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Recent growth in the media visibility of female combat sport athletes has offered a compelling site for research on gender and sport media, as women in deeply masculinized sports have been increasingly placed in the public spotlight. While scholars in the Anglophone West have offered analyses of the media framing of this phenomenon, little work has been done outside these cultural contexts. Thus, in this paper we offer a qualitative exploration of how Joanna Jędrzejczyk, a Polish champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, has been represented in Polish media. Our findings reveal a relatively de-gendered, widely celebratory account, primarily framed by nationalistic discourse -findings we ascribe to both the particularities of the sport of mixed martial arts as well as the historic nature of Jędrzejczyk's success.

The results clearly show that more effort is needed to support female football players, especially after an injury, so that they do not quit the sport voluntarily.

This study examines how newspapers in post-communist Poland nurture a gendered national identity through their disparate coverage of men’s and women’s European basketball championships. Agenda-setting, framing and social identity theories were used to analyse 502 articles published between 2009–2013. Results show that men’s tournaments received 3.5 times more coverage than women’s events; the gap further widened when Poland hosted the championships. Articles about men’s championships were also longer (314 words on average versus 161). The discourse surrounding women’s competitions was factual whereas the men’s national team’s performances were framed as challenges, matters of national pride, and involved combat and military terminology. Peculiarly, the most frequently mentioned member of the women’s team was its male coach. Findings indicate a significant departure from the communist-era promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment as a source of pride. National identity is nurtured through newspaper coverage of the men’s national team (when team colours and the first person plural are mentioned) but not of the women’s national team.

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