There are many ways in which women are discriminated against in sport. One of these is the way in which women's teams are trivialised. This is most apparent in the way women's teams are named, for example if a college football team was to be called the "Blue Hawks", the female side would have a much less powerful name like the "Blue Tits". This is because societies attitudes to women are that they are supposed to be "feminine". This idea is that they do not play hard and physical games and therefore the names of the teams they play for should be less threatening as well, so instead of having a powerful predator like a hawk as there mascot they are thought as of cute gentle blue tits instead.
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On a professional level one of the biggest examples of this is the difference in media coverage of women's sport is compared to men's. There are many parts to this subject of media coverage of women's sport and the first and most obvious of these is the fact that women in sport get hardly any media coverage. This is true of newspapers reporting on, and TV showing, even major women's sporting events. When women's sport is televised or reported it is generally with men's tournaments as well for example Wimbledon and many of the golf championships. The reasons for this is that the people in positions of authority in the newspapers are male and so the males are more interested in the male sports like football and rugby, instead of hockey, so they print stories or broadcast these sports.
Another problem with media coverage of women's sport is that when it is covered the media focuses more on the looks and fashion of the competitors than their actual abilities. A prime example of this is when Anna Kournikova plays and gets a lot of media attention, even though she is no where near the best in the world, and players such as the Williams sisters and Justin Henin-Hardene are hardly mentioned. This again is due to the fact that the people in authority to say what gets printed and what doesn't are men.
