The image of women athletes in the media in historical process

In this thesis, we attempt to understand and explain to what extent the claims that the media treats female athletes as sexual objects and exploits them in some way reflect the truth, in what ways the media sexualizes female athletes, and the reactions of female athletes to the sexual objectification implemented by the media, based on available information and documents. In this qualitative thesis study, which was designed based on a limited number of previous studies examining the coverage of female athletes in the media, document analysis, and literature review were used as data collection tools. To access the documents to be examined, an advanced search was conducted in the databases of the YÖK National Thesis Center, SOBİAD, WoS, EBSCO, Scopus, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, Cochrane Library, ACM Digital Library, Embase, DOAJ, Historical Abstracts, SciFinder Scholar, CORE, ASC, ERIC (via ProQuest), Sociological Abstracts and Google Scholar. In the searches, the keywords 'woman', 'athlete', 'media', 'gender', 'sexuality', 'sexual object', 'sexualization' and 'objectification' were used individually and in combination in Turkish and English. The scientific sources reached in these scans and the covers and contents of online nonscientific journals, newspapers, and television channels frequently cited in these sources were included in the scope of the research. The documents included were read, understood, analysed, evaluated and a synthesis was reached. It was concluded that female athletes were openly subjected to systematic gender discrimination and sexual objectification by the media, that quantitative media coverage was insufficient compared to male athletes, that female athletes were mostly sexualized through sportswear and visuals, and that female athletes and women's sports were trivialized. It was understood that some female athletes approved of the media's sexualization actions with the expectations of popularity and sponsorship, while others strongly opposed it. To prevent sexual objectification, the media and sports organizations should include positive representations of female athletes. Young women's skills in questioning and criticizing sexualized images should be developed through gender equality and media literacy education. Sexual objectification should also be opposed socially. The reasons for the media's dependence on sexualized female bodies should be further examined and discussed.