“We’ve … had to Make Ourselves more Visible Because … the Media hasn’t Done it for us”: Theorising a Visibility Bind in Relation to the Growing Prominence of Women’s Sport

Abstract

Women have been traditionally excluded from sport, and recent work has argued for the need to increase the visibility of both women’s sport and female athletes in order to secure public attention and commercial opportunities and encourage the next generation to participate. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the visibility bind to offer a more nuanced understanding of these debates. Here, we note that growing visibility may often operate as a double-edged sword for women operating in ‘traditional’ male domains and, largely unregulated, online spaces. Drawing on interviews with elite athletes from professional cricket in England, we show that visibility may not only lead to abuse and stereotyping, both overt and covert, but also places an added burden on players who are often expected to carry out unpaid physical and emotional labour. Finally, we draw attention to the benefits of being in a team sport where colleagues can provide advice, support and levity when dealing with such challenges.

Introduction

In the last decade, research on women’s sport has noted that in-person and media audiences have been growing, which has in turn have boosted commercial opportunities and the status of many female athletes (Women’s Sport Trust, 2023). Indeed, Petty & Pope (2019) have argued that we are in a ‘new age’ of women’s sport coverage where negative attitudes and lazy caricatures are slowly being challenged. Instead, women’s sporting activities and achievements are being analysed, and often celebrated, on their own terms, rather than as an adjunct to (or lesser version of) men’s sport. These shifts have been welcomed by a variety of actors who argue that women’s sport is at a key ‘tipping point’ and that growing its profile is key to future success. As the Women’s Sports Trust (2021) in the UK argue, by 2030 “women’s sport will reach £1 billion revenue if female athletes and teams are made more visible” (np). This is a common refrain that links growing visibility to economic opportunity. Others have made related claims but this time linking visibility to forms of equality or progress for example “Why greater media coverage of women’s sport will provide a platform for equality” (McCaskill, 2022), “Women’s sport could lose decade of progress in one 'invisible summer'” (Wilson, 2020), and “Visibility is everything-let’s hope this amazing year of women’s sport coverage only grows” (Asher-Smith, 2019). These headlines demonstrate the extent to which mediated visibility has become a primary objective of, and presumed solution to many of the problems facing, women’s sport.

While the growing profile of women’s sport and female athletes has the potential to attract audiences and sponsorship opportunities and inspire a new generation of participants, greater visibility alone is not a panacea for gender inequalities in sport (McClearen, 2021). Indeed, there is a small, but growing, body of work within sport that shows that increasing visibility may represent a particular challenge for female athletes (Pocock & Skey, 2024), fans (Toffoletti, 2017) and administrators (Hancock and Hums, 2015).

Therefore, in this paper we want to achieve two main objectives. First, to move beyond rather one-dimensional views that simply discuss visibility in terms of viewer numbers and argue that it is important and valuable for women’s sport. To do this, we engage with broader work on visibility and draw together insights from both the politics and economies of visibility and, in particular, Duffy and Hund’s (2019) work on influencers, to put forward the idea of a ‘visibility bind’ ¹ , which captures both the challenges and advantages of becoming visible in the domain of sport. We, then, use this framework to examine the experiences of elite female athletes in the sport of cricket. This is a further key contribution of the paper as the voices of female athletes are sometimes missing from wider debates around the development of women’s sport and the presumed benefits of generating greater visibility. In other words, those who advocate on behalf of women’s sport in general terms don’t pay much attention to what being visible might mean for those within a given sport. To this end, the empirical parts of the paper identify the ways in which participants view visibility as an opportunity to engage general media audiences as well as specific constituencies (notably young women and girls) whilst also noting the costs involved. These would include having to deal with sexist comments as well as setting aside time to work on social media content. Indeed, these latter discussions demonstrate the extent to which female athletes are often expected to undertake gendered forms of labour that have the potential distract from their careers in what can be a precarious professional environment. Finally, we note the benefits for female athletes of being in a team sport where colleagues can provide advice, support and levity when dealing with negative experiences.

Representing (Women’s) Sport

In terms of mainstream media, three decades of research (Hargreaves, 1986; Hargreaves & Anderson, 2014) has shown the extent to which women’s sport has been marginalised, stigmatised and stereotyped. Although this coverage has improved in the contemporary era, the achievements of sportswomen are far more likely to be trivialized (Biscomb and Griggs, 2013) and they continue to be represented as objects of sexual desire rather than elite professionals (Cooky et al., 2013, p. 223).

More recently, scholars have argued that while digital media cannot be seen as the solution to the, often, dismal representation of women’s sport, such platforms do at least provide an opportunity for women’s sporting organisations to side-step dominant media organisations, promote their own achievements, seek sponsorship opportunities and engage audiences (Toffoletti and Thorpe, 2018; Vann, 2014). Elsewhere, there is a small, but growing, body of work that not only focuses on the activities of individual athletes but also points to some of the tensions that they must deal with in online spaces (see, e.g., Ahmad & Thorpe, 2020; Geurin, 2017; Kavasoğlu, Eratlı Şirin and Uğurlu, 2024; Rahikainen and Toffoletti, 2021).

On the one hand, social media is seen to “provide opportunities [for female athletes] to reframe their lives, challenge stereotypes, and play potentially empowering roles” (Kavasoğlu, Eratlı Şirin and Uğurlu, 2024, p. 364). This is particularly the case for ethnic minority and LGBTQ women in sport who are often subject to intersecting forms of marginalisation and stigmatisation (Ahmad & Thorpe, 2020). As well as these socio-political benefits, some have noted that social media provides opportunities for sportswomen to engage sponsors and take advantage of other commercial opportunities (Geurin, 2017, Pocock & Skey, 2024).

In the latter case, however, McClearen (2021) has argued that these activities are often another form of uncompensated labour that is tied to the fact that women in sport don’t generally earn as much as their male counterparts. Moreover, this athlete labour not only takes time, energy “and social skills but also demands a degree of emotional resilience” (ibid: 105). In a related argument, Rahikainen and Toffoletti (2021) examine how professional female climbers need to become familiar with the affordances of social media platforms in order to both ensure that they are visible whilst also avoiding any controversy that might put off (potential) sponsors.

In addition to these challenges, a whole raft of studies continue to show the extent to which women in a range of sports and contexts are subject to unwanted attention and abuse in digital spaces (Pocock & Skey, 2024), reflecting wider studies of online misogyny (Jane, 2016) and, in particular, the travails faced by women in traditionally male-dominated industries.

While this work has been undoubtedly important, not least in pointing to the struggles that female athletes face in both trying to become visible, and then dealing with the consequences of growing visibility, we still lack a coherent framework for theorising these processes.

Therefore, in the next section, we look to develop a theoretical framework that can more effectively capture these ‘tensions’ (Kavasoğlu, Eratlı Şirin and Uğurlu, 2024). In order to do this, we engage with recent debates, in sociology, politics and communication and media studies, around the key concept of visibility. We then put forward the idea of a visibility bind that female athletes must confront as they articulate a desire to promote their activities and sport whilst aware of the challenges that this generates in terms of the labour it involves, the abuse it receives and the distraction it represents.

Theorising Visibility

In its most basic definition, “the visible is that which can be seen, that which is perceptible by the sense of sight; the invisible is that which cannot be seen, is imperceptible or hidden from view” (Thompson, 2005, p. 35). However, Brighenti argues that it should not only be viewed as a sensory register, instead it concerns the intersection of perceptions and power relations (Brightenti, 2007: 324). In other words, what becomes visible at a given time and place is tied to wider cultural, political and economic hierarchies.

To this end, Brighenti (2007) theorises visibility in terms of both dis/empowerment. On the one hand, being visible can be an enabling resource that is connected to recognition. On the other hand, it can also be theorised in relation to surveillance by both institutions (Foucault, 1977) and individuals (Duffy and Chan, 2019), which “transforms visibility into a strategic resource for regulation” (Brighenti, 2007, p. 330). In short, visibility can be a ‘double-edged’ sword, generating recognition and value for some, opprobrium and restrictions for others. Building on these ideas, and specifically addressing both the struggles for, and consequences of, visibility in a digital media era, more recent work has used two contrasting perspectives to theorize the growing complexity of these processes, the politics and economies of visibility (Banet Weiser, 2018).

The Politics of Visibility

In contemporary, media-saturated societies, the politics of visibility has been used to “describes the process of making visible a political category (such as gender or race) that has been historically marginalized in the media” (Banet-Weiser, 2015, p. 55). The politics of visibility paradigm “assumes that identities that are visible have a degree of power through media and society whereas those that are invisible remain disenfranchised and lack opportunity” (McClearen, 2021, p. 13). Social media sites are said to be “important tools to promote visibility in an empowering sense” because they allow the “visibility-deprived” to bypass traditional media gatekeepers and share stories on their own terms (Rega and Medrado, 2023: 2).

A second key element of the politics of visibility concerns the significance of role models for groups that have been subject to marginalisation and stigmatization. When it comes to sports participation, role modelling is seen to be particularly important for young women and girls as drop-out rates are very high (Women in Sport, 2023). However, while female athletes do discuss the importance of being role models (Pocock & Skey, 2024) recent studies have noted that these forms of ‘inspirational labour’ can distract from training and competition and may lead to feelings of guilt if athletes feel they are not able to ‘give back’ (Chahardovali and McLeod, 2022).

Finally, in relation to these arguments, we should be cautious about assuming a direct link between visibility and acceptance, as some forms of visibility can lead to more negative attitudes and increasing vulnerability for particular, often marginalised, social groups (Mihelj et al., 2023). Indeed, as we saw in the previous section, there is an established body of research detailing the online abuse that (sports) women have been subject to after becoming more visible (Kavasoğlu, Eratlı Şirin and Uğurlu, 2024). Therefore, greater visibility doesn’t not simply lead to recognition or empowerment, it may result in greater levels of surveillance, abuse and control (Ahmad and Thorpe, 2020).

In summary, the politics of visibility focuses on struggles for power between groups (Banet-Weiser, 2015, p. 55) and often assumes a link between greater visibility and increased status. It, therefore, offers a more collective approach to understanding (in)visibility. This stands in contrast to an economies of visibility perspective which tends to focus more on individuals and how they operate within a market economy – this will be the subject of the next section.

Economies of Visibility

The economics of visibility perspective notes that visibility and attention have become a valuable commodity and therefore places much more of an emphasis on commercial forces and market objectives (Banet-Weiser, 2015, p. 69). Here, visibility “is measurable, accumulated, transmissible, earning interest and convertible” (Gaižutytė-Filipavičienė, 2020: 125).

When considering women’s sport, it is a framework that allows us to explore “the logics that encourage sportswomen to act as entrepreneurial subjects responsible for the construction and promotion of their online identities as marketable media products” (Toffoletti and Thorpe, 2018, p. 17). Given the relatively low status of much women’s sport, as well as the struggles to secure funding from both commercial and government sources, social media has, in some cases, been held up as a potential panacea for female athletes in terms of building a profile and securing sponsorship opportunities (Geurin, 2017). While there is some evidence for this, it should be noted that particular forms of ‘desirable femininity’ (Banet-Weiser, 2015) tend to be privileged, which make visible some female bodies at the expense of others.

Likewise, these efforts generally involve forms of ‘media labour’ (McClearen, 2021) that often place an added burden on female athletes. This labour of visibility has also been discussed in relation to influencer culture and is defined as “the work individuals do when they self-posture and curate their self-presentations so as to be noticeable and positively prominent among prospective employers, clients, the press, or followers and fans, among other audiences” (Abidin, 2016, p. 90). As we noted earlier, there are a small number of scholars who have applied the concept of the labour of visibility to a sports context (Toffoletti and Thorpe, 2018; Rahikainen and Toffoletti, 2021, McLearen, 2021), highlighting the work that individual athletes do in promoting both themselves and their sport.

By drawing together these findings, alongside more general insights from studies of the politics and economies of visibility, we can start to offer a more sophisticated account of visibility in the context of elite female sport. To this end, we introduce the concept of the visibility bind, which draws on Duffy and Hund’s (2019) writing around an ‘authenticity bind’. The authenticity bind explains how marginalised groups, especially women, using digital spaces must navigate a line between being seen as aspirational (they must possess something ‘special’ that sets them apart) as well as approachable (they must also be viewed as – more or less – like their followers). Their ongoing success, in terms of attracting followers and then sponsors, depends on being able to successfully address, or reconcile, both of these competing forces.

It is these ‘competing forces’ that the ‘visibility bind’ is also designed to address in the realm of sport. On the one hand, visibility is viewed as a key objective for more marginal groups when it comes to generating more engagement and investment in a ferociously competitive sports-media environment. On the other, becoming more visible takes time and effort for female athletes and often leads to unwanted attention from those with antagonistic attitudes towards such groups, notably in largely unregulated digital spaces. Having outlined the theoretical framework that underpins this work, in the next section we turn to issues around data collection and analysis.

Methods

Feminist research paradigms are vital and well-established frameworks for understanding and analysing gendered experiences in sports communications. As informed by feminist writings outlined in the literature review, our research sought to shed light on the inequalities faced by women, whose voices remain underrepresented both in sport and in academic research. As Naples (2007) explains, “by starting inquiry from the lived experiences of women and others who have been traditionally outside of the institutions in which knowledge about social life is generated and classified, more objective and more relevant knowledge can be produced” (p. 1).

However, engaging elite athletes in research is often a major challenge due to the many demands on their time not to mention the increasing use of gatekeepers, in the form of public relations officers or media advisors, who often manage access to them (English, 2022; O’Boyle and Gallagher, 2023). Fortunately, the lead author was able to draw on contacts gained from her previous work in professional cricket as a media content producer and leverage existing relationships with players and, subsequently, the England women’s teams’ media manager. Overall, the process of securing interviews took around 12 months, from the time of the initial approach to conducting the final interviews. In total, eight players were put forward by the media manager and seven agreed to be interviewed. This sample, while small, was broadly representative of the England squad at the time as it involved both established players who had represented England in several major tournaments as well as younger players who recently made their debuts.

In terms of those interviewed, all were white and aged between 18-30. This is fairly typical of the broader profile of women’s cricket in England (Nicholson, 2017). It also means that we can say very little about the challenges facing ethnic minority and/or working-class women in sport, whether in terms of becoming professional athletes and/or dealing with mediated visibility (Elling and Knoppers, 2005). Therefore, while the study findings are not generalisable to sportswomen in general, what this work does offer is a novel perspective on the lives and experiences of athletes participating in team sports, who are relatively rare in receiving a central contract from their sporting association.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, video interviews were used. However, this turned out to be an advantage as it allowed for more flexibility in arranging a suitable time and meant that athletes were more likely to participate as they had fewer training, playing and other commitments. All interviews were conducted virtually via Zoom video calls, recorded and fully transcribed.

Questions predominantly focused on two main issues. First, the athletes’ experiences of mainstream media coverage of themselves as individual athletes and the sports as a whole. Second, their use, and experience of, of social media. A pre-established interview schedule was employed but participants were encouraged to reflect on their own experiences and draw attention to any issues or experiences that they thought were particularly relevant. Three players made reference to specific posts on social media and the lead author asked if they would be willing to show and discuss these. The players in question were willing to do this, which helped clarify the points they were making.

Ethical issues were specifically addressed in line with [the university’s] stated policy. To this end, all participants were provided with detailed information about the research project and signed an informed consent form prior to the interview starting. As the interview was likely to touch on issues such as online misogyny, participants were explicitly told that if they felt uncomfortable at any time, they were free to stop the interview, change the topic or withdraw from the research.

Following Braun and Clarke (2019), a two-stage thematic analysis was conducted, first to identify broader patterns in the interview transcripts and insights from existing research on the topic. Through an initial process of open coding, two key themes around opportunities and challenges were first identified. Through a subsequent process of axial coding, these initial themes were re-analysed and divided into further categories (engaging audiences, role models, time and training, sexualisation and abuse).

In the following section, we use illustrative examples from the interviews to highlight these categories, using the following sub-headings; engaging audiences, role models, media labour and online misogyny. These sections not only support existing research on both women’s sport and gendered visibility, but also offer novel perspectives on the ways in which elite athletes balance competing expectations from a range of stakeholders (fans, media, sporting authorities). These tensions can be usefully theorised by returning to the key concept of the visibility bind.

Engaging Audiences

We noted earlier that social media has been viewed as a way of making women’s sport more visible given the extent to which it has been traditionally overlooked by mainstream media. This idea was also discussed by the majority of those we interviewed, with the following responses typical;

“I use it to promote our game … It’s actually quite important for us because we’ve kind of had to make ourselves more visible because notoriously, the media hasn’t done it for us” – Player B

“It gives … [cricket] its own platform .. and it gives a voice … If you think about the newspapers and the TV, everybody's fighting for that specific channel or slot. Whereas social media everyone can be on it and have their opinion.” – Player D

“It allows players themselves to build a profile which then therefore brings a profile to the game … um …. so it's probably more beneficial to sports such as women's cricket compared to men's football and stuff because that was already there. So smaller sports have been given an opportunity to grow – Player G

We can highlight a number of features in relation to these quotes. First is how mediated visibility is seen to be key to developing a sport in the contemporary era (Women’s Sport Trust, 2023). It is not enough to simply play, and enjoy, the game, success comes from being able to attract the attention of ‘newspapers and the TV’ and ‘fight’ for a profile. Second is the gendered nature of these struggles. As existing literature has demonstrated, men’s sport has traditionally dominated media coverage and therefore is seen as the benchmark against which women’s sport should be judged (Bruce, 2016). Third is the idea that social media can ameliorate established hierarchies when it comes to the coverage (and value) of sports. This democratisation narrative is a common one around social media and encourages people to believe in the idea that because most people can access it, anyone can become visible (Ronzhyn et al., 2023). However, this rather overlooks the extent to which online visibility is shaped not only by the demands of social media companies (and the algorithms they use to rate and sort online data) but also existing hierarchies around social categories, including gender (Magalhães and Yu, 2022).

Overall, this section has highlighted the extent to which female athletes have normalised the idea that their use of social media is a key element in promoting their activities as well as the sport as a whole. Leading on from this idea, in the next section, we address the idea that female athletes should be/come more visible in order to act as role models for the next generation of young girls and boys.

Role Models

The players we interviewed all talked about the importance of inspiring the next generation but, interestingly enough, spoke about this in relation to both girls and boys. Below are some illustrative examples of how participants talked about inspiring young girls through their social media presence;

“You can’t be what you can’t see, so visibility in all senses of young girls being able to see females playing cricket at recreational level to international level. Understanding that they can be that as well”– Player B.

“We talk a lot about inspiring girls and women to play cricket and so I think when you see that happening on a day-to-day basis and actually like seeing these [online] messages and the girls who love playing cricket and want to be like you, it's really weird. But it's really nice in the same way.” – Player E

“I'm aware that young girls might look and see what I'm doing is quite cool and I want to inspire girls to play cricket. But the idea of me being a role model seems a bit weird still to me.” – Player F

The above statements can all be linked to a politics of visibility perspective where representatives of marginalised groups are encouraged (and sometimes expected) to be/come more visible in order to inspire others like them (Banet-Weiser, 2015: 55). The novelty of this position is expressed by Players E and F who both use the term ‘weird’ to describe their standing as role models. Both of these players are relatively new to the international set up, which may explain their need to adjust to this new status but also the fact that becoming a ‘role model’ isn’t something that comes naturally to all the players. Indeed, as Guest & Cox (2009) argue being a role model may be “unduly burdensome” because athletes are often young people themselves who have dedicated themselves to their sport and are still in a process of forming their own identity. In other words, it is something that they have to learn to be, which for most people will take additional time and effort.

Elsewhere, what should also be noted is that while male athletes are sometimes encouraged to be ‘role models’, often during moments of crisis or moral panic (Lines, 2001), elite female athletes continue to be asked to fulfil this role as a matter of course (Midgley, DeBues-Stafford, Lockwood and Thai, 2021). Put simply, the lower status of women’s sport places additional burdens on female players who are expected to leverage their visibility to benefit the next generation. Interestingly, those we interviewed not only discussed this responsibility to girls but also mentioned how they could potentially shape the views of boys as well.

“There's a chance for young girls to see like what I'm doing and they might be inspired to do that or … even young boys as well …” – Player A

“I guess it's important for not just young girls, but both boys and girls to have role models that are female in cricket … it's essential for young people to see that it's a career for women, not just girls, but boys to be like oh yeah, girls play cricket as well and it's a really good career.” – Player D

It is worth noting that previous research on female athletes as role models tends to focus exclusively on young girls (Pocock & Skey, 2024). Much less attention has been paid to the ways in which female role models in elite sport might also shift attitudes among boys and young men, normalising the idea that women both play, and make a successful living from, elite sport. But here, once again, it should be noted how the responsibility for inspiring some young people, and educating others, remains the preserve of athletes who are already burdened with the need to constantly prove themselves in an, often, hostile sporting and social environment.

In the next section, we look at another aspect of the visibility bind, the generally unseen, and uncompensated, emotional and physical work women in sport are often expected to undertake.

Media Labour

As we have seen, there is an expectation that elite female athletes will use social media to both promote their sport more generally and engage young girls, in particular, so that they participate more widely in sport, whether as athletes, fans or officials. However, in line with recent studies of UFC fighters (McClearen, 2021) and female climbers (Rahikainen and Toffoletti, 2021), these activities need to be understood as forms of labour that not only require particular (intellectual, social and emotional) skills but also place an additional burden on female athletes. This burden is exacerbated by the lack of training that the players receive when it comes to using social media as a promotional tool and dealing with negative, or demeaning, comments.

Indeed, the following extracts not only highlight the effort involved in posting but also the distinct lack of guidance that the players had been given.

“We get asked to by our media manager to post…they're quite formal, not formal, but more about an initiative and things.” Player A

“I post consciously, because I kinda have to. Like it's not out of choice. It’s like I haven't posted in two months, I should probably post. I'm like, oh, I probably should put something up there otherwise no one will find me interesting which is quite sad isn’t it really.”– Player C

I'll make sure I'll pick a photo and I'll say to my team do you think this photo is it okay like to use and is it sensible. And if I want to put like a funny caption or something I'd just check … because I don't want to offend anyone or come across like I don't care or anything like that”. Player C

As work on influencers has demonstrated, crafting an online image takes time and effort, even more so when you are largely reliant on your own initiative and resources (Hodge and Walker, 2015). This creates an addition burden on women to find solutions to their own marginalisation. Despite being financed by a national sports governing body (the England and Wales Cricket Board), resources are not evenly shared between the men’s and women’s team. For context, at the time of the interviews, there was nobody assigned on a full-time basis to the role of producing content (photos and videos) for the England Cricket channels nor for players to share themselves. Indeed, the media manager’s position was primarily to act as a gatekeeper role between players and mainstream media rather than being someone who captured or disseminated social media content. This meant that players generally considered creating content as their responsibility, but this was difficult to do when trying to train and in some ways was seen as a distraction to their professional role as athletes.

I know when the football girls go away, they get 5 or 10 photographs or videos of themselves from each training session where it's for us we wouldn't get anything like that, so we very rarely put ourselves out there … People can't see it to latch onto it, so I think it is a bit of a circle of the popularity of the sport, but also like the financial backing as well – Player F

We get the odd bit of [media] training every year or so, but that's more about interviews and stuff which actually probably is the harder part of the media side of things when someone pulls you off the pitch and you have to pretend like you're not fuming or something.

Yeah we don't get too much direction in terms of what to do with our social media, … we're obviously getting … told what not to post, but mostly that's common sense stuff, really – Player H

A barrier to becoming visible is having the images and/or videos required to participate on relevant platforms and without a dedicated individual capturing such content, the labour falls on the athlete. Normally, this would involve players using their phones during training sessions to produce content. Player F draws a contrast between professional female football players, whose growing profile means they now receive more regular media production support, and those in cricket – and other less visible sports – who struggle to ‘put ourselves out there’. Furthermore, while some media training is offered, and the media manager provides regular advice on how to deal with journalists all these activities tend to focus on mainstream media outlets. Therefore, for the players in our study, when it comes to social media, it’s not just about generating sufficient content to post, but also understanding which type of content is appropriate both in terms of engaging audiences and, crucially, aligning with the objectives of sponsors and sporting authorities. These findings echo the work of other studies who note the difficulties that female athletes face in navigating a range of competing demands that they generally have to learn through experience rather than being prepared for (Rahikainen and Toffoletti, 2021; Toffoletti and Thorpe, 2018).

Having examined the additional labour that female athletes often have to do in order to promote their sport and engage young people, in the final empirical section, we turn to another important aspect of the visibility bind. For as women become more high profile in previously male-dominated environments, such as sport, they also often become the target of misogynistic abuse.

Online Misogyny

The following responses were typical when we asked whether our interviewees had ever been subject to sexist or other demeaning comments online;

“I once had a man send me, you know, like the England football badge it’s got like three Lions on it. He sent me a badge with three irons on it”. – Player D

“How can something so positive get like spun on its head and people telling women to get back in the kitchen, just how. Like think of something original that’s not.” Player G

“I always have a bright colour nail polish on that's just what I've always done, and I remember a bloke commenting on it like she's too busy thinking about how she looks like she's too busy looking at her nails than the cricket. And commenting on parts of my body as well, which isn't very nice”– Player E

As we noted earlier, there is a long history of women in sport being trivialized, sexualised or otherwise denigrated. The first two extracts highlight the well-worn divisions between the public and the private (as male and female spheres respectively) to criticise those who have the temerity to enter, and become successful and visible, in what is still perceived, by some, as a male domain. The comments directed at Player E refuses to recognise the ability of female athletes to be both ‘pretty and powerful’ (Bruce, 2017) and instead reduces the athlete to her appearance – a common refrain within misogynistic attacks on women in sport. The comments in the extracts above are, as Player G notes, cliched but none the less damaging for that. Alongside the continuing use of these standard tropes, we also saw another feature within the interviews, which was players’ tacit acceptance of the fact that they would get ‘negative comments’ because of their growing visibility online.

“You might get negative comments, but that's just a given with social media that you’ve got to accept.” – Player C

“I tend to just laugh them off and move on … I'm not going to waste my time trying to change their opinion if that's what they think like OK, get on with it.” Player F

Both extracts indicate just how ‘normal’ it is for players at the elite level to receive critical comments. What is also noteworthy, however, is both the acceptance of social media as a bastion of ‘negative comments’ against women but also how responsibility for dealing with them is placed onto women, ‘you’ve got to accept’ and ‘get on with it’. This echoes other work on female athletes who have both become visible in public life and largely inured to the comments and abuse they receive as a result of their status (Rahikainen and Toffoletti, 2021). This is a prime example of what the visibility bind captures; women are encouraged to become more visible in order to promote their activities and, at the same time, largely left to deal with the negative consequences of this shift.

In the final section, we examine the strategies athletes use when dealing with negative comments. While a growing number of studies have acknowledged experiences of sexism online, few have directly asked female athletes how they respond to sexist comments and how they might be better supported by institutional authorities.

“These are the ways you can deal with it”

This section addresses two key issues. First, is the extent to which our participants relied on each other for advice and formulating strategies for dealing with online abuse. The second is the lack of training that they receive about these issues, which is particularly noteworthy given the emphasis that is placed on female athletes using social media to promote themselves and their sport.

“The girl's opinion of me is really important to me, so like especially the captain like she said … we know you're not like that like don't worry about it. That really reassured me.”- Player C

“I think the girls are very good, you know like quote tweeting and highlighting people who have perhaps given some negative comments or whatever.” – Player G

It’s worth noting, here, the extent to which players rely on each other for advice and guidance when it comes to both using social media and dealing with online abuse. The fact that cricket is a team sport means that individuals have an established network of fellow players, who are often dealing with similar issues, that they can go to for help. This stands in contrast to elite athletes who compete against each other in individual pursuits, where keen rivalries develop and collaboration is much less likely. However, given earlier discussions of gendered labour, these support networks are another example of how female athletes are often required to do extra unpaid work to deal with the consequences of their growing success and, hence, visibility. It’s also worth noting that the players themselves are not only asking for help when it comes to generating an appropriate strategy for producing content but also when it comes to dealing with unwanted comments and/or online abuse.

“I think dealing with negative comments on social media is something that we should have someone come in and talk to us about that because we've not had anything like that.” – Player E

“I think one thing they could work on is and it's not about how to respond to people … I think they should just maybe give a heads up like OK, you might get these negative comments, if you do these are ways you can deal with it.” Player F

The need for further support and training has been discussed in relation to previous studies of the abuse that female athletes are subject to when they become visible for their sporting achievements (Pocock & Skey, 2024). It further highlights the emotional costs that being visible may generate for women in a highly gendered domain such as sport and the need to develop specific frameworks of care and guidance that are organised, and funded, at the institutional level. However, while such training might be able to mitigate some of the worst aspects of online abuse, it still continues to place the burden of dealing with said abuse on individuals. Therefore, in line with much other work on gendered visibility we again emphasise the need for a solution at the structural level, namely better regulation of social media platforms.

Conclusion

This paper has introduced the concept of the visibility bind to explore the ways in which elite female cricketers discuss social media as both an opportunity to promote their activities and sport, more broadly, but also the challenges of becoming more visible online, notably in terms of online abuse and emotional labour. Drawing on insights from work on the politics and economics of visibility, we showed how the growing visibility of women’s sport – often celebrated as a positive development by some - can present particular challenges for elite female athletes, who are expected to act as both cheerleaders for the sport and as role models to both young girls and boys. Moreover, these expectations are gendered as male athletes in the same sport are not required to labour to the same extent, whether in terms of promoting the sport, engaging young people or dealing with abuse.

Elsewhere, a key finding related to the nature of team sports, which in contrast to the hyper-atomised world of individual competitors, offered (the potential for) solidarity and emotional support when trying to work out how to both engage the right kind of user and deal with negative comments from others. While the shared responses to these comments are noteworthy, they once again place the burden on women in a domain in which they already face massive structural inequalities. To this end, we challenge the idea that more media training is the simple answer to these issues and argue that a unified response from government, the sporting authorities and social media platforms is required.

While getting access to elite female cricketers, and discussing their gendered experiences of the sport, was a major achievement, we should also note the study had a rather narrow focus in terms of class and ethnicity. Women’s cricket in England is dominated by white, middle-class women at the elite level and therefore future research would benefit from adopting an intersectional lens by exploring the pathways to professionalism and the major challenges facing women from other backgrounds. It would also be good to see other researcher apply the concept of the visibility bind to different types of sport (both individual and team) as well as other domains where women face ongoing abuse through simply have a visible presence in mainstream and/or digital media.