the most widely circulated papers in the UK. 5 Together, the eight sources have a collective circulation of over 10 million. Furthermore, the content of these newspapers influences the news agenda in other media such as TV and radio. This content analysis focuses on three case studies. Using the LexisNexis, ProQuest, and EBSCO databases, we compiled data-sets for each case study separately; thus, it is possible for articles to appear in more than one case study. We used Boolean search terms in order to cast a wide search net while ensuring relevance to the topic of study. After an initial search, we removed all live blogs, letters to the editor, and news briefs, in order to zero in on more robust news content produced by the actual news outlets. In the end, our case study regarding the first Olympic athletes from Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and Qatar had 79 articles, while the Caster Semenya case and the beach volleyball case contained 62 and 70 news packets, respectively. After compiling the three data-sets of eligible news packets, each author independently read all the articles in order to inductively identify the predominant frames and themes in an open-closed coding fashion (Glaser 1978, 56 – 61). Each author made note of all emergent frames, themes, and gender-related issues. Then, to measure validity of the coding structure, the authors tested inter-coder reliability by independently closed-coding a sample of 75 articles (25 from each case study) applying the frames and themes. We then ran a statistical comparison to ensure each coding category attained statistically significant agreement. Overall, our reliability test achieved coder agreement for each frame and theme that fell well within the acceptable range of reliability coefficients (Neuendorf 2002, 142 –143; Riffe, Lacy, and Fico 1998, 131). 6 The unit of analysis for this study was the news article. In discussing each case study below we offer details about time frames and coding structure. A significant dimension of this study involves frame analysis. Media scholars use the term ‘framing’ to mean the complex process through which journalists organize ever- evolving events and actions into consumable news packages, placing figurative photograph frames around the dynamic machinations of empirical reality. This framing process generates media frames that focus the public’s attention on particular events, issues, and ideas. Media frames are ‘consistent, coherent bundles of information that Sport in Society 223 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 journalists provide to imbue real-world events with structure and meaning’. They ‘organize issues, pointing both backward at what happened and forward, offering interpretive cues for what it all means’ (Boykoff and Laschever 2011, 346). Media frames matter. As political scientist Nicholas J.G. Winter points out, ‘Frames impose structure on political issues, and when that structure matches the cognitive representation, or schema, for a social category (such as race or gender), that schema will likely govern comprehension and evaluation of the issue’ (2008, 141). In short, the way journalists frame news can influence how the general public comprehends gender relations. Gender at the London 2012 Olympics Olympic participation by women from Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and Qatar Groups like Human Rights Watch and the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF) have long pressured the IOC to force countries from predominantly Muslim countries to allow women to participate in the Olympic Games. Activists often used Olympic Charter to leverage IOC action. For instance, Sue Tibballs, head of the WSFF, told The Guardian , ‘Saudi Arabia’s current refusal to send sportswomen to the Olympics puts them directly at odds with one of the IOC’s fundamental principles as laid out within the Olympic Charter’ (April 5, 2012). Persistent pressure eventually paid off when Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and Qatar agreed to include women in their 2012 Olympic squads for the first time, thereby putting a dent in what The Telegraph dubbed ‘gender apartheid’ (August 7, 2012). Qatar sent swimmer Nada Arkaji, sprinter Noor al-Malki, and air rifle shooter Bahia Al Hamad to compete in London, while Brunei fielded Maziah Mahusin in the 400-meter race ( The Independent , July 8, 2012). A mere month before the Games commenced, the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee relented, allowing women to participate in London. Equestrian show jumper Dalma Rushdi Malhas was the most likely participant, but an injury to her horse scratched her candidacy. Eventually, Saudi Arabia put forth two athletes: Sarah Attar, a teenage trackster raised in California who was an entrant in the 800-meter run, and Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, who competed in judo. Shahrkhani’s participation was momentarily jeopardized by a kerfuffle over whether she would be allowed to wear a hijab. The International Judo Federation ultimately allowed her to compete in suitable headgear short of a full hijab. This set the table for what the Daily Mail called the ‘hijab heroines’ (August 9, 2012). The time frame for this case study ranged from 15 June to 8 October 2012, straddling the actual Olympics so we could consider pre-Games coverage and post-Games analysis. Using the search terms ‘Qatar OR Saudi Arabia OR Brunei AND Olympic’ generated 137 articles. After weeding out duplicates and news packets in which the issue was only addressed peripherally, 79 articles remained. Two predominant frames emerged from these articles: a Progress Frame and a Tokenism Frame. The former featured the idea that these countries’ change of policy was a step in the right direction for gender equality, while the latter frame highlighted the notion that the athletes were not Olympic calibre and were only being included to symbolically support gender equality. The Progress Frame was the dominant frame, appearing in three of every four articles (76%). In an opinion piece for The New York Times , Lara Setrakian judged the athletes’ inclusion to be ‘a landmark change from the ultra-strict Islamic mores that ban women from public competition’ (July 6, 2012), while The Telegraph called it ‘a moment of monumental symbolic importance’ (August 2, 2012). The Wall Street Journal wrote in regard to Saudi Arabia that it was ‘a breakthrough moment in the ultraconservative 224 J. Boykoff and M. Yasuoka Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 kingdom’ (August 4, 2012). After Shahrkhani was swiftly defeated (in 82 s) in her first match, The Telegraph remarked, ‘In the end her Olympic debut lasted little more than a minute. But for the women of Saudi Arabia it was a revolutionary minute’ (August 3, 2012). Most media offered guarded optimism on the progress front, with Qanta Ahmed commenting in The Telegraph that it was ‘a baby step toward gender equality for the approximately 11 million women and girls who call Saudi Arabia home’ (August 7, 2012). Similarly, The Guardian quoted IOC President Rogge: We believe if there is a woman participating that will be a big symbolic event. You can’t expect a country to change overnight its cultural, social, political fabric. Whether we like it or not, this is a fact of life. It will take time, but this is the first step. (July 26, 2012) The Tokenism Frame appeared in one-third of the data-set (34%). Indeed, the IOC invoked its special ‘universality clause’ to allow participants from the three countries to compete, since they would not have otherwise qualified based on merit alone. The clause was previously deployed so Eric ‘the Eel’ Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, could participate in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney ( The Wall Street Journal , July 12, 2012). This led Nabila Ramdani to write in The Guardian , ‘In terms of comic value, a Saudi Arabian woman Olympian is in the same athletic under-class as Eddie the Eagle or Eric the Eel’ (June 25, 2012). 7 One commentator quoted in The New York Times asserted that such special treatment was ‘a victory for tokenism, and doing the bare minimum to satisfy a toothless I.O.C’ (June 26, 2012). In other instances of the Tokenism Frame, the Daily Mail , in discussing the Saudi judoka Shahrkhani, alluded to ‘the obvious fact that she was way out of her depth’ (August 4, 2012). An anonymous source told The New York Times that Shahrkhani ‘had no business competing at the Olympic level’. The observer opined: The I.O.C. is making a huge fuss about her being here – their spin is that Olympic sports are opening the door for women, especially Arabic women. Which is kind of a joke. I think these girls are being propped up by the I.O.C. as their token Islamic female participants. ( The New York Times , August 12, 2012) Others doubted that Olympic participation would make a difference in the three countries themselves: ‘The Kingdom’s small step in the direction of gender equality may therefore turn out to be nothing more than a symbolic and empty gesture’ ( The New York Times , June 26, 2012). A deeper issue is whether such ‘symbolic gestures’ can help foment widespread sociopolitical change. Olympic critics like Lenskyj are deeply suspicious of ‘a liberal approach’ whereby ‘the “firsts” take on great significance . . . as if one breakthrough constitutes a landslide victory’ (2013, 43 –44). With this in mind, it is important to explore whether the inclusion of these female athletes in the Olympics was depicted as one strand in a larger battle over civil rights in these three countries. Alternatively, do these frames open up space to critique the Olympic Movement? In short, do these historic firsts allow journalists to widen the scope of their analysis beyond sport? To answer this, we turn to the vital difference between episodic and thematic framing. According to political scientist Shanto Iyengar, an episodic news frame ‘depicts issues in terms of specific instances’, whereas a thematic frame ‘depicts political issues more broadly and abstractly by placing them in some appropriate context – historical, geographical, or otherwise’ (1996, 62). The media’s dependence on episodic framing has important effects, he asserts: ‘By reducing complex issues to the level of anecdotal cases, episodic framing leads viewers to attributions that shield society and government from responsibility’ (70). By and large, did Sport in Society 225 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 the press in the USA and the UK depict the participation of women athletes from Saudi Arabia, Brunei, and Qatar as a series of discrete episodes, split off from the bigger struggle over political freedom? If so, this allowed readers to interpret the events as endgame social progress rather than confront the structural conditions that gave rise to the uniqueness of these female athletes’ inclusion in the Games. To measure whether the specific episodes of gender inclusion led to more thematic coverage, we revisited each story in the data-set, assigning an additional code: whether such stories contained three or more sentences that scoped out to consider the wider context of either political discrimination in these countries or problems within the Olympic Movement. We tallied each sentence that offered a wider political context in these areas. 8 Approximately a third of the articles in the data-set (34%) met this three-sentence standard, engaging in both episodic and thematic framing. The media tended to show a marked preference for episodic rather than thematic framing. After all, as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim note, ‘society tells us to seek biographical solutions to systemic contradictions’ (2001, xxii). Yet, many journalists used the opportunity to assess the bigger picture. Op-eds and editorials were more likely to widen the scope and achieve substantive depth. For example, a Washington Post editorial appearing a month before the London Games asserted that Saudi Arabia’s decision to allow women to participate ‘will forestall disqualification’ by the IOC, ‘but it doesn’t solve the deeper problem’, which is that ‘discrimination is entrenched against Saudi women in athletics, as in many fields’. The piece concluded: It is hardly sufficient for Saudi Arabia to announce that women can participate, just weeks before the London games open, while it continues to deny them basic rights at home. The true spirit of the Olympic Movement dictates that in athletics, and in all of society, the kingdom needs to do more. ( The Washington Post , June 26, 2012) In sum, while sports scholar Richard Giulianotti correctly points to ‘a picture of a strong cohabitation between international sports movements and states that have systematically impugned the human rights of their citizens’ (2004, 359), many journalists in this study used episodic frames as a springboard to thematic framing that addressed this very contradiction. Caster Semenya and gender verification In August 2009, Caster Semenya, an 18-year-old middle-distance runner from South Africa, rocked the athletics world, posting the fastest time of the year in the 800-meter event at the Track and Field World Championships in Berlin. She beat the runner-up by 2.5 s, sparking a firestorm of speculation about her sex and gender. Butler writes, ‘Assuming for a moment the stability of a binary sex, it does not follow that the construction of “men” will accrue exclusively to the body of males or that “women” will interpret only female bodies’ (1990, 6). Try telling that to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body for athletics, which in the wake of Semenya’s athletic success, revealed that Semenya had undergone a ‘gender verification test’. Such verification tests, which the IOC had condoned in one form or another since the 1960s, sidelined Semenya for nearly a year (Schultz 2012, 443 –460). Eventually the IAAF declared her eligible to participate in international competition. The London 2012 Olympics marked an important benchmark in Semenya’s comeback. In the analysis that follows, we explored whether the media defined Semenya through her experience of gender verification. Did the media offer a new variation of ‘gender marking’ whereby journalists deployed appositives and adjectival clauses that defined Semenya through the socially constructed category of gender? To do this, we analysed 226 J. Boykoff and M. Yasuoka Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 articles between 27 July 2011 and 8 October 2012 in order to capture the run-up to the Games as well as coverage during the Olympics and their aftermath. Sixty-seven articles comprise our data-set. We found that Semenya was defined by her gender and sex, along with the controversy surrounding them, in nearly two of every three articles (63%). US media were particularly prone to using the dynamic, with all but 2 of the 18 articles (89%) using gender to define Semenya. Meanwhile, British media defined Semenya by her gender in only about half the articles (52%, or 23 out of 44 articles). Only one article used the scientific term ‘intersex’ to describe Semenya’s biological condition: having both female and male anatomical features ( The New York Times , June 24, 2012). Most of the articles in our data-set used appositive phrases or adjectival clauses to introduce the concept of gender verification, tacking them to their descriptions of Semenya. For instance, one article in the Daily Mail remarked, ‘The poor girl whose gender has been scrutinised in the world’s eye falls within legal testosterone levels after’ (August 26, 2011). In another, The New York Times introduced Semenya by noting she ‘became a cause celebre at the 2009 world championships in Berlin, emerging from obscurity to overwhelm the 800 field and trigger an extended controversy about gender’ (September 5, 2011). When used in conjunction, both appositive phrases and adjective clauses redefined Semenya, as not a world-class athlete, but as an individual scrutinized by a policy. This happened across media outlets in both countries. In a sense, the test became the signifier and Semenya became its signified. The relationship between signifiers and signifieds is at the core of Butler’s discussion of the signifiers ‘woman’ and ‘female’. Butler writes, that woman and female ‘gain their troubled significations only as relational terms’ (1990, ix). The problem in the case of Semenya is the relational interaction between ‘gender’ and ‘sex’. Semenya’s gender is ‘woman’, as that is how she chooses to live her life and self-actualize to society. Her sex is what the IOC and other athletic bodies are trying to verify. Therein lies the discursive slippage: the sports-organizing bodies’ insistence on calling the process ‘gender verification’. This links to the media’s tendency to engage in ‘gender marking’ – labelling events as ‘women’s soccer’, ‘women’s basketball’, and so on. Yet, the dividing characteristic is not the gender of the athletes, but their sex. It is not a separation between men and women, but male and females. As Hargreaves puts it, women athletes must choose between femininity and ‘musculinity’ (1994, 173). Media scholars have long noted that a prime rule of reporting is the imperative to create a storyline through the use of official, authoritative viewpoints (Bennett 1996, 373 – 384). Journalists’ usage of official language to refer to policies – even when the terms themselves are incorrect – is a variation of this concept. Journalists in 59 instances (out of 62) used ‘gender verification’, as it is the official language of the organizations carrying out the tests. One article that used ‘sex-verification’ – the non-official language – used quotation marks to create distance from the term. By sourcing the athletic organizations’ conflation of sex and gender, the media reinforced antiquated concepts regarding sex and gender. Butler writes, ‘The cultural matrix through which gender identity has become intelligible requires that certain kinds of “identities” cannot “exist” – that is, those in which gender does not follow from sex’ (1990, 24). The media, as part of this ‘cultural matrix’, perpetuate problematic discussions of sex and gender through their reliance on official sources. Yet, the media often exhibited sympathy for Semenya and her predicament, using phrases like ‘seedy allegations’ ( The Telegraph , September 4, 2011) and ‘humiliating’ ( The Independent July 19, 2012) to describe the controversy. In the end, Semenya carried the flag for South Africa at the opening ceremony and won a silver in the 800-meter run, Sport in Society 227 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:25 08 December 2015 leading The Telegraph to assert ‘nobody could begrudge Semenya her place on the podium’ (August 11, 2012). Sam Murphy, of The Guardian , observed, ‘Men run fast and get praise heaped on them. Women run fast and get derogatory comments about their physiques and question marks raised over their femininity’ (June 14, 2012). This mirrored comments from sports scholars who declared a double standard to be at work; Jaime Schultz has pointed out that male athletes are not subjected to sex tests. While superstar Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps is championed as having ‘genetic gifts’ that are a vital ingredient in his recipe for success, Caster Semenya is depicted as ‘an “anomaly” with an “unfair advantage.” In other words, genetic variations that affect autosomal chromosomes are considered endowments, while those that affect sex chromosomes constitute an inequity that can effectively drum a woman out of competitive sport’ (Schultz 2012, 448). Yet, even articles that cast positive light on Semenya and criticized the policy of gender verification often did so in ways that made the test Semenya’s defining characteristic. Semenya was not able to define herself outside of the verification test and the grammatical structures used to discuss her, inherently subjectivizing her identity, as a function of the test. As Butler put it, ‘we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right’ (1990, 140). It is here that Semenya finds herself: a person caught in the linguistic struggle between gender, sex, and societal expectations. Beach volleyball in London Beach volleyball first became an official Olympic sport at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta. Since then, it has been both a staple in Olympic TV coverage and a harbinger of feminist critique for fostering sexualized images of female athletes. Lenskyj (2012, 432) dubbed women’s beach volleyball ‘the ultimate example of sexploitation’. Indeed, British tabloids like the Evening Standard often focused on the bodies and looks of ‘Olympic fitties’ (see Figure 1). But did mainstream print coverage of the London 2012 Olympics conform to the codes of sexualization and contribute to notions of ‘appropriate femininity’? To find out, we analysed 70 articles covering the time period between 15 June and 8 October 2012. We coded for three frames: (1) the Sexualization Frame, which was when an article focused on the players’ attire or looks; (2) the Appropriate Femininity Frame, which was when a journalist discussed the players in regard to traditional roles such as motherhood or marriage; and (3) the Critique Frame, which was coded anytime an article criticized the sexualization and gender coding vis-a ‘-vis beach volleyball. The most prominent frame employed by journalists was the Sexualization Frame, which appeared in one-third (36%) of all articles (25 out of 70). For instance, a passage in The Independent asserted, ‘Beach volleyball is one of the most talked-about sports on the Olympic scene owing to its daring dress code’. The article continued, ‘Women often play in bikinis – something that has won the game a new army of fans’ (July 25, 2012). The media demonstrated consistent fascination with the athletes’ apparel; the word ‘bikini’ appeared 34 times over the course of the 70 articles. An article in the Daily Mail about a moth