Serving Equality

"Serving Equality is a timely and engaging assessment of the inter-relationships among and between women and sports media. Cooky and Antunovic balance empirical observations with critical insights across a range of topics, including the impact of Title IX, inequities in sports media industries, the role of women in athlete activism, and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in sports. At the heart of the book is the authors’ challenge to the liberal feminist notions of equality and progress which, as they argue, are undermined by good intentions that are unable to disrupt structural forms of discrimination. Cooky and Antunovic especially direct their attention to the mediated stories told about women’s experiences in sports and demonstrate why those stories fail to advance robust forms of inclusion. Academically rigorous yet accessibly written, Serving Equality will be an essential resource for anyone who seeks to understand the history of gender-based exclusions in sports, contemporary struggles for equity, and the future prospects for an inclusive and safe culture for women in sports media." —Michael L. Butterworth, Director of the Center for Sports Communication & Media, The University of Texas at Austin
“Cooky and Antunovic offer an innovative theoretical and methodological demonstration of how, and which, feminisms influence academic and media narratives of women’s sport. The detailed analysis identifies the asymmetrical visibilities of different feminisms—the most popular being ‘media-friendly’ versions that do not challenge existing structures—and a significant narrative shift from ‘sex sells’ to ‘feminism sells’. The book is a valuable tool for thinking differently and triggering new conversations for media, student and academic audiences.”—Toni Bruce, Professor of Sociology of Sport and Sports Media, University of Auckland, New Zealand