Women, sport and globalisation : competing discourses of sexuality and nation

As an aspect of a bigger research project into globalization, regional sports culture and the media, this chapter examines issues associated with women and global sport. Using the media coverage of the 1999 Australia Tennis Open as a touchstone, it considers the tension between gender expectations, representation, and imagery in one of the few sports where women's competition matches that of men in terms of media coverage, spectator interest and, increasingly, prize money and sponsorship. The chapter considers the ways in which the Australian print media dealt with issues of gender, femininity and sexuality to illuminate some of the processes framing women and global sport. Working from the premise that an understanding of the gender dimension of global sport will contribute to more general academic knowledge of globalization processes, I thus seek to contribute to current debates over global Sport, media and gender.