1 octobre 2021
Natacha Lapeyroux, « L'identité "féminine" à l'épreuve du sport. Représentations télévisuelles des sportives de haut niveau en France de 2005 à 2015. », HAL-SHS : sociologie, ID : 10670/1.8zensj
This thesis analyses the televisual representations of high-level female athletes from a corpus of television sports broadcasting of six sports (gymnastics, tennis, basketball, soccer, rugby and boxing) over a period of ten years from 2005 to 2015. A quantitative analysis of the world championships allowed us to report on a recent TV broadcasting (in the mid-2000s) of sports disciplines organizing competitions independently of those for men. A socio-semiotic analysis of the gendered representations which circulated about high-level female athletes was made from Judith Butler's concept of gender performance (Butler, 2005) and was coupled with a census of gender and ethnoracial identity of the commentators. We found three salient periods during which women athletes fought for recognition of their high-performance sport identity (Fraser, 2011). From 2005 to 2008, television sports broadcasting of high-level female athletes sports competitions were mostly commented by white men who devalued women's sports performance and took a "male gaze" on them. Between 2008 and 2013, despite the persistence of gender stereotypes, women's sports performance began to be recognized at a time when women’s sports consultants took on a more prominent place. From 2013, women were considered as high-level athletes but their sporting performances should not come close to those of men under pain of being stigmatized, and so-called "feminine" qualities were attributed to them (such as solidarity, team spirit, seriousness, discipline).