Same sport, same gold, different sex : A study on Swedish Newspaper’s Representation of the SM-winning Football Team.

The aim of this study was to examine how the biggest newspaper in Sweden, Aftonbladet, represent female and male football. The question examined was: How has the representation of the Swedish SM-winners in men vs women's football changed over the last decade? We made a discourse analysis of 16 news articles from two different time periods. The results show that female football players and the female football game are marginalized in the newspaper compared to the representation of male football and male football players. Women´s victory is given less attention, making their achievement look minor and easier to reach. Instead journalists more often have a tendency to focus on external things, such as individual’s future, money and the team’s or player’s next tasks. It is also often men, coaches or chairman, who are chosen to speak in articles about female football. We could also see that the representation of men does not differentiate significantly today compared to ten years ago. The way to write about male football feels ideal and contains more components that encourage reading. The articles are more in-depth, focus more on the performance and more often put the achievement into a perspective to emphasize the victory. We have seen that sports journalism has taken steps to reach more gender equality, but also noted that there are more steps to take