Abstract

This chapter addresses several thematic developments in the sociology of sport on gender, sport and media, focusing on scholarship in the United States from the 1980s through the early 2000s to chart the development and contributions of US feminist scholars to the knowledge on gender, media and sport. The first development focuses on research conducted on the “symbolic annihilation” of women’s sports and female athletes. The second development focuses on key theoretical frameworks grounded in feminist cultural studies of sport. This chapter offers insight into the ongoing legacy of some of the key studies from this era and concludes with future directions, including an evaluation of the relevance of this work to contemporary understandings of gender, sport and the media.