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‘In any women’s sport …, it’s hard work because it’s a male dominated society’ – exploring forms of gendered media labour in relation to elite women’s cricket in England

Hannah Thompson-Radford Orcid Logo, Michael Skey

Sport in Society, Pages: 1 - 14

Swansea University Author: Hannah Thompson-Radford Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/17430437.2025.2563828

Abstract

Recently, many women’s sports have grown enormously whether in terms of media attention, funding and participation levels. However, these positive developments often obscure the additional work elite female athletes are required to undertake promote ‘their’ sport. In this paper, we introduce the con...

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Published in: Sport in Society
ISSN: 1743-0437 1743-0445
Published: Informa UK Limited 2025
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa70389
Abstract: Recently, many women’s sports have grown enormously whether in terms of media attention, funding and participation levels. However, these positive developments often obscure the additional work elite female athletes are required to undertake promote ‘their’ sport. In this paper, we introduce the concept of gendered media labour to theorise this work focusing on two key elements. The first concerns what we label as ‘promotional labour’. This is the work that female athletes do to both promote their own achievements and that of the sport in general. The second draws on Chahardovali and McLeod’s research on ‘inspirational labour’ and notes how female athletes are often encouraged to be role models so as to inspire young girls and women’s involvement in sport. Drawing on research with elite female cricketers in England, we evidence the importance of these two forms of labour and the physical and emotional commitments that they entail.
Keywords: Visibility, social media, gendered media labour, inspirational labour, gender
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: This research was supported by the Economic & Social Research Council (UK) [2106607].
Start Page: 1
End Page: 14

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