Gender bias in sports journalism

'That was a great game! How's your love life?' A perplexing question, in more ways than one, to ask an athlete. But it happens, and it's worse for women, according to Cornell researchers. A computer analysis of several thousand's with tennis players shows that in post-game press conferences, female players are asked more questions not related to the game. Words that come up in questions asked of males might include clay, challenger(s), sets, practiced, volley, shots, server(s), tiebreaker. While in's with women we might hear nervous, improve, seed, friends, mom, meet, fight, father, thing. Rather than subjectively judge themselves whether specific words like 'fight' are game-related, the researchers trained a computer to to compare the's wth a model of game-related language. Since the analysis is based on comparing word usage it is not dependent on subjective human judgment, they point out.