The purpose of this study was to examine how Swedish media describes women´s sport and female athletes. More exactly, how three Swedish newspapers describe women´s sport and female athletes through three different time periods. The time periods are based on The Swedish Sports Confederation´s description of the history of sports in Sweden: The Gender Differentiation phase (1920-1945), the Build-up Phase (1945-1970) and the Integration Phase (1977-1999). The second purpose of the study was to examine how the description of women´s sports and female athletes change or remain over time, as well as how the descriptions reinforce or question gender norms. Therefore, four questions were sought to be answered by the thesis: How do the articles describe women´s sports? How do the articles describe female athletes? What change/continuity can be found in the article’s description of women´s sports and female athletes? And, in what way have the articles contributed to maintaining or questioning female gender norms?

The research material used for the study was newspaper articles that were published in three Swedish newspapers: Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The examination of the articles was based on a qualitative analysis of a symptomatic nature. Yvonne Hirdman´s gender system theory and norm-critical theory were used to analyse the articles´ descriptions of women´s sport and female athletes. The theoretical approach gave the right tools to discuss how the articles´ contributed to maintaining or questioning female gender norms.

The result of the study shows that the newspaper articles that were published during the Gender differentiation phase describe women´s sports and female athletes in a gender-discriminatory order, that also reinforces prevailing female gender norms. Unlike those articles, the articles that were published during the Build-up phase describe women´s sports and female athletes in a two-sided manner. The articles partly describe women´s sport in the same manner as the articles published during the Gender differentiation phase, partly in a nuanced way with descriptions that portray women´s sport and female athletes as strong, fast, and resilient. The descriptions therefore follow the evolution of women´s sports during the time period, and both reinforces and questions female gender norms. The articles that were published during the final phase mostly described women´s sports and female athletes in a positive way. The earlier descriptions that were based on women´s appearance and normative characteristics disappeared. The articles that were published during the Integrations phase describe the female athletes based on their sports performance. Finally, the results show that the articles´ descriptions undergo change while traces of continuity remain. The descriptions reinforce and question gender norms in all phases, but in different ways.