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“We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport

Hannah Thompson-Radford Orcid Logo, Michael Skey Orcid Logo

Communication & Sport

Swansea University Author: Hannah Thompson-Radford Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1177/21674795251324846

Abstract

Women have been traditionally excluded from sport, and recent work has argued for the need to increase the visibility of both women’s sport and female athletes in order to secure public attention and commercial opportunities and encourage the next generation to participate. In this paper, we introdu...

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Published in: Communication & Sport
ISSN: 2167-4795 2167-4809
Published: SAGE Publications 2025
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa69125
first_indexed 2025-03-19T19:45:19Z
last_indexed 2025-08-07T08:10:05Z
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spelling 2025-08-06T14:58:24.0069415 v2 69125 2025-03-19 “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport 3434c3ca5452d553ecde4e7973184047 0009-0009-7793-9634 Hannah Thompson-Radford Hannah Thompson-Radford true false 2025-03-19 CACS Women have been traditionally excluded from sport, and recent work has argued for the need to increase the visibility of both women’s sport and female athletes in order to secure public attention and commercial opportunities and encourage the next generation to participate. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the visibility bind to offer a more nuanced understanding of these debates. Here, we note that growing visibility may often operate as a double-edged sword for women operating in ‘traditional’ male domains and, largely unregulated, online spaces. Drawing on interviews with elite athletes from professional cricket in England, we show that visibility may not only lead to abuse and stereotyping, both overt and covert, but also places an added burden on players who are often expected to carry out unpaid physical and emotional labour. Finally, we draw attention to the benefits of being in a team sport where colleagues can provide advice, support and levity when dealing with such challenges. Journal Article Communication &amp; Sport 0 SAGE Publications 2167-4795 2167-4809 visibility; women&apos;s sport; cricket; online misogyny; media labour 2 3 2025 2025-03-02 10.1177/21674795251324846 COLLEGE NANME Culture and Communications School COLLEGE CODE CACS Swansea University Another institution paid the OA fee This research was supported by the Economic & Social Research Council (UK) (2106607). 2025-08-06T14:58:24.0069415 2025-03-19T19:40:36.2820530 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR Hannah Thompson-Radford 0009-0009-7793-9634 1 Michael Skey 0000-0001-6138-6021 2 69125__33988__788b996c9d0546abb799127247d61bca.pdf 69125.VoR.pdf 2025-04-10T12:11:38.8634281 Output 570014 application/pdf Version of Record true © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. true eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
title “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport
spellingShingle “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport
Hannah Thompson-Radford
title_short “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport
title_full “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport
title_fullStr “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport
title_full_unstemmed “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport
title_sort “We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport
author_id_str_mv 3434c3ca5452d553ecde4e7973184047
author_id_fullname_str_mv 3434c3ca5452d553ecde4e7973184047_***_Hannah Thompson-Radford
author Hannah Thompson-Radford
author2 Hannah Thompson-Radford
Michael Skey
format Journal article
container_title Communication &amp; Sport
container_volume 0
publishDate 2025
institution Swansea University
issn 2167-4795
2167-4809
doi_str_mv 10.1177/21674795251324846
publisher SAGE Publications
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
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hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - Media, Communications, Journalism and PR
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description Women have been traditionally excluded from sport, and recent work has argued for the need to increase the visibility of both women’s sport and female athletes in order to secure public attention and commercial opportunities and encourage the next generation to participate. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the visibility bind to offer a more nuanced understanding of these debates. Here, we note that growing visibility may often operate as a double-edged sword for women operating in ‘traditional’ male domains and, largely unregulated, online spaces. Drawing on interviews with elite athletes from professional cricket in England, we show that visibility may not only lead to abuse and stereotyping, both overt and covert, but also places an added burden on players who are often expected to carry out unpaid physical and emotional labour. Finally, we draw attention to the benefits of being in a team sport where colleagues can provide advice, support and levity when dealing with such challenges.
published_date 2025-03-02T05:23:50Z
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score 11.090071

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