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Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike

The sport sector functions as a site of health-promotion by encouraging and enabling individuals to invest in their health and giving them tools to do so. This investment is often initiated by, or altered by, role modeling, or seeing other individuals engaging in sport. This could include family or...

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Autores principales: Rasmussen, Kirsten, Dufur, Mikaela J., Cope, Michael R., Pierce, Hayley
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345737/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34360052
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157759
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author Rasmussen, Kirsten
Dufur, Mikaela J.
Cope, Michael R.
Pierce, Hayley
author_facet Rasmussen, Kirsten
Dufur, Mikaela J.
Cope, Michael R.
Pierce, Hayley
author_sort Rasmussen, Kirsten
collection PubMed
description The sport sector functions as a site of health-promotion by encouraging and enabling individuals to invest in their health and giving them tools to do so. This investment is often initiated by, or altered by, role modeling, or seeing other individuals engaging in sport. This could include family or peers but could also include depictions of sport in popular media. Inclusive role-modeling could subsequently encourage more sport participation, thus expanding access to health benefits that arise from sport. However, stereotypical depictions of sports role models could make sports seem like a more exclusive space and discourage participation. We examine a case study of a prominent athletic brand and their advertising to examine the ways they expand or reify stereotypes of gender in sport. Through a qualitative content analysis of 131 commercials released by Nike in the past decade, we explore whether their stated goals of being a socially progressive company extend to genuinely diverse and inclusive portrayals of gender in their commercials. Our results indicate that Nike commercials continue to treat sports as a predominantly and stereotypically masculine realm, therefore marginalizing athletes who are female, who do not fit traditional gender binaries, or who do not display traditionally masculine qualities. We also find that the bulk of athletes portrayed by Nike are those who adhere to gender stereotypes. Despite their purported goal of encouraging individuals to participate in sports, Nike’s promotion of gendered sport behaviors may be having an opposite effect for some consumers by discouraging sports participation for those who do not align with the gendered behavior Nike promotes. The stereotyped role modeling of the sport sector portrayed in a majority of Nike commercials could dissuade already marginalized individuals from participating in the health-promoting behaviors available through sport.
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spelling pubmed-83457372021-08-07 Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike Rasmussen, Kirsten Dufur, Mikaela J. Cope, Michael R. Pierce, Hayley Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The sport sector functions as a site of health-promotion by encouraging and enabling individuals to invest in their health and giving them tools to do so. This investment is often initiated by, or altered by, role modeling, or seeing other individuals engaging in sport. This could include family or peers but could also include depictions of sport in popular media. Inclusive role-modeling could subsequently encourage more sport participation, thus expanding access to health benefits that arise from sport. However, stereotypical depictions of sports role models could make sports seem like a more exclusive space and discourage participation. We examine a case study of a prominent athletic brand and their advertising to examine the ways they expand or reify stereotypes of gender in sport. Through a qualitative content analysis of 131 commercials released by Nike in the past decade, we explore whether their stated goals of being a socially progressive company extend to genuinely diverse and inclusive portrayals of gender in their commercials. Our results indicate that Nike commercials continue to treat sports as a predominantly and stereotypically masculine realm, therefore marginalizing athletes who are female, who do not fit traditional gender binaries, or who do not display traditionally masculine qualities. We also find that the bulk of athletes portrayed by Nike are those who adhere to gender stereotypes. Despite their purported goal of encouraging individuals to participate in sports, Nike’s promotion of gendered sport behaviors may be having an opposite effect for some consumers by discouraging sports participation for those who do not align with the gendered behavior Nike promotes. The stereotyped role modeling of the sport sector portrayed in a majority of Nike commercials could dissuade already marginalized individuals from participating in the health-promoting behaviors available through sport. MDPI 2021-07-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8345737/ /pubmed/34360052 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157759 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Rasmussen, Kirsten
Dufur, Mikaela J.
Cope, Michael R.
Pierce, Hayley
Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike
title Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike
title_full Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike
title_fullStr Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike
title_full_unstemmed Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike
title_short Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike
title_sort gender marginalization in sports participation through advertising: the case of nike
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8345737/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34360052
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157759
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