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Communication studies professors David Painter and Brittani Sahm recently published an article in collaboration with communication alum Paul Schattschneider ’20.

The article, titled ”Framing sports’ corporate social responsibility: US women’s vs. men’s soccer leagues,” appeared in the Corporate Communications Journal. Based on ongoing disputes over compensation inequities, the trio’s research compared coverage of professional women’s and men’s soccer teams. Their findings indicated that the women soccer players and teams received significantly less funding and more negative coverage than their male counterparts. This research project began as Schattschneider’s honors thesis, with Painter and Sahm working on a revision of the article prior to publication.

“We are proud of this project,” says Painter. “We effectively used the liberal arts perspective (hegemonic masculinity) in conducting research on corporate communications in the sports world. Sports, and especially team sports, are widely considered ‘masculine’ in our society. When women participate, and especially when women outperform men, they are punished. In this example, U.S. professional women’s soccer players and teams are objectively more successful than male players and teams. But they receive less pay, less recognition, and less positive news coverage.”

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