KINGSTON, RI – February 6, 2025—Molly Yanity, professor of sports media and communications at the Harrington School of Communication and Media, will release Media, Communication and the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup on February 26.
The book serves as an academic text centering around the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, while analyzing media and communications’ role in women’s sports. Scholars from a dozen different countries contributed research on topics such as the influence of podcasts in women’s sports, sexual empowerment, and harassment in the game.
“We worked with each author and determined the flow, which chapters would fly and which [wouldn’t],” Yanity said. “We put out a call and lots of people offered chapters and ideas, so the stuff that we knew we wanted to focus on, that’s how we shaped it.”
Yanity earned a PhD in mass communications from Ohio University in 2013. Before joining the URI faculty, she worked in Seattle as a sports writer for 15 years and taught journalism and sports journalism at Quinnipiac University.
While teaching at Quinnipiac, Yanity had the opportunity to travel to Australia with 15 students to see the Women’s World Cup in person. Seeing firsthand the impact of experiencing an international sporting event had on students who had never traveled out of the country, let alone witnessed such a sporting event in person, inspired Yanity to bring more personal aspects into her book.
“In my lifetime, it really went from not seeing much media coverage at all to where we are today, where it’s pretty commonplace and celebrated. I think that, while we’re at this point, there’s an opportunity to do things in a better way. We don’t just have to emulate what men’s sports do, right? There are more equitable and fair ways to do things.”
Yanity’s interest in the field of women’s sports not only stems from growing up involved in sports, but recognizing the importance of representation and equal opportunity.
“I think it is so important for women, particularly women of color and trans women, to have space to succeed,” Yanity said. “ When I say succeed, I don’t just mean, ‘we can all make a hundred million dollars.’ I mean so that we can succeed in living sustainably and living good lives and productive lives. We can do this if we can see that it’s possible.”
This is the second book professor Yanity and co-editor Danielle Coombs have edited together, the first covering the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup
“We had so much input from other scholars and people who wanted to write chapters [that] we actually have two books,” Yanity said. “The first one… is on media coverage and the second one…is more on social and cultural issues surrounding women’s soccer in the World Cup.”
This article was written by Erin Malinn, class of 2028.