The Lawn Tennis Association has challenged Google to end its “bias” towards male players on International Women’s Day. Online searches are rendering women’s sport virtually invisible, according to a “shocking” study published by the British tennis governing body.
Although tennis is one of the most gender-balanced sports in the world, with equal prize money in all four major events and a number of internationally renowned female players, online algorithms appear to be undermining its reputation for equality. The Gender Equality in Search report, commissioned by the LTA, examined more than 8,000 keywords returned by over 150,000 URLs and found how “male-specific” content and information is the default result for generic search terms about players.
In a Google search for “best tennis players in the world,” 98% of the top 51 results in the “athlete carousel,” the images at the top of the results, were of men, with Serena Williams being the only female player included. Looking specifically at image search results for generic queries, 78% of images displayed above the fold (without scrolling) were of male players, compared to just 15% of female players and the rest were mixed results. When video results were displayed on the first page for the generic “best” or “top” player queries, 86% of the 269 available slots featured male tennis players in the preview frame and key moments sections of the video, while only 14% were of women.
The study also found that in the “people also ask” section of search results, 92% of the immediately available options directed users to more masculine content. The research showed that this problem isn’t limited to tennis or sports, as a 2018 Pew Research Center study found that women were significantly underrepresented in image search results for a number of different professions.
