essay on gender inequality in sports

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Sports Act Living

Women in International Elite Athletics: Gender (in)equality and National Participation

Henk erik meier.

1 Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

Mara Verena Konjer

Jörg krieger.

2 Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Gender discrimination has been strongly related to the suppression of women's participation in sport. Accordingly, gender (in)equality has proven to be an important determinant for the participation and the success of countries in international women's elite sport. Hence, differences in gender (in)equalitity, such as women's participation in the labor force, fertility rates, tradition of women suffrage or socio-economic status of women, could be linked to success in international women's elite sports. While major international sport governing bodies have created programs to subsidize the development of women's sports in member countries, gender equality has figured rather low within the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) (now World Athletics). Therefore, the paper examines the impact of gender (in)equality on country participation in international athletics on the base of a unique dataset on season's bests. The results provide further support that gender inequality matters and is associated with participation in women's elite sports. Whereas, women's participation in athletics has made considerable progress in the past two decades as a side-effect of the IAAF's decentralization strategy, the analyses illustrate the need for better targeted and better resourced development programs for increasing participation of less gender equal countries. Moreover, the analyses indicate the limitations of a pure macro-social approach as there are some rather unexpected dynamic developments, such as, the substantial progress of women's athletics in the Islamic Republic of Iran as a country with strong Muslim religious affiliation. The results from this analysis were used to provide practical implications.

Introduction

Since men's control of women's physical activity has been at the heart of masculine hegemony, sports has been a highly gendered social sphere. For a long time, women were denied the right to engage in physical exercise for reasons of health, that is, the alleged physical “weakness” of women's bodies or detrimental effects on the fertility of women, chastity or threats to the “natural order” of sexes (e.g., Pfister, 1993 ; Meier, 2020 ). Over the last decades, women have made considerable progress with regard to participation in mass sports as well as elite sports. Nevertheless, there is still evidence that sport continues to be gendered. Thus, a persistent finding of macro-social research on international elite sport participation is that the participation and success of women in international elite sports is strongly related to national gender regimes.

International sport governing bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the international governing body of football (Fédération Internationale de Football Association—FIFA), have tried to promote women's sports and women's sport participation. Such efforts do not necessarily indicate that these organizations have ceased to be institutions of men's hegemony (Fink, 2008 ; Williams, 2014 ). Initiatives to promote women's sport might simply reflect the search for new customers in an increasingly saturated sports entertainment market. Nevertheless, there is evidence that such promotional efforts inspired more women's elite sport participation (e.g., Jacobs, 2014 ).

In contrast, the International Athletics Association Federation (IAAF)—since 2019 known as World Athletics—made little effort to promote women's athletics throughout its history (Krieger, 2021 ). Therefore, the current paper explores the relationship between gender (in)equality and country participation in women's elite athletics. It does so on the base of a unique dataset on season's best in women's athletics covering the period between 2000 and 2019.

Theoretical Background

Gender discrimination in international elite sports has been examined from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Much of the research has more or less characterized women's access to elite sport as the political outcome of a liberal-feminist discourse centering on equal opportunities, socialization practices and legal or institutional reform (e.g., Scraton et al., 1999 ).

Historical research on women's sport has highlighted how women have been kept out of sport for medical, aesthetic and social rationales (Guttmann, 1991 ; Hargreaves, 1994 ; Schultz, 2018 ). The founder of the modern Olympic Movement, Pierre de Coubertin, thought women's sport was “impractical, uninteresting, ungainly, and, I do not hesitate to add, improper” (Coubertin, 1912 ). Following attempts to restrict women's participation in the early Olympic Games, more women's events were added during the interwar years due to the growing significance of women's sports and the increasing activities of women's sport organizations (Pfister, 1993 ). Put simply, men wanted to maintain control over women's sport so it would not exceed the men's sport in popularity (Krieger and Krech, 2020 ).

After the Second World War, social, economic and legislative changes catalyzed the increased participation of women in elite sport. Between the 1970's and the 1990's, the international women's sport movement gained increasing momentum that culminated in the inaugural World Conference on Women and Sport, held in Brighton in 1994 (Hargreaves, 1999 ). The outcome of the conference was an international treaty to support the development of a gender equal sport and physical activity system (Brighton Declaration on Women Sport, 1994 ). The IOC supported and signed what became known as the “Brighton Declaration.” Thus, since the end of the 19th century, women have gained access to participate in all sporting disciplines at the Olympic Games. The 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang were the first Olympics at which more medal events for women than for men were held (IOC, 2020 ). However, it should be mentioned while women have access to all sporting disciplines in the Olympics, there are still some events which they cannot compete in. In athletics, until 2017 women could only participate in 20 km race walk, but not in the 50 km race walk.

The current study does, however, not focus on the women's sport movement's struggle to gain access to elite sports but examines the (relative) impact of national gender regimes on country participation in international elite sport. The concept of gender regimes tries to grasp gender hierarchy within societies. According to the influential contribution of Connell ( 2002 , p. 53–68), a gender regime can be characterized via four dimensions:

• “Gender division of labor,” that is, the way in which production and consumption are arranged along gender lines;
• “Gender relations of power,” that is, the way in which control, authority, and force are exercised along gender lines;
• “Emotion and human relations,” that is, the way in which attachment and antagonism among people and groups are organized along gender lines; and
• “Gender culture and symbolism,” that is, the way in which gender identities are defined in culture, the language and symbols of gender difference, and the prevailing beliefs and attitudes about gender.

The macro-social research on the impact of national gender regimes on country participation has, however, usually not employed such an encompassing definition of gender regimes but focused on gender equality in the spheres of education, labor market and political process (see below). Most of this research is inspired by the parsimonious economic model developed by Bernard and Busse ( 2004 ). Accordingly, the production of athletic success can be explained by two primary factors, that is, population size and national wealth. Population size defines the national pool of athletic talents, while national wealth provides the economic means to develop these very talents. Most empirical accounts also consider (former) membership in the communist bloc as additional variable, which has served as a proxy either for organizational capacities or for policy priorities in favor of elite sports policies (Bernard and Busse, 2004 ). Macro-social research on women's international elite sports has expanded the basic economic model by adding different proxies for gender inequality. In a groundbreaking paper, Klein ( 2004 ) demonstrated that stronger participation of women in the labor force related to better women's performances in the Summer Olympics and the Women's Football World Cup even when the analyses controlled for income per capita and population size. Klein's ( 2004 ) contribution inspired a vibrant research, which used different indicators of gender inequality but supported his main findings.

With regard to international women's football, Hoffmann et al. ( 2006 ) found that the ratio of average women's earnings to men's earning related significantly to better team performances measured by the scores awarded to national women's soccer teams by FIFA's ranking system. Hence, the lower the gender pay gap, the better national team performances. In an ambitious article, which compared determinants of men's and women's team performances as measured by FIFA scores, Congdon- Hohman and Matheson ( 2013 ) used the ratio of women's to men's secondary enrollment rates as an indicator for gender equality. They found that the influence of economic and demographic factors were similar for men's and women's team performances. In contrast, Muslim religious affiliation correlated with lower women's success but not men's, while communist political systems showed better women's performances but men's performances were worse. The gender equality indicator used seemed to exert a positive impact on women's soccer performance but not on men's. Cho ( 2013 ) also used FIFA scores to examine the question whether football traditions or women empowerment were a driving force for national success in women's soccer. Again women's labor force participation served as proxy for gender equality. Cho ( 2013 ) found that women's empowerment correlated with the success in women's soccer.

Concerning success in the Olympics, Leeds and Leeds ( 2012 ) confirmed Klein's ( 2004 ) finding that higher women's labor force participation related to improved women's performances at the Summer Olympics. Moreover, they found that lower fertility rates and a longer tradition of women's suffrage also correlated with better women's performances. Noland and Stahler ( 2016 ) used several indicators for gender equality in their more recent analyses of women's performances at the Summer Olympics and demonstrated that the socio-economic status of women correlated significantly with better performances. Lowen et al. ( 2016 ) employed the gender inequality value (GIV) as developed by the United Nations as predictor for success in the Summer Olympics. They confirmed that greater gender equality has been consistently and significantly associated with improvements in two measures of Olympic success, that is, athletic participation and medal counts, even when other important predictors were taken into account. Interestingly, they even found that higher gender inequality related to lower number of medals won by both men and women. Finally, the finding that Islamic religion is a negative correlate of sporting success in the Olympics has been related to the fact that Islamic religion does not support women's sport participation (Sfeir, 1985 ; Tcha and Pershin, 2003 ; Trivedi and Zimmer, 2014 ; Noland and Stahler, 2016 ).

These findings can be summarized as follows: There is solid and consistent evidence that macro-social gender inequality relates to women's participation and success in international elite sports. However, the cited macro-social approaches suffer from a number of limitations. With regard to measuring gender (in)equality, the studies exclusively employ macro-social indicators focusing on what has been called “public sphere gender equality,” which refers to women's equality in education, labor market and political process. However, it has been argued that the gender revolution will only be complete when gender equality reaches the private sphere since even in societies with high public sphere gender equality responsibility for household chores is unequally distributed (England, 2010 ; see also: McDonald, 2000a , b ). A second limitation is that most studies fail to consider meso-level factors, “such as sports federations and sports clubs, families, the media, schools and peer groups [which] function as gatekeepers and mediate or moderate the effect of macro-level gender equality” (Lagaert and Roose, 2018 , p. 546). Yet, a recent study by Meier ( 2020 ) on women's soccer in reunified Germany indicated that macro-social gender equality does not translate in a linear manner into more women's sport participation and that policy priorities of sport organizations at different levels (national, regional and local) appeared to be highly consequential for women's sport participation and the popularity of women's sports. Finally, there is a lack of studies examining the impact of the efforts of international sport governing bodies to promote women's elite sports and to inspire women's sport participation. A particular exception is the innovative study conducted by Jacobs ( 2014 ). Jacobs ( 2014 ) evaluated the effects of FIFA programs for promoting women's soccer by using FIFA scores as dependent variable. At the macro level, she found income per capita, women's population size and women's labor force participation to be consistently and positively associated with women's team success. In addition, there was a significant impact of meso-level organizational factors on women's team performances. Dedicated governance staff and training proved to be key correlates of successful women's soccer nations in the short term, while dedicated governance staff and investments in youth developments were strong predictors of success in the long term (Jacobs, 2014 ).

Hence, although the current study follows the path of previous macro-social research on the relationship between gender (in)equality and country participation, it is fully aware of the conceptual and measurement limitations of such an approach. The main innovative contribution of the current study is, therefore, to apply macro-social research approaches to a new subject, that is, country participation in international women's athletics. As will be elaborated now, women have been long marginalized in international athletics.

Gender Discrimination in International Athletics

The IAAF was founded in 1912 to organize men's international athletics, and initially expressed little interest in the women's sport. It was not until French sport official and feminist Alice Milliat through her organisation Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale (FSFI) began successfully organizing international athletics competitions for women. In response, the IAAF began to consider extending its influence to cover women athletes. Viewing the FSFI as a threat to its singular authority over the sport, the men's federation usurped control from the women's federation through a series of strategic maneuvers. In 1922, the then President of the IAAF, Sigfrid Edström, ordered the all men's IAAF officials to study the possibility of the IAAF governing women's sport. As result of these efforts, two women's FSFI representatives were co-opted, which contributed to the disintegration of the FSFI. Yet, the influence of the former FSFI representatives was intentionally limited (Krieger and Krech, 2020 ). A similar development occurred later in the U.S., when the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was forced to discontinue its activities in 1982 in favor of the NCAA, which until then had been responsible only for men's sports (Wushanley, 2004 ). When IAAF business resumed after World War II, an all-men's Women's Commission was appointed (IAAF, 1946 ). It took 10 years before Zoya Romanova was elected as the first women to chair (IAAF, 1956 ). Moreover, Romanova's recruitment seems to have been primarily motivated by the Soviet demands for greater representation in IAAF leadership positions (Krieger and Duckworth, 2020 ).

The Women's Commission focused on adding women's events to the athletics programme at the Olympic Games and European Championships. However, progress was rather slow and women's influence in the IAAF's governance structures remained limited. Within the IAAF a centralized power structure and misogynistic culture were deeply intertwined, and characterized the organizational environment within which the Women's Committee operated at least until the early 2000's. For example, in 2002 women still only made up an average of 7.1% of all committee and commission members (outside the Women's Committee) (Bechthold, 2002a , b ).

Therefore, the concerns of women's athletes and its development had a difficult stance within the IAAF. Throughout the 1990's, the Women's Committee under the leadership of German sport administrator Ilse Bechthold continued to seek the expansion of the women's programme of events at international competitions. It also adopted the explicit goal that, by the turn of the century, the IAAF should recognize an equal number of events for women as for men (IAAF Women's Committee, 1995 ). In response, the IAAF Congress agreed to a plan in 1995 which would see women's pole vault and hammer throw debut at the 1999 World Championships in Athletics (IAAF, 1995 ). Adding steeplechase races for women to IAAF events proved even more cumbersome and did not materialize until the 2005 World Athletics Championships (IAAF Women's Committee, 2002 ). However, it was only in 2017 that the women's competition programme reached the same number of events as the men (Krech, 2019 ).

Regarding development work for women's athletics, the Women's Committee proposed a Strategy for the Development of Athletics for Women in 1991, which focused on detailing “the situation of women's athletics in the world” and proposing specific strategies to encourage women's involvement in all roles in the sport (IAAF Women's Committee, 1991 ). Such development work was to be undertaken in both “advanced” and “less advanced” athletics nations, although the strategies would differ by context (Ibid.). These goals were primarily pursued through the staging of seminars and workshops around the world. These events failed to have a sustainable impact so the Women's Committee proposed the establishment of an IAAF Year of Women in Athletics, which would involve a range of promotional activities around the world (Ibid.). This was agreed in 1995 and the Year of Women's Athletics eventually took actually place in 1998. However, the Women's Committee was denied its own budget for developing women's athletics, while its proposals were ignored in the activities of the IAAF's Regional Development Centres (RDCs), located around the world. The Women's Committee also failed to make the establishment of a women's committee in each member federation a common standard. Therefore, the historical account described lends to the reality that women tend to be underrepresented in the national federations (Anthonj et al., 2013 ).

More recently, the IAAF has become increasingly aware about the federation's gender inequalities and has addressed the issue of gender in its latest governance reform process to ensure that more women are represented at all levels in the sport's governance. This was primarily done through a change in the IAAF constitution to reach better gender balance on the IAAF Council, the IAAF's executive body. Several milestones were introduced that lead to 50% gender distribution in the IAAF Council and amongst the IAAF vice-presidents by 2027 (World Athletics, 2016 ). In 2019, the IAAF introduced a Gender Leadership Taskforce to intensify the development of specific programmes to educate potential candidates for executive roles from national federations. Significantly, the governance reform only focused on the level of representation, with issues of women's overall participation in athletics, technical aspects and global development of women's athletics still overseen by the IAAF Women's Commission.

Despite those latest changes on the governance level, it seems fair to conclude that for most of IAAF's existence, women's athletics was not an organizational top priority. The Women's Committee figured particularly low on the organizational hierarchy and its policy initiatives regularly encountered pushback from within the IAAF structure. The ignorance for the issues of women's athletics stands in stark contrast to IAAF's general efforts to diffuse athletics worldwide (Krieger, 2019 ). In 1976, the organization created an IAAF Development Aid Programme in order to promote the spread of athletics in particular in developing countries (Connor and McEwen, 2011 ). Beginning in 1985, the IAAF further established Regional Development Centers (RDCs) in developing countries. The first RDC was located in India, others followed. Moreover, the IAAF founded the International Athletics Foundation, which aims to develop and spread scientific knowledge about coaching and training, to financially help building sporting facilities and also to encourage their member states to organize competitions (World Athletics, 2012 ). As in other international sport governing bodies, these development policies also served the goals of the leadership of IAAF to secure votes from the benefitting countries (Krieger, 2021 ).

The IAAF has also increasingly pursued a decentralization strategy reflecting concerns about the commercial future of athletics. Hence, the IAAF's marketing plan of 2006 strongly suggested to better develop the African market because European markets saw decreasing audience figures and lacked star athletes (International Association of Athletics Federations, 2006b ). Former IAAF president Lamine Diack promoted an Athletics World Plan in 2003, which empowered the Area Associations (International Association of Athletics Federations, 2009 ). Therefore, in 2008 the IAAF changed its rules for sanctioning competitions (International Association of Athletics Federations, 2008 ). Previously, the IAAF Council had the exclusive right to determine whether member federations could stage IAAF events (International Association of Athletics Federations, 2006a ). From 2009 on, the authority was given to the six Area Associations. As a result, all six Area Associations held events in the second highest competition category, called World Challenge, in 2010 for the first time. In addition, the IAAF lowered the performance requirements for athletes to appear in the season's best list. In short, the IAAF decentralized its competition programs to increase visibility for more member federations, enhance its marketing opportunities and promote the development of athletics.

In summary, previous research has shown that the development of women's athletics has faced multiple challenges, which included opposition from men's officials in international athletics to highly unequal national gender regimes. As a result, the promotion of women's athletics was difficult. Therefore, the current study addresses two key questions:

• How does macro-social gender inequality relate to country participation in international women's athletics?
• How did the IAAF's decentralization strategy affect the participation in international women's athletics?

Research Design

Data sources.

Research presented here analyzes data on season's bests in international athletics in the period from 2001 to 2019. The performance data analyzed here have been exclusively retrieved from the official website of World Athletics (formerly IAAF website). World Athletics is collecting the results of every performance at an officially licensed events and makes them publicly available. At the end of each year, these results are combined into season's bests lists with only the best result of an athlete in a discipline in a respective year. World Athletics allows for non-commerical use of the data as long as the data source is mentioned. Moreover, it should be mentioned the season's bests data are here only analyzed in anonymized from, that is, without considering the identity of the individual athlete. World Athletics has defined minimum performances to enter the season's best list (i.e., 11.00 s in the men's 100 m run), so that the list entries are limited. We decided to exclude the combined events (heptathlon and decathlon) from our datasets since only few countries in the world are participating here due to technical and infrastructural reasons.

Analyzing season's bests comes with a number of methodological advantages. First, in comparison to analyzing Olympic medal shares, data on season's bests are by definition available on an annual base and not only in 4-year intervals. Second, season's bests might also more accurately reflect the proficiency level of athletes and elite sport systems, as Olympic performances are heavily day dependent with athletes employing different tactics (Lames, 2002 ). Third, the analysis of season's bests avoids modeling problems resulting from the two-stage character of Olympic competitions (Johnson and Ali, 2004 ).

Dependent Variables

The account presented here analyzes four different indicators for country participation in women's international athletics. First, we calculated the share of women's athletes in the total number of athletes of a country c in a certain discipline j and a certain year t (PARITY c, j, t ). PARITY ranges from “0” in cases where only men's athletes participated in a discipline to “1” in cases where only women athletes participated. This serves as an indicator for the development of women's participation with respect to men's participation. In addition, two count variables were conducted for measuring the visibility of member federations in women's athletics, that is, the number of women elite athletes per 100,000 inhabitants appearing in the season's best lists in a certain discipline j for a country c in a certain year t and the number of women's events per 100,000 inhabitants in a certain discipline j a country c has been hosting in a certain year t. The latter is drawn from the season's best lists' additional information about the venues where the respective result has been achieved. Only events licensed by World Athletics, that is, events fulfilling minimum infrastructure and participation standards appear in the season's best lists. Both variables appeared to be extremely strongly overdispersed, with more than 80 percent of the observations equaling zero. The research team decided to convert them into categorical variables with three categories, having countries with zero athletes or events in category 1, countries with up to 0.1 athletes (ATHLETES c, j, t ) or events (HOSTINGS c, j, t ) per 100,000 inhabitants in category 2 and all with more than 0.1 in category 3. Finally, the number of athletic disciplines in which a particular country c participated in a certain year t was counted (DISCIPLINES c, t ). This dependent variable serves as an indicator for a countries visibility in athletics in general.

Independent Variables

As discussed above, previous scholarship has used quite different indicators for gender (in)equality in the public sphere. After intense discussion, the women's political empowerment index (WPEI) as developed by the V-Dem Institute was chosen as indicator because it seems to allow for more precise measurement and covers the Global South better than other indices. The V-dem Institute offers free access to datasets with democratic indicators for 202 countries over a period from 1789 to 2020 (Coppedge et al., 2021 ). The WPEI, as one of these indicators, considers three dimensions of empowerment, that is, women's civil liberties, civil society participation and political participation and originally ranges between “0” (no political empowerment) and “1” (full political empowerment) (Sundström et al., 2017 ). For the analyses presented here, a categorical variable with five categories (from “1 = very low WPEI” to “5 = very high WPEI”) was created. Hence, with regard to the research questions, WPEI represents the first key independent variable. The second key independent variable is a set of year dummies for the period from 2001 to 2019 in order to estimate a potential effect of World Athletics' strategy change (YEAR). The year dummies do not only allow to estimate the effects of the decentralization strategy of World Athletics but also to account for general trends.

As religion seems to play an important role for women's sporting participation and women's success (Sfeir, 1985 ; Trivedi and Zimmer, 2014 ; Noland and Stahler, 2016 ), a categorical variable for RELIGION was created based on a country's majority religion. Data on the religious affiliation of a country's population was retrieved from the Pew Research Center website (Pew Research Center, 2015 ). Since the IAAF developed its decentralization strategy in particular to promote the diffusion of athletics in Africa, the second control variable categorizes World Athletics' distinct Area Associations (ASSOCIATION). Moreover, the existence of a national elite sport tradition was considered by measuring the age of the first acknowledged National Olympic Committee (NOC) (NOCAGE). Since the literature on the specialization of national elite sport systems assumed that countries with lower resource endowments are more prone to make strategic choices, the analyses control for the strength of the national economy (GDP PER CAP) and country size (POPULATION) by including two categorical variables. POPULATION and GDP PER CAP were retrieved from the World Development Indicator (WDI) database as provided by the World Bank (World Bank, 2020 ). In order to account for differences among athletic disciplines, they were combined into groups (DISCIPLINE GROUP) ( Table 1 ).

Dependent and independent variables for all regression models.

Analytic Strategy

The research questions are first addressed with some descriptive analyses of the key indicators. For conducting multivariate analyses, two different data sets were created:

The so-called “Participation dataset” contains 79,580 observations for each of the 20 disciplines for 210 countries in a certain year. It entails the dependent variables PARITY, ATHLETES, and HOSTINGS as well as the independent and control variables. Since PARITY appeared to be nearly normally distributed, ordinary least square (OLS) regressions were employed.

For ATHLETES and HOSTINGS we employed ordered logistic regressions. In all models we includes country dummies 1 to account for the fixed effects-panel shape of the data and year dummies to map developments over the years.

The “Discipline dataset” is country based and contains 3,857 observations on country level with the dependent variable DISCIPLINES. The analyses employ tobit panel regressions for censored data since the number of disciplines for women is limited to 20. Only fixed effects models were calculated by including country dummies. Again, including year dummies serves to account for the longitudinal character of the data. The dataset includes all independent and control variables, except for DISCIPLINE GROUP.

Descriptive Findings

With regard to the relationship between gender (in)equality and country participation in international women's sport, Figure 1 demonstrates that in countries with more political empowerment of women, the share of women's athletes, the number of women's athletes, as well as the number of women's disciplines in which a country makes visible appearances tend to be higher. Moreover, countries with more macro-social gender equality seem to host more women's events ( Figure 1 ).

Gender (in)equality and participation in women's athletics. The figure displays violin graphs for different dependent variables and five categories of the women's political empowerment index (WPEI); 1 = low empowerment; 5 = high empowerment.

A simple mapping of country participation patterns, which is measured by number of athletic disciplines in which women's athletes make an appearance in seasons' bests, illustrates that women's athletics has made substantial progress between 2000 and 2019. The number of “white spots” (lowest quantile = 0 disciplines) for women's athletics on the world map has substantially decreased and a number of countries has expanded its visibility in women's athletics. This is particularly evident in the third figure, which shows the differences between 2001 and 2009. The highest growth were recorded in South America and in the Islamic Republic Iran ( Figure 2 ).

Country participation in women's athletics in 2001 and 2019 and difference between 2001 and 2019. (A,B) Displayed are the 5 quantiles of the number of women's athletics disciplines in which athletes from a particular country participate from white = 0 disciplines to black = 20 disciplines. (C) Displayed is the difference in absolute numbers of disciplines from white = −5 to 0 disciplines to black = more than 15 disciplines.

A more detailed look at the top-ten increases in terms of disciplines confirms these surprising insights. A number of South American countries heavily increased their visibility in women's athletics. The same applies to the Islamic Republic Iran. Moreover, a number of European countries also appear on the list with the highest increases in terms of visible participation in disciplines ( Table 2 ).

Top-ten countries with regard to participation increases.

Displayed is the number of women's athletics disciplines in which athletes from a particular country participate .

Figure 3 suggests that the progress of women's athletics between 2001 and 2019 is related to IAAF's decentralization strategy. Hence, after the implementation of the decentralization strategy substantial increases materialized in the average share of women's athletes, the average number of women's athletes, the average number of hosted events as well as the average number of disciplines in which countries make appearances. However, as the depiction of medians makes evident, the majority of countries have neither women athletes nor events in women athletics ( Figure 3 ).

Development of participation in women's athletes between 2001 and 2019. The figure displays trends for different dependent variables.

Multivariate Analyses

Separate multivariate analyses are conducted for the distinct dependent variables. Since PARITY ranges between 0 and 1 and is nearly normally distributed, OLS regressions were calculated. We included country dummies to account for fixed effects and year dummies to account for time-dependent developments and effects of IAAF's decentralization strategy in 2008. Two different models are presented: Model 1a represents the basic model, whereas in model 1b interactions between YEAR and WPEI were included ( Table 3 ). Both models appear to fit the data quite well with an adjusted R 2 of 0.365 or 0.367, respectively, but still leave a fairly high proportion of unexplained variance. In addition, the coefficients appear to be very stable in both models.

OLS regression models for parity.

Dependent variable is PARITY; Method is ordinary least squares regression with country dummies to account for the fixed effects-character of the data. Coefficients for country dummies are not reported .

First of all, the results do not confirm the descriptive findings as clearly as we expected: IAAF's decentralization strategy in 2008 did not significantly increase the share of women's athletes for all nations substantially since there no significant coefficients for the YEAR dummies after 2008. A higher WPEI correlates only slightly with higher share of women's athletes. PARITY is substantially higher in Christian countries than in countries with other dominant religious affilitations (RELIGIONS). Europe, compared to the other Associations, has the highest women's athlete share (ASSOCIATION), indicated by the highly significant, negative coefficients for all other associations. Interestingly, a higher share of women's athletes is found in countries with small or low middle populations (POPULATION), with a higher GDP per capita and in those with longer sporting traditions (NOCAGE) (Model 1a). The interaction coefficients in model 1b indicate that the STRATEGY CHANGE has served to increase women's athlete share in particular among countries in the middle WPEI categories. There are also discipline specific differences: Sprint, middle distance running and throwing seem to be the most equal discipline groups, especially compared to walking, which is the reference category.

For analyzing ATHLETES, which is a categorical variable, ordered logistic regressions were employed. Again, a basic (model 2a) and an interaction model (model 2b) were calculated. Model 2a does again not show a significant effect of IAAF's decentralization strategy (YEAR). WPEI and RELIGION have no significant impact on ATHLETES while countries with low middle population (POPULATION) and middle incomes (GDP PER CAPITA) seem to be more likely to have women's athletes appearing in the season's bests. Additionally, there are no significant differences among the Associations (ASSOCIATION). The interaction model provides a more nuanced view: IAAF's decentralization strategy served primarily to increase the likelihood of countries with a higher WPEI to make a visible appearance in women's international athletics over the entire period under scrutiny ( Table 4 ). Including the interaction terms slightly served to increase the model fit, indicated by the decreased AIC. In order to check for rubustness, we calculated the basic model again for each of the different categories of WPEI (see Appendix , Table A6). The results in general confirm the original findings and offer even more insights: Again we see that higher WPEI countries increased their number of women athletes after 2008. Additionally, we find countries with low WPEI (WPEI = 2) also appear to have increased their participation after the decentralization strategy was implemented. There is a significant effect for Muslim countries. In general, the wide variation in AICs suggests that the macro-social models employed fail to account for adequately for country specific features beyond WPEI.

Ordered logistic regression models for Athletes.

Dependent variable is ATHLETES; Method is ordered logistic regression with country dummies to account for the fixed effects-character of the data. Coefficients for country dummies are not reported.

In order to examine whether women's or men's elite sport participation benefitted more from World Athletics' strategy change, we tested how PARITY has developed with respect to the number of women's athletes (ATHLETES). Therefore, we employed an OLS regression with PARITY as dependent variable and an interaction of ATHLETES and YEAR as independent variable ( Table 5 ). To account for country specific differences, country dummies were included. Negative coefficients for the interactions would indicate that men's elite sport participation benefitted more from the strategy change, since the absolute number of women's athletes, as shown, has been generally increasing.

Influence of the interaction between Athletics and Year on Parity.

Dependent variable is PARITY; Method is Ordinary least squares regression (OLS) with country dummies to account for the fixed effects-character of the data. Coefficients for country dummies are not reported.

d Reference category is “No women's athletes × YEAR.” Only significant interaction coefficients are reported. For all coefficients see Appendix .

** p < 0.01,

* p < 0.05 ,

† p < 0.1 .

Actually, the results indicate that an increasing number of women's athletes per 100,000 inhabitants is negatively associated with the development of PARITY. There is a substantial and significant drop from 2008 to 2009 with respect to the number of women's athletes. Accordingly, it can be inferred that men's participation in elite athletics has developed better after the IAAF implemented its decentralization strategy. The model fits the data very well, indicated by an adjusted R 2 of 0.793.

In order to analyze HOSTING, which represents also a categorical variable, again ordered logistic regressions were employed. As for ATHLETES, Model 3a does not show a significant effect of IAAF's decentralization strategy (YEAR). We see more events in countries with very high WPEI (WPEI), with big populations (POPULATION) and high income (GDP PER CAPITA). The interacted model (model 3b) is hard to interpret: the number of events seems to have increased in all WPEI categories and independently of the IAAF decentralization strategy since we see highly significant and positive odds ratios also before 2008 ( Table 6 ). The robustness checks (see Appendix , Table A7) again confirm our general models. Additionally, we see that the number of events especially increased in countries with high and very high WPEI already before 2008. The models also provide stronger evidence that in particular countries with low WPEI seem to have increased the hosting of women's events after the decentralization strategy was implemented. Again, the variation in AICs suggest, however, that pure macro-social models do not grasp the developments very well.

Ordered logistic regression models for Hosting.

Dependent variable is HOSTINGS; Method is ordered logistic regression with country dummies to account for the fixed effects-character of the data. Coefficients for country dummies are not reported.

Finally, the number of disciplines in which a country is present in the season's bests (DISCIPLINES) is analyzed as proxy for the development of a national women's elite sport system. Since the dataset has panel character with a censored dependent variable, tobit regressions were conducted. Fixed effects models, which provide more consistent estimators, were calculated (Models 4a and 4b) by including country dummies. Again, a basic model and an interaction model were estimated. Both models have a very a high model fit, in particular model 4b, which predicts 82% of the data correctly (multiple R 2 ).

First of all, all model 4a shows highly significant and positive coefficients from 2009 onwards. Accordingly, IAAF's decentralization strategy is related to an increase of the disciplines in which women's athletes of a particular country appear in the season's bests. Additionally, DISCIPLINES is significantly higher for countries with higher WPEI's. The number of DISCIPLINES per country is higher in Europe, non-Islamic and non-Buddhist countries as well as countries with larger populations and a longer sport tradition. Interestingly, GDP PER CAPITA seems to exert a negative effect. In the interacted fixed effect model (Model 4b), the mostly insignificant interaction coefficients show that developments over time were not related to WPEI ( Table 7 ).

Tobit regression models for Disciplines.

Dependent variable is DISCIPLINES; Method is tobit regressions with country dummies to account for the fixed effects-character of the data due to the truncated dependent variable. Coefficients for country dummies are not reported.

The results of our study will be first discussed in the lights of the guiding research questions, that is, (1) the relevance of macro-social gender inequality for country participation in international women's athletics, and (2) the impact of IAAF's decentralization strategy on participation in international women's athletics.

With regard to the first question, the study, which relied on a larger sample of countries and more fine-grained data, primarily confirmed previous findings. It was demonstrated once more that macro-social gender equality matters for women's sport. Higher women's empowerment in the public sphere relates to higher participation of countries in international women's athletics. It became also at least slightly evident that countries with Muslim religious affiliation appear to be in general less supportive of women's participation in international elite sports. However, there are notable exceptions, such as, the Islamic Republic of Iran (see below). Interestingly, population seems to play a less important role than in men's sports, while country participation in women's international athletics increased with higher GDP per capita.

Concerning the second questions, the study demonstrated that women's athletics made substantial progress over the last two decades, which is in some aspects related to the IAAF's decentralization strategy. The number of disciplines in which countries participate substantially expanded over the period examined. Also the number of athletes and hostings generally increased. It is most interesting that the progress of women's athletics is not related to a deliberate developmental policy of the IAAF (now World Athletics) with regard to women's athletics. The progress appears to be the outcome of a more general decentralization strategy, which involved the lowering of performance requirements for season's bests and of technical standards for hosting. The decentralization strategy allowed more countries to make visible appearances in women's athletics and served to increase women's share among national elite athletes. However, the findings also indicate that although the decentralization strategy served to increase the participation of countries in women's elite athletics, men's athletics appear to have benefitted even more.

Hence, it can be concluded that the study demonstrates the limits of such rather gender unspecific development strategies. The analyses showed that the decentralization strategy mainly promoted the development of women's athletics in countries characterized by higher levels of women's empowerment. These countries include, among others, Costa Rica, where the share of women's athletes increased after the implementation of the IAAF's decentralization stratey, the United States, which experienced a remarkable growth in women's athletes appearing in the season's bests and in hosted events, and Croatia, where the number of athletic disciplines in which women's athletes appeared in the season's bests increased. By implication, the differential impact of the decentralization strategy is likely to increase the gaps in the development of women's athletics between less and more gender equal countries. It seems reasonable to assume that the decentralization strategy allowed more gender equal countries to increase their visibility in women's international athletics because of stronger grassroots of women's athletics in these countries. Accordingly, the current study suggests that a more deliberate developmental and better resourced strategy is needed to promote women's athletics in countries characterized by lower women's empowerment. If such efforts are not made, the progress of women's athletics in these countries will depend on whether women's empowerment increases and automatically translates into better opportunities for women's elite sports. Hence, if World Athletics aims to deliberately promote women's athletics in less gender equal countries, it should create better targeted women's developmental programs. The IAAF Women's Commission made similar recommendation in the period between 1990 and 2007 but received significant pushback from leading IAAF bodies. However, it should be realized that encouraging investments in women's elite sports might not the most reasonable strategy for promoting women's sport and physical activity in such countries as it is highly questionable whether such top-down approaches result in “trickle down” effects benefitting women's participation in sport or physical activity in general (Connor and McEwen, 2011 ).

Limitations

First of all, it should be realized that the current study does not allow for strong causal claims as it represents only a retrospective data analysis. In addition, the current study shares the limitations of other macro-social accounts, which usually neglect meso-level factors. It is important to realize that the analyses hinted at the existence of country specific responses to IAAF's decentralization strategy. However, a macro-social approach provides little means to dissect these responses. The relevance of meso-level factors has been indicated by the substantial progress of women's athletics in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This progress in a country with strong Muslim religious affiliation seems to reflect the efforts of the Iranian government to exploit sport in pursuit of a broad range of domestic and international policy objectives (in general: Dousti et al., 2013 ; for women's sport: Sadeghi et al., 2018 ). Hence, the progress of women's elite sport depends on priorities of national sport policies. Moreover, the relevance of path dependencies and diffusion patterns is indicated by the fact that countries with a longer sport tradition seem to show a higher participation in women's international athletics. It might be speculated that, even though the first sport men's officials heavily discriminated against women, an earlier establishment of a national sport movement served also to bring earlier up the question of women's participation or women's sport. Hence, besides national gender regimes and sport policies, sport specific trajectories seem to be relevant.

Accordingly, future analyses should try to conduct more sophisticated proxies for meso-level factors in order to improve academic understanding of the development of women's sport and to provide better guidance to sport administrators at international and national level.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

HM and MK contributed to the conception and design of the empirical study. MK organized the database and performed the statistical analyses. HM and JK wrote the theory section and the discussion section. All authors wrote sections of the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

1 Coefficients for the 210 country dummies will not be reported.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2021.709640/full#supplementary-material

• Anthonj P., Emrich E., Flatau J., Hämmerle M., Rohkohl F. (2013). The Development of Women's Athletics-Findings of an Empirical Analysis . Saarbrücken: Universaar. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bechthold I. (2002a). Fax, 11 September 2002, collection “Ilse Bechthold ”. Münster: University of Münster. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bechthold I. (2002b). Letter to Lamine Diack, 1 May 2002, collection “Ilse Bechthold” . Münster: University of Münster. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bernard A. B., Busse M. R. (2004). Who wins the olympic games: economic resources and medal totals . Rev. Econ. Statist. 86 , 413–417. 10.1162/003465304774201824 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brighton Declaration on Women and Sport (1994). Brighton Declaration on Women and Sport . Brighton: Sports Council. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cho S. Y. (2013). A league of their own: Female soccer, male legacy and women's empowerment . Discuss. Papers DIW Berlin 1267 :8158. 10.2139/ssrn.2228158 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Congdon- Hohman J., Matheson V. A. (2013). International women's soccer and gender inequality: Revisited, in Handbook on the Economics of Women in Sports , eds Leeds E. M., Leeds M. A. (Cheltenham: Edgar Elgar; ). 10.4337/9781849809399.00026 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Connell R. (2002). Gender . Cambridge: Polity Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Connor J., McEwen M. (2011). International development or white man's burden? The IAAF's regional development centres and regional sporting assistance . Sport Soc. 14 , 805–817. 10.1080/17430437.2011.587295 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Coppedge M., Gerring J., Knutsen C. H., Lindberg S. I., Teorell J., Alizada N., et al.. (2021). V-Dem [Country-Year/Country-Date] Dataset v11.1 . Variet. Demo. Project . 10.2139/ssrn.3831905 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Coubertin P. (1912). The women at the olympic games, in Olympism: Selected Writings . ed Müller N. (Lausanne: IOC; ). [ Google Scholar ]
• Dousti M., Goodarzi M., Asadi H., Khabiri M. (2013). Sport policy in Iran . Int. J. Sport Policy Politics 5 , 151–158. 10.1080/19406940.2013.766808 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• England P. (2010). The gender revolution: uneven and stalled . Gender Soc. 24 , 149–166. 10.1177/0891243210361475 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fink J. S. (2008). Gender and sex diversity in sport organizations: Concluding comments . Sex Roles 58 , 146–147. 10.1007/s11199-007-9364-4 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Guttmann A. (1991). Women's Sports: A History . New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 10.7312/gutt94668 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hargreaves J. (1994). Sporting Females . London: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hargreaves J. (1999). The 'women's international sports movement': Local-global strategies and empowerment . Women's Stud. Int. Forum 22 , 461–471. 10.1016/S0277-5395(99)00057-6 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hoffmann R., Chew Ging L., Matheson V., Ramasamy B. (2006). International women's football and gender inequality . Appl. Econ. Lett. 13 , 999–1001. 10.1080/13504850500425774 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• IAAF (1946). Minutes of the Meeting of the IAAF Congress 1946, 21 and 26 August 1946, Archive Collection “ IAAF Congress Files” . Monaco: IAAF Archive. [ Google Scholar ]
• IAAF (1956). Minutes of the Meeting of the IAAF Congress 1956, 22 November and 3-4 December 1956, Archive Collection “ IAAF Congress Files” . Monaco: IAAF Archive. [ Google Scholar ]
• IAAF (1995). Minutes of the Meeting of the IAAF Congress 1995, 1-3 August 1995, Archive Collection “ IAAF Congress Files” . Monaco: IAAF Archive. [ Google Scholar ]
• IAAF Women's Committee (1991). An IAAF Strategy for the Development of Athletics for Women. Draft Outline Collection “Ilse Bechthold ”. Münster: University of Münster. [ Google Scholar ]
• IAAF Women's Committee (1995). “Report to the IAAF Council”, Collection “Ilse Bechthold” . Münster: University of Münster. [ Google Scholar ]
• IAAF Women's Committee (2002). Minutes of the Meeting of the IAAF Women's Commission, 15 September 2002, Collection “Ilse Bechthold” . Münster: University of Münster. [ Google Scholar ]
• International Association of Athletics Federations (2006a). Book of Rules . Monaco: IAAF. [ Google Scholar ]
• International Association of Athletics Federations (2006b). Elements of Marketing Strategy . Tübingen: Private Archive of Helmut Digel,. [ Google Scholar ]
• International Association of Athletics Federations (2008). Book of Rules . Monaco: IAAF. [ Google Scholar ]
• International Association of Athletics Federations (2009). Athletics' World Plan. Presentation by IAAF President Lamine Diack to the 47th IAAF Congress . Berlin: Private Archive of Helmut Digel. [ Google Scholar ]
• IOC (2020). Factsheet Women in the Olympic Movement . Available online at: https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Factsheets-Reference-Documents/Women-in-the-Olympic-Movement/Factsheet-Women-in-the-Olympic-Movement.pdf (accessed March 14, 2021).
• Jacobs J. C. (2014). Programme- level determinants of women's international football performance . Eur. Sport Manage. Q. 14 , 521–537. 10.1080/16184742.2014.945189 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Johnson D. K., Ali A. (2004). A tale of two seasons: participation and medal counts at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games . Soc. Sci. Q. 85 , 974–993. 10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00254.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Klein M. W. (2004). Work and play: International evidence of gender equality in employment and sports . J. Sports Econ. 5 , 227–242. 10.1177/1527002503257836 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Krech M. (2019). The misplaced burdens of “gender equality” in caster semenya v IAAF: the court of arbitration for sport attempts human rights adjudication . Int. Sports Law Rev. 3 , 66–76. 10.15779/Z38PK07210 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Krieger J. (2019). No struggle, no progress: the historical significance of the governance structure reform of the international association of athletics federation . J. Global Sport Manage. 4 , 61–78. 10.1080/24704067.2018.1477522 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Krieger J. (2021). Power and Politics in World Athletics. A Critical History. London: Routledge. 10.4324/9781003003267 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Krieger J., Duckworth A. (2020). ‘Vodka and caviar among friends’ - Lord david burghley and the soviet union's entry into the international association of athletic federations . Sport History 41 , 260–279. 10.1080/17460263.2020.1768887 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Krieger J., Krech M., Pieper L. (2020). 'Our sport': the fight for control of women's international athletics . Int. J.History Sport 37 , 451–472. 10.1080/09523367.2020.1754201 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lagaert S., Roose H. (2018). The gender gap in sport event attendance in Europe: The impact of macro- level gender equality . Int. Rev. Sociol. Sport 53 , 533–549. 10.1177/1012690216671019 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lames M. (2002). Leistungsentwicklung in der Leichtathletik: Ist Doping als leistungsfördernder Effekt identifizierbar? dvs-Informationen 17 , 15–22. [ Google Scholar ]
• Leeds E. M., Leeds M. A. (2012). Gold, silver, and bronze: Determining national success in men's and women's Summer Olympic events . Jahrbcher for Nationalökonomie und Statistik 232 , 279–292. 10.1515/jbnst-2012-0307 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lowen A., Deaner R. O., Schmitt E. (2016). Guys and gals going for gold: The role of women's empowerment in Olympic success . J. Sports Econ. 17 , 260–285. 10.1177/1527002514531791 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McDonald P. (2000a). Gender equity, social institutions and the future of fertility . J. Populat. Res. 17 , 1–16. 10.1007/BF03029445 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• McDonald P. (2000b). Gender equity in theories of fertility transition . Populat. Dev. Rev. 26 , 427–439. 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2000.00427.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Meier H. E. (2020). The Development of Women's Soccer: Legacies, Participation, and Popularity in Germany. London: Routledge. 10.4324/9780429341403 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Noland M., Stahler K. (2016). What goes into a medal: Women's inclusion and success at the Olympic Games . Soc. Sci. Q. 97 , 177–196. 10.1111/ssqu.12210 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pew Research Center (2015). Religious Composition by Country, 2010-2050 . Available online at: https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projection-table/ (accessed July 15, 2021).
• Pfister G. (1993). Der Kampf gebhrt dem Mann …': Argumente und Gegenargumente im Diskurs Aber den Frauensport, in Sport and Contest , ed Renson R. (Madrid: INEF; ). [ Google Scholar ]
• Sadeghi S., Sajjadi S. N., Nooshabadi H. R., Farahani M. J. (2018). Social-cultural barriers of Muslim women athletes: Case study of professional female athletes in Iran . J. Manage. Pract. Humanit. Soc. Sci. 2 , 6–10. 10.33152/jmphss-2.1.2 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schultz J. (2018). Women's Sport: What Everyone Needs to Know . New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/wentk/9780190657710.001.0001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Scraton S., Fasting K., Pfister G., Bunuel A. (1999). It's still a man's game? The experiences of top- level European women footballers . Int. Rev. Sociol. Sport 34 , 99–111. 10.1177/101269099034002001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sfeir L. (1985). The status of Muslim women in sport: Conflict between cultural tradition and modernization . Int. Rev. Sociol. Sport 20 , 283–306. 10.1177/101269028502000404 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sundström A., Paxton P., Wang Y. T., Lindberg S. I. (2017). Women's political empowerment: A new global index, 1900-2012 . World Dev. 94 , 321–335. 10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.01.016 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tcha M., Pershin V. (2003). Reconsidering performance at the Summer Olympics and revealed comparative advantage . J. Sports Econ. 4 , 216–239. 10.1177/1527002503251636 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Trivedi P., Zimmer D. (2014). Success at the summer olympics: how much do economic factors explain? Econometrics 2 , 169–202. 10.3390/econometrics2040169 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Williams J. (2014). A Contemporary History of Women's Sport: Part One: Sporting Women, 1850- 1960 . London: Routledge. 10.4324/9781315795157 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• World Athletics (2012). An Evaluation of the Accomplishments of the International Athletics Foundation Over the Past 25 Years and Recommendations for Future Emphases . Available online at: https://www.worldathletics.org/download/download?filename=55c654f9-c9b8-42c3-841d-921073de3589.pdf&urlSlug=an-evaluation-of-the-accomplishments-of-the-i (accessed November 1, 2012).
• World Athletics (2016). Reform of the IAAF. A New Era . Available online at: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiM2pKrxaDwAhUOPuwKHaJnC8YQFjACegQIAhAD&url=https%3A%2F%2F
• World Bank (2020). World Development Indicators . Available online at: https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/ (accessed February 20, 2020).
• Wushanley Y. (2004). Playing Nice and Losing: The Struggle for Control of Women's Intercollegiate Athletics, 1960-2000 . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. [ Google Scholar ]

Gender equality: Women empowerment in sports and science

Empowering women: Unleash the opportunities

Nadia Nadim’s striking life story brought her from Afghanistan to a refugee camp in Denmark, then on to career as an elite footballer and, now, a qualified doctor. She is also UNESCO Champion for Girls’ and Women’s Education.

After growing up in a country where women were not allowed to leave the house without a male relative, Nadia Nadim fought adversity and discrimination in order to pursue her dreams. Her experience of losing freedom under the Taliban and living in poverty in a refugee camp in Denmark fueled her intense desire to succeed.

Football saved me from being this poor outsider kid and made me get accepted.

Once her family’s asylum request was granted by Denmark, where girls are empowered to play sports, Nadim’s professional career took off.

Today, Nadim has become a role model for many girls and women who aspire to emancipate and unleash their potential against gender norms and discrimination.

Gender equality starts in the classroom

With the ongoing deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan, violence and instability have prevented many women and girls from accessing schools and education. More recently the attitude of Taliban leaders toward female education is seriously impacting the enrollment of female students and their opportunities for success.

I was born on the 2 nd of January 1988 in Herat, Afghanistan, where I was raised by my mother and father, together with my four sisters. When I was young, I got the heartbreaking news that the Talibans had executed my father. After that, my family decided to escape Afghanistan, as it was not a safe place for a family of six women.

Too many girls and women around the world are still held back by social norms and traditional school practices that limit their educational right and opportunities. Yet, their education is the most powerful investment to make for society’s collective future.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, school closures have exacerbated girls’ and women’s unpaid care work, limiting the time to learn at home. Amid this unprecedented disruption to education, UNESCO estimates that  11 million girls may not return to school . Girls aged 12-17 are at particular risk of dropping out of school in low and lower-income countries.

Without schools as safe spaces, adolescent girls are at increased risk of gender-based violence, early marriage and unintended pregnancy, as well as sexual exploitation and abuse.

Nadim became UNESCO Champion for Girls’ and Women’s Education in 2019 after deciding to put her heart and notoriety at the service of girls and women everywhere.

For me, education is very important. If you want to change something in the world, it is with education. There are many children who can’t study or go to school. I hope this will change because if you want to change something, it will be with school, she said.

Her education, our future  is UNESCO’s mission to accelerate action for girls’ and women’s education by leveraging political and financial commitments, as well as leadership for women and girls. It will contribute to the  UNESCO Strategy for Gender Equality in and through Education (2019-2025)  and its three pillars aiming for better data to inform action for gender equality in and through education; better legal, policy and planning frameworks to advance rights; and better-quality learning opportunities to empower girls and women.

Her education, our future

#HerEducationOurFuture

Girls’ emancipation through sport

The positive impact that sports can have on the emancipation of young girls and women has been acknowledged for decades.

Participating in sports can help break-down gender stereotypes, improve girls’ and women’s self-esteem and contribute to the development of leadership and strategic thinking skills.

Women in sport break down the misperception they are weak or incapable.

The fact that certain political or religious groups wish to continue to prohibit or restrict the practice of women or the presence of women in stadiums testifies to the importance and social influence of sport.

It was thanks to the Iran-Spain match during the 2018 FIFA World Cup that the Iranian women were able, for the first time since 1979, to officially enter the stadiums. This is an example of sport – football, in this case – as an accelerator of social change in favor of the freedom of young girls and women.

We were smuggled to Denmark, where I lived in a refugee camp for six months. One day I saw a young girl play football. I knew what it was, but I had never seen girls play. I didn’t even know it was something I could do. When I saw this girl play, I was like, wow! I want to play this game. Now I’m here.

She began playing for local teams in Denmark and made her debut with the national team in 2009, going to play with high profile teams such as Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.

To support girls and women like Nadia Nadim, UNESCO has kickstarted programs to enforce their right for girls and women to participate in physical education, physical activity and sports at all levels. These missions also aim to protect participating girls and women from harassment, misconduct and abuse, as well as use sport to promote gender equality and empower girls and women.  

With UNESCO’s support, the Global Observatory for Women, Sport, Physical Education and Physical Activity has been established as an incubating association in Lausanne, Switzerland.

It aims to overcome global and systemic inequalities for girls and women in sport. For example, in Europe,  45% of men play sport at least once a week compared to 37% of women .

I was told women don’t play football and that there were other things set out for me. I should learn to cook, I should prepare to be a wife. That was the life people were expecting for me. I said that wasn’t true. So I started playing football.

Tackling the gender bias in sport

In 1924, women made up just 4% of all Olympic athletes. A lot has changed since then. Today, women athletes compete regularly and many of them become elite sportswomen. Indeed, a century later, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games are set to achieve full gender balance in the number of participating athletes for the first time in Olympic history.

Still, one thing that has not changed is media interest.

There are still a lot of differences and a lot of inequalities. Most people are interested in the men’s game and don’t have a clue about what’s happening on the women’s side. But that’s changing. From when I started until now, there’s been a huge change in the women’s game and that’s in the right direction. If you want change, you have to use your voice. It’s going to happen, but it won’t happen overnight.

Women only get 4% of sports media coverage, and of that coverage, their physical appearance, family life and love life are referenced more than their athletic ability, while men are depicted as powerful, independent and valued as athletes.

This is due to the low percentage of women in sports journalism. Even though this field has become more accessible to women, numbers show that there is still a noticeable gap. Currently, a low percentage of sports broadcasters are women, while the number of women who enter into sports journalism is still relatively low. This particular area of reporting remains a predominantly male-dominated specialty in countries all over the world.

#HerMomentsMatter  is a spinoff of UNESCO’s World Radio Day campaign promoting fairer coverage of women athletes. It encourages participants to share videos and images of sportswomen on your social networks and help raise awareness for fairer coverage of women athletes.

In order to promote gender equality in media coverage , UNESCO’s Communication and Information  mission has spearheaded many initiatives to empower women and girls, such as the development of Gender-Sensitive Indicators for Media (GSIM) and the promotion of gender-sensitive educational resource policies.

Smashing the glass ceiling for women in science

While playing as a professional footballer, Nadim decided to pursue studies in the medical field. She has since graduated from Aarhus University in Denmark with a medical degree, focusing on reconstructive surgery. When her sports career eventually ends, Nadim aims to join Doctors Without Borders, the international humanitarian medical non-governmental organization known for its projects in conflict zones and in countries affected by endemic diseases.

Nadim’s profile as a professional athlete will help her acquire a platform to raise awareness about the lack of medical resources in many countries around the world.

I am going to have a platform as a doctor so I can reach out to people who are in need. I love playing football, but I always wanted to give something back. Being able to do it as a doctor is going to be different than what I’ve been doing as a footballer.

Yet, for many women attempting a career in science there are many hurdles to overcome, and that even before they attempt to balance work and family life.

Often, a male-dominated culture prevents some women from even considering leadership positions in academia or from being satisfied with their achievements.

Throughout the years, women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have been faced with a significant gender gap in these disciplines all over the world. Even though women have made major progresses towards increasing their participation in higher education, they are still under-represented in these fields.

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics , less than 30% of the world’s researchers are women. Women who are active in STEM fields publish less, are paid less for their research and do not progress as far as men in their careers.

Achieving gender equality in STEM is not just a matter of fairness or a basic human right. The fact there are many brilliant girls and women who might be interested in STEM, but choose to pursue careers elsewhere because of the various obstacles they may face, is a lost opportunity – both for women themselves as well as for the society as a whole.

UNESCO has worked to highlight and support the work of women scientists around the world by recognizing the excellence of their work.

The L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Awards are presented every year to five outstanding women scientists – one per each of the following regions: Africa and the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America – in recognition of their scientific accomplishments. The scientific fields considered for the awards alternate every other year between Life Sciences and Physical Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science.

To encourage women in the early stages of their science career, UNESCO and L’Oréal has also launched the International Rising Talents initiative, which selects the 15 most promising women scientists among the 275 national and regional fellows of the L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women In Science programme. As these young women represent the future of science, recognizing their excellence will help ensure that they reach their full potential.

L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science programme

Women empowerment: making the equality dream come true.

The continued marginalization and under-utilization of women’s talents, expertise and resources across the world represents a serious loss of opportunity for society as a whole, not just for the women who are left by the wayside.

Keep believing in yourself, even though there is going to be a lot of people telling you not to. And secondly, remember always to have a dream. Because these are the things that have always been with me. First of all, I dreamt. And secondly, I believed my dreams would come true.

The Covid-19 crisis has disproportionately affected women. They are on the frontline of the pandemic while conservative forces attempt to undermine the rights acquired after decades of progress.

Against this backdrop, the full participation of women in social, cultural and economic development – and in democratic processes at all levels – is a moral imperative, a matter of human rights and a political priority of the highest order.

Generation Equality is a landmark global initiative supported by UNESCO which is driving commitments in six thematic areas –  Action Coalitions  – that include  gender equality  to foster significant and lasting change for generations of women to come.

The Hilltop Monitor

The official student publication of william jewell college.

• The Hilltop Monitor 2024, Issue 16 & 17
• Mass shooting at KC Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade
• Strikes End as WGA and SAG-AFTRA Win New Contracts with AMPTP
• The Rise of Hamas: Origins and Overthrow
• The Hilltop Monitor 2024, Issue 13

Gender Inequality in Sports: Women face a double bind

“Who is your favorite male athlete?”

“How do you balance your career with raising a family?”

“Can you give us a twirl?”

These are just a few of the many sex-based questions professional female athletes are asked in interviews. In 2015, the #CoverTheAthelete movement became popular by highlighting the difference in how male and female athletes were covered in interviews and the news.

I believe that interview questions are just one example of the way in which female athletes are treated differently than their male counterparts. Gender inequality still exists in sports and has permeated the culture in such a way that female athletes cannot win.

The foremost debated argument around the topic of gender inequality in sports is the wage gap that exists between male and female sporting events. It is fairly easy to show that there is a difference in the payment for male and female athletes.

In 2015, the total payout for men competing in the World Cup was almost 40 times as much as the women’s payout.

The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) had a 2018 salary cap of $110,000 while the National Basketball Association (NBA) minimum salary was $582,186.

In the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) the median pay gap between a woman in the top 100 and the man of her same rank is $120,624

Women in the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) earn about 80 per cent less for each shot than men in the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA).

While it is clear that women are paid less than men, the debate among inequality in payment has shifted to discuss revenue.

The statistics provided above are explained by recognizing that organizations such as the WNBA and WTA simply do not pull in as much revenue as their male counterparts – this is true.

In 2014, the ATP’s revenue was $37.4 million more than the WTA.

Conservative figures estimate that the WBNA makes around $50-$60 million each year in revenue while the NBA makes almost $6 billion in revenue each year.

In 2013, the PGA brought in a little over $1 billion in revenue while the LPGA earned almost $103 million in revenue.

U.S. women’s soccer has traditionally earned less revenue than U.S. men’s soccer. However, the U.S. women’s league has actually produced more revenue in some years compared to the men’s which has resulted in greater strides toward pay equality.

Arguments for the pay inequality between men and women are traditionally explained through the disparity in revenue. Some advocate that pay be based on revenue and since men consistently bring in more revenue they should be paid more.

While a revenue-based pay argument might be a way to mitigate the issue of wage gap I believe that we must take into consideration the double bind which a revenue-based pay scale places on women.

The revenue-based pay scale tells women that they must bring in more revenue –through sponsorships, ratings, broadcasting time etc. – in order to earn more money. However, women’s sports are viewed as not being as entertaining as men’s and thus, less people view or care about them.

This creates an endless cycle in which women are told they need to bring in more viewership in order to make more money yet they are also told that their sport is not as entertaining to watch and therefore don’t make as much.

While it does not feel fair that women make more than men if they are not bringing in as much revenue, we must realize that women are trapped in this cycle in which it seems almost impossible for them to generate more revenue.

The issue of gender inequality in sports is greater than the pay difference between men’s and women’s teams. The pay gap is part of the issue but inequality is a greater structural issue than pay difference.

Women’s professional sports teams are viewed as worse than men’s teams and not as fun to watch. This societal stigma creates an endless cycle in which women have trouble creating more revenue and thus are paid because of the way society views their sport – something that women cannot control.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

• All Solutions
• Audience measurement
• Media planning
• Marketing optimization
• Content metadata
• Nielsen One
• All Insights
• Case Studies
• Perspectives
• Data Center
• The Gauge TM – U.S.
• Top 10 – U.S.
• Top Trends – Denmark
• Top Trends – Germany
• Women’s World Cup
• Men’s World Cup
• News Center

Client Login

Insights > Sports & gaming

On different playing fields: the case for gender equity in sports, 6 minute read | stacie de armas, svp, diverse insights & initiatives | march 2021.

Women make up more than half of the U.S. population, but they are still fighting for equality in the world of sports, where gender-based discrimination is all too common. Recently, we saw a very public and painful example, during Women’s History Month no less, of the stark inequity in the treatment of female versus male athletes in the NCAA Basketball Tournament. It’s difficult to understand how neglecting to supply female student-athletes with the proper equipment and facilities—especially during the largest tournament of their sport—can still happen today. Unfortunately, it seems that sexism in sports is ingrained from the time our children are in youth sports. This inequity is also institutionalized—from how we define what qualifies as a sport to the imagery used to represent female athletes, disparities in the facilities, and support for female athletes. 

As superstar athlete and World Cup champion Megan Rapinoe testified to Congress, “One cannot simply outperform inequality or be excellent enough to escape discrimination of any kind.” As a mother of a son and a daughter, this inequality hit very close to home just last week. Up until two weeks ago, in my state of California, all youth sports, which were prohibited for nearly a year, were permitted to return. All sports, that is, except for one female-dominated sport: cheer. While my son was able to get back on the field and enjoy his sport, I, alongside many other concerned parents, had to continue to advocate at the state level for equity for cheer athletes. We were successful, but why did we even have to fight for recognition and equal treatment for these athletes? Women and girls in sports should not be an afterthought.

It is disheartening to see that the fight for equality for women’s sports continues beyond grade school, as collegiate athletes in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament recently experienced firsthand. Like many of you, I recently saw the viral video from University of Oregon sophomore forward Sedona Prince showing the weight room facilities provided for the female players at the basketball tournament compared with the facilities provided for the men. The women’s weight room consisted of a single set of dumbbells and some yoga mats, while the men’s weight room was stocked with state-of-the-art training equipment, rows of weights, and workout machines. Her TikTok video was further socialized on Instagram and Twitter and now has more than 20 million views. 

The outrage was swift, as many people were quick to criticize the blatant inequities for these female athletes, but the brands stepped in even faster. Not only did the outcry to correct the situation come from celebrities, sports journalists, and fans, but companies weighed in, too. Fitness and retail brands like Orange Theory, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Tonal responded to support these women athletes (who don powerful social media influence) with equipment the very next day and offered to make appropriate training facilities available. Shortly thereafter, the NCAA acknowledged this terrible error in judgment and installed a fully functional women’s weight room coupled with an apology. 

These brands understand the power of the moment and of female athletes. Research from Nielsen Sports illustrates the power female athletes hold as social media endorsers. Fans like to buy products and services that their favorite athletes endorse on social media. When brands partner with athletes to embrace their power and advocate for equity, they can enact change as well as accountability in sports institutions. That’s a winning play for brands—fully embracing the power of female athletes, while proactively building equity in women’s sports and not just in response to a crisis.

There are several fundamental truths here that brands need to embrace: social media is powerful; female athletes are powerful influencers; and consumers are asking more from brands when it comes to social responsibility. For example, a global Nielsen Fan Insights study reveals that 47.5% of respondents have a greater interest in brands that have been socially responsible and “do good.” The good news is that some brands are taking notice and recalibrating business and marketing models to meet consumers’ changing needs in a new era of sports sponsorship . The brands stepping in to act on the values they espouse as an organization are a perfect example. Brands, including leagues, teams, owners, and even school districts, must address changing consumer and social demands and their female athletes’ needs by operating with equity in women’s sports. 

More opportunity leads to more audience

The weight room in San Antonio isn’t the only place where we need to see change. While we’re seeing progress in how women are represented on television in scripted content, we have not seen the same visibility in women’s sports. This isn’t for lack of women’s sporting events or even viewer interest, but rather the relative lack of access to women’s team sporting events being broadcast and promoted on TV compared with men’s events. We know this needs to change, but it is a catch 22. Far fewer women’s sports are being broadcast, and when they are, games are often carried on difficult to find, smaller outlets, and are under-promoted, naturally resulting in smaller audiences. This overall lack of investment and promotion on television negatively affects audience draw, and therefore ROI for advertisers and sponsors. This lower brand investment is being used to justify disparities in resources for women’s sports. And the cycle continues. 

The good news is that there seems to be a change in tide. Coverage for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament this year is one of the broadest in its history thanks to ESPN’s expanding coverage—a move that has so far doubled the audience reach of the first round of the women’s tournament compared with the one in 2019. 

Along with the gripping game play, the increase in reach is most likely attributed to the number of games actually being aired. Round 1 of the tournament in 2019 was exclusively broadcast on ESPN2, which aired just nine game windows. This year’s NCAA women’s games have been on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, and every single one of the 32 games has been aired in round 1. When audiences have access to women’s sports, they tune in. Female athletes deserve the facilities, equipment and support they need to thrive. While the men’s tournament has seen multi-network coverage since 2011, the women’s tournament is finally seeing increased coverage, with 2021 marking the first time the women’s tournament has been on network TV—and not just on cable—in decades. Because that viewing opportunity exists, more people are watching. It is time women’s sports get the investment, coverage and support they deserve. Advertisers should take note: A growing fan base means a bigger audience.

It has been nearly 50 years since Title IX legislation granted women equal opportunities to play sports. But the legislation also mandates the equal treatment of female and male student-athletes from equipment to competitive facilities to publicity and promotions and more. As more and more brands champion equity for women’s sports and female athletes become more influential as brand endorsers, it is my hope that we will see fewer disparities in playing time, facilities, brand partnerships, and coverage of women’s sports on screen. And that for future female athletes, equity for women’s sports will be a slam dunk.

Related tags:

Related insights

Continue browsing similar insights.

Black audiences are looking for relevant representation in advertising and content

Dimensions of diversity are numerous, spanning well beyond skin tone and narrative location.

Need to Know: What’s the difference between OTT, CTV and streaming?

We break down the differences between OTT, CTV and streaming, how advertising works on each, and why they’re more…

Reaching voters with radio 

In a crowded market for political ads, radio offers an advantage.

Find the right solution for your business

In an ever-changing world, we’re here to help you stay ahead of what’s to come with the tools to measure, connect with, and engage your audiences.

How can we help?

Women in sport are changing the game

Date: Thursday, 22 July 2021

As the Tokyo 2020 Olympics kick-off on 23 July 2021, almost 49 per cent of participating athletes will be women, making it the most gender-balanced Games in history. All 206 National Olympic Committees also have at least one female and one male athlete representative. This marks a landmark for gender balance in sport – a powerful means of empowering women and girls .

Sport mobilizes the global community and speaks to youth. It unites across national barriers and cultural differences. It teaches women and girls the values of teamwork, self-reliance and resilience; has a multiplier effect on their health, education and leadership development; contributes to self-esteem; builds social connections; and challenges harmful gender norms.

To celebrate women in sport, here are just a few inspirational women breaking down gender barriers all around the world.

Malak Abdelshafi, a Paralympic swimming champion from Egypt

Malak Abdelshafi is a 17-year-old Egyptian Paralympic swimming champion who qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. When she was 10 months old, she suffered severe spinal cord injuries from an accident that left her partially paralysed.

“I started swimming as hydrotherapy, since wheelchair-users usually need to maintain blood circulation,” says Abdelshafi . “I did not plan to swim professionally. During my hydrotherapy sessions, my trainer said I was talented and pushed me to compete.”

“My first championship was in 2012 with my club and I won a silver medal. I was 9 years old then and the youngest among the participants. We were all surprised and did not expect it at all. Since then, I decided to pursue a professional track in swimming. I joined the national team in 2014.” Abdelshafi has since won 39 national and six international medals.

“Nothing can stop us because we’re girls. We’re all human and there’s no difference between a girl or a boy. One of my favourite quotes is: ‘There’s always another way’. When you find out that the way to your goal is blocked, don’t give up. Try to find another way and you’ll reach your goal with your persistence.”

“I believe that sports can influence our behaviour and help us have a positive impact on others. I hope I can do this one day and be an inspirational model.”

Kathely Rosa, an aspiring soccer coach from Brazil

When Kathely Rosa,19, first shared her dream of becoming a professional football player, people around her said football was for boys. When she tried to play with the boys, they refused and would only allow her to watch. Her brother, four years younger, had a completely different experience, and took football lessons from an early age.

 “He had a ball, a complete uniform, the opportunity to train at a club, money to participate in championships and selection processes. I got nothing,” says Rosa .

Rosa decided to coach herself, watching videos online to learn the tactics and practiced alone. One day, she was searching various ways of dribbling and found a video showing Brazilian football player and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Marta Vieira da Silva scoring a goal 20 different ways.

“I learned football mainly from male figures, because women’s football is not that visible,” says Rosa. “I was just fascinated when I saw what Marta could do with a ball.”

In February 2020, Rosa, along with 15 girls from One Win Leads to Another (OWLA), a joint programme with UN Women and the International Olympic Committee that provides weekly sport practice and life skills sessions for adolescent girls, fulfilled another dream ­– she met Marta in person in Rio.

“Marta told me that if I truly believe in what I want to do, nothing is impossible,” says Rosa. “It may sound like an obvious advice, but I needed to hear that from her.”

“I will graduate, become a coach and create a female’s football team with girls from the favela . There are a lot of girls with so much talent. They just need to be properly trained,” says Rosa. In the meantime, Rosa continues to lead by example in her community, as the only girl who plays on the boys’ team. 

Anita Karim, Pakistan’s first professional mixed martial arts fighter

Anita Karim, 24, is the only woman among the more than 300 professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters in Pakistan.

“I understand how significant confidence and knowledge of self-defence are for girls,” says Karim . “I started training in mixed martial arts and I wanted to become an example for other girls to encourage them to join a sport like MMA that makes individuals healthy and active.”

Karim comes from a family of MMA fighters and trains at an MMA training centre founded by her brothers in Islamabad. Her first professional fight was in 2018. “My family always supported me and encouraged my enthusiasm towards MMA, which is why I have accomplished so.” says Karim.

“We get the message from our society that women and girls can't commute on their own or can only work in particular areas. We are taught to fear, and there is a perception that girls are weak and vulnerable, which makes it difficult for us to move forward. When we go out and encounter harassment, we get frightened and are unable to react. MMA has taught me confidence and also made me strong enough to compete at a global level. It has taught me strategies for protecting myself in any kind of difficult situation.”

Khadija Timera, a lawyer and boxer from Senegal

Khadija Timera, 35, was raised in a working-class district in Paris. She won a scholarship to study business law at the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked in one of the world’s top law firms.

“After graduating, I felt that I had achieved a challenge,” says Timera . “I wanted to create my own company to support high-level sportswomen, specifically soccer players.” Now, Timera runs a London-based business and investments consultancy for professional athletes and is also a boxer, who advocates against gender-based violence. She narrowly missed out on qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics.

“I made my first selection in 2019. We went to the African championship in Cabo Verde and I won the gold medal for Senegal,” says Timera.

“Violence against women is regrettable. Women and children in Senegal are vulnerable and should therefore be protected.”

“People need to become [more] aware that women and men are equal and complementary. I also think that women themselves have to realize that they have a real power that they send out; they have to learn to trust themselves.”

“Boxing can help to build confidence,” Timera adds. “There should be many more associations and action to help women recognize their personal value and learn self-development.”

To women, Timera says: “you are enough.”

Aizhan Alymbai Kyzy, a chess champion from Kyrgyzstan

Aizhan Alymbai Kyzy is a 26-year-old chess champion from Kyrgyzstan. She has been a member of the national team since she was 15 years old, and came third place in the Asian Rapid Chess Championship.

“In Kyrgyzstan, as in the rest of the world, chess is mostly male dominated,” says Kyzy . “Monetary awards for women at the Kyrgyz championships are almost half of what men are offered and mostly men participate in these tournaments. The situation is changing for the better now.”

Kyzy believes the world is heading towards equality and that families have a significant role to play in supporting their daughters.

“We can be the ones to push the boundaries of what is possible,” says Kyzy. “At chess academy, where I was teaching, we demanded equal performance both from girls and boys. But parents urged teachers to be less harsh on girls. We need to raise awareness on ensuring quality education for girls and encourage families to support their daughters.”

“In the modern world, creative thinking and analytics are highly valued, and this is exactly what chess can offer. I want to be a role model for other girls. Playing chess is empowering, self-fulfilling, and makes you realize that everything is possible. Our society needs to create an enabling environment for women’s empowerment in sports and beyond. I call on all women and girls to challenge gender stereotypes, smash the boundaries and keep realizing their dreams!”

• ‘One Woman’ – The UN Women song
• UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous
• Kirsi Madi, Deputy Executive Director for Resource Management, Sustainability and Partnerships
• Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, Deputy Executive Director for Normative Support, UN System Coordination and Programme Results
• Guiding documents
• Report wrongdoing
• Programme implementation
• Career opportunities
• Application and recruitment process
• Meet our people
• Internship programme
• Procurement principles
• Gender-responsive procurement
• Doing business with UN Women
• How to become a UN Women vendor
• Contract templates and general conditions of contract
• Vendor protest procedure
• Facts and Figures
• Global norms and standards
• Women’s movements
• Parliaments and local governance
• Constitutions and legal reform
• Preguntas frecuentes
• Global Norms and Standards
• Macroeconomic policies and social protection
• Sustainable Development and Climate Change
• Rural women
• Employment and migration
• Facts and figures
• Creating safe public spaces
• Spotlight Initiative
• Essential services
• Focusing on prevention
• Research and data
• Other areas of work
• UNiTE campaign
• Conflict prevention and resolution
• Building and sustaining peace
• Young women in peace and security
• Rule of law: Justice and security
• Women, peace, and security in the work of the UN Security Council
• Preventing violent extremism and countering terrorism
• Planning and monitoring
• Humanitarian coordination
• Crisis response and recovery
• Disaster risk reduction
• Inclusive National Planning
• Public Sector Reform
• Tracking Investments
• Strengthening young women's leadership
• Economic empowerment and skills development for young women
• Action on ending violence against young women and girls
• Engaging boys and young men in gender equality
• Sustainable development agenda
• Leadership and Participation
• National Planning
• Violence against Women
• Access to Justice
• Regional and country offices
• Regional and Country Offices
• Liaison offices
• UN Women Global Innovation Coalition for Change
• Commission on the Status of Women
• Economic and Social Council
• General Assembly
• Security Council
• High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development
• Human Rights Council
• Climate change and the environment
• Other Intergovernmental Processes
• World Conferences on Women
• Global Coordination
• Regional and country coordination
• Promoting UN accountability
• Gender Mainstreaming
• Coordination resources
• UN Coordination Library
• System-wide strategy
• Gender Focal Points and Focal Points for Women
• Entity-specific implementation plans on gender parity
• Laws and policies
• Strategies and tools
• Reports and monitoring
• Training Centre services
• Publications
• Government partners
• National mechanisms
• Civil Society Advisory Groups
• Benefits of partnering with UN Women
• Business and philanthropic partners
• Goodwill Ambassadors
• National Committees
• UN Women Media Compact
• UN Women Alumni Association
• Editorial series
• Media contacts
• Annual report
• Progress of the world’s women
• SDG monitoring report
• World survey on the role of women in development
• Reprint permissions
• Secretariat
• 2023 sessions and other meetings
• 2022 sessions and other meetings
• 2021 sessions and other meetings
• 2020 sessions and other meetings
• 2019 sessions and other meetings
• 2018 sessions and other meetings
• 2017 sessions and other meetings
• 2016 sessions and other meetings
• 2015 sessions and other meetings
• Compendiums of decisions
• Reports of sessions
• Key Documents
• Brief history
• CSW snapshot
• Preparations
• Official Documents
• Official Meetings
• Side Events
• Session Outcomes
• CSW65 (2021)
• CSW64 / Beijing+25 (2020)
• CSW63 (2019)
• CSW62 (2018)
• CSW61 (2017)
• Member States
• Eligibility
• Registration
• Opportunities for NGOs to address the Commission
• Communications procedure
• Grant making
• Accompaniment and growth
• Results and impact
• Knowledge and learning
• Social innovation
• UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women
• About Generation Equality
• Generation Equality Forum
• Action packs

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

8 Times Women in Sports Fought for Equality

By Sarah Mervosh and Christina Caron

• March 8, 2019

On Friday, all 28 players on the United States women’s soccer team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation, an escalation in their increasingly public battle for equality.

The players have said that they play more games than the men’s team — and win more of them — yet still receive less pay. They said “institutionalized gender discrimination” affected not only their paychecks, but also where they played and how often, how they trained, the medical care and coaching they received, and even how they traveled to matches.

They are not alone in their fight for fairer pay and better treatment. Here are eight times in recent memory when women fought for equality in sports.

Finishing the Boston Marathon despite an attempt to eject her

Experts claimed for years that distance running was damaging to women’s health and femininity.

In 1967, women weren’t allowed to officially enter the Boston Marathon, so Kathrine Switzer entered that year as “K.V. Switzer” to hide her gender.

Two miles in , an official tried to eject her from the course, a moment captured in dramatic photographs. She finished anyway, becoming the first woman to complete the race as an official entrant.

“We learned that women are not deficient in endurance and stamina, and that running requires no fancy facilities or equipment,” Switzer wrote in The New York Times in 2007 .

Women were officially allowed to enter the race in 1972. Women’s marathoning joined the Olympics in 1984.

A feminist tennis champion wins the Battle of the Sexes

The year 1973 was a big one for Billie Jean King, the trailblazing tennis star.

She founded the Women’s Tennis Association . She led a movement for female players to earn equal prize money in tournaments that featured players of both sexes.

And, on a September night at the Astrodome in Houston, she epitomized her crusade for gender equality when she handily beat Bobby Riggs, a self-described male chauvinist pig, in the Battle of the Sexes .

King went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 for her work championing the rights of women and gay people. She is considered to be one of the most important athletes of the 20th century.

“Everyone thinks women should be thrilled when we get crumbs,” King once said. “I want women to have the cake, the icing and the cherry on top, too.”

Yale rowers strip to protest lack of women’s showers

Chris Ernst is a two-time Olympic rower. But in the spring of 1976, she was the captain of Yale University’s women’s crew team — and sick of not having proper showers to use after practice.

She led 18 teammates in an eye-catching protest at Yale’s athletic office. The athletes stripped to their waists, revealing the words “Title IX,” which had been drawn in blue marker on each woman’s back and breasts.

The Times ran an article in the next day’s paper, and a photograph of the history-making event also ran in The Yale Daily News.

Within two weeks , the female rowers had new locker rooms. And, across the country, educators began viewing Title IX — which had been in effect for just four years — as a law that required compliance.

Venus Williams wins a victory for women off the court

In 2007, after pressure from the tennis great Venus Williams and others, Wimbledon announced that women’s tennis players would receive prize money equal to the men’s.

Williams had made a failed plea to Wimbledon’s governing body the night before she won the title in 2005. And in 2006, she wrote an op-ed essay in The Times of London titled “Wimbledon Has Sent Me a Message: I’m Only a Second Class Champion.”

“Have you ever been let down by someone that you had long admired, respected and looked up to?” she wrote. “Little in life is more disappointing, particularly when that person does something that goes against the very heart of what you believe is right and fair.”

After the policies changed in 2007, she was awarded $1.4 million for her fourth Wimbledon victory, the same amount as the men’s champion, Roger Federer.

A first for women’s hockey

In March 2017, the women’s national hockey team announced that it would boycott the coming world championship if U.S.A. Hockey, the sport’s national governing body, did not increase the women’s wages.

“It’s hard to believe that in 2017, we have to fight so hard just to get equitable support,” Meghan Duggan, the team’s captain, said at the time. “We want to do the fair thing, and the right thing — not just for hockey but for all women.”

They put their careers on the line, but the risk paid off.

Less than two weeks later, the team reached a four-year deal with U.S.A. Hockey . It provided the female players a $2,000 training stipend each month from the United States Olympic Committee and larger bonuses for winning medals. The team also received the same travel and insurance provisions that the men’s national team did, and a pool of prize money to be split each year.

Female surfers receive equal prize money

Four prominent female big-wave surfers, Bianca Valenti, Andrea Moller, Keala Kennelly and Paige Alms, spent years fighting for equal pay in the largely male sport where they regularly risk their lives.

Last July, the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing, an organization formed by six women, sent letters to the California Coastal Commission arguing that by treating women unequally, the World Surf League was in violation of state civil rights law.

Months later, in September, Valenti and other female surfers earned a victory when the World Surf League announced it would offer equal prize money to men and women.

Valenti, along with Sabrina Brennan, the president of the San Mateo County Harbor Commission, and Karen Tynan, a labor lawyer, also successfully pushed for women to be included in the Maverick’s Challenge, a big-wave surfing competition that had traditionally invited only men.

“Some people would tell me that by trying to get the (prize) pie redistributed I was ruining it for everyone,” Moller said in December . “But I would just say: ‘That’s wrong. We’re fighting for the industry. People love watching women surf big waves, so the whole sport will grow.’”

W.N.B.A. players speak up

In the world of professional basketball, pay disparities are well-documented : In the N.B.A., a multibillion-dollar industry where players often make millions, the minimum starting salary is about eight times what the average W.N.B.A. player makes.

And female players are speaking up, on social media and on TV.

Skylar Diggins-Smith, the W.N.B.A. All-Star who plays guard for the Dallas Wings, recently appeared in a commercial to raise awareness about pay inequity.

The commercial, by the investment adviser Wealthsimple, contrasts the paths of two young players, a boy and a girl. Each lists their basketball dreams and accomplishments, but only one will grow up to receive a multimillion-dollar rookie contract.

A’ja Wilson, a star rookie who was the first overall W.N.B.A. draft pick in 2018, has also weighed in: “must. be. nice,” she wrote about LeBron James’s $154 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers. “We over here looking for a M but Lord, let me get back in my lane.”

Wilson earned about $53,000 that season. The top N.B.A. draft pick last year, Deandre Ayton, was expected to earn about $6.8 million in his first year playing for the Phoenix Suns.

The best female soccer player boycotts the World Cup

Ada Hegerberg, a 23-year-old Norwegian, was recognized as the best female soccer player in the world last year when she became the first person to win the women’s Ballon d'Or , a prestigious individual honor in soccer that had previously been reserved for men.

Despite the big award, she has decided not to play on the biggest stage of all, the Women’s World Cup, in France this summer.

Hegerberg quit the Norwegian national team in 2017 in protest of what she said was a lack of support for women’s soccer in her home country.

“I was quite clear with them about what I thought needed to be better,” she said in an interview after winning the Ballon d’Or. “I gave them the reasons. I wish my national team all the best. I love my country. I wish I could play for them. In this case, I had to move on.”

Maya Salam and Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting.

Inside the World of Sports

Dive deeper into the people, issues and trends shaping professional, collegiate and amateur athletics..

No More  Cinderella Stories?: Expansion of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament has been a popular topic. But adding more teams could push small schools like Oakland, which upset Kentucky, out of the action .

Caitlin Clark’s Lasting Impact: People have flocked to watch the Iowa basketball star  on TV and in person. But will her effect on the popularity and economics of women’s sports linger after her college career ends ?

Gambling Poses Risks for Leagues:   The situation involving the former interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers slugger and pitcher, shows that when it comes to wagering on games, professional leagues have more than just the players to watch .

Unionization Efforts: How is a football team different from a marching band? The National Labor Relations Board is considering this question as it tries to determine whether some college athletes should be deemed employees .

Delayed Gratification: Doping rules, legal challenges and endless appeals have left some Olympic medalists waiting for their golds .

New study reveals gender bias in sport research. It’s yet another hurdle to progress in women’s sport

Research Fellow & Psychologist, Mental Health in Elite Sports, The University of Melbourne

Senior Research Fellow, Biostatistician, Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne

Associate Professor & Clinical Psychologist, Mental Health in Elite Sports, The University of Melbourne

Disclosure statement

Courtney Walton receives funding through a McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. He advises a number of elite sports codes and organisations nationally.

Caroline Gao receives salary support from the Department of Health, State Government of Victoria for unrelated projects. She is an investigator on projects funded by NHMRC, NIH, HCF and MRFF. She is affiliated with Orygen and Monash University.

Simon Rice receives funding from the NHMRC, MRFF and The University of Melbourne. He advises a number of elite sports codes and organisations internationally.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

View all partners

• Bahasa Indonesia

Throughout history, sports have been guilty of prioritising certain groups at the exclusion of others. There has been a pervasive idea that being an athlete requires the demonstration of traditionally masculine traits. Any individual not doing so was, and often still is, susceptible to being harassed, sidelined, or ostracised.

Indeed, femininity has historically been considered nonathletic. Research finds some athletes describe a perception that being a “woman” and an “athlete” are almost opposing identities .

For these reasons and more, women’s sport has been held back in ways that men’s sport has not. While progress is certainly now being made, our new research , published this week, finds large gender gaps persist in sports research.

We found sport psychology research studies – which inform the strategies athletes use to reach peak performance – have predominantly used male participants.

For example, across the sport psychology research we looked at between 2010 and 2020, 62% of the participants were men and boys. Further, around 22% of the sport psychology studies we examined had samples with only male participants. In contrast, this number was just 7% for women and girls.

Women may experience sport and exercise differently from men. As in other areas of medicine, an evidence base that’s predominately informed by men’s experiences and bodies will lead to insufficient, ineffective outcomes and recommendations for women.

Some progress has been made

Progress in women’s sport is evident, and continues every year. Gender gaps across recreational and professional sport are slowly narrowing.

Girls’ involvement in sport continues to grow, with the number participating in high school sports in the United States increasing by 262% between 1973 and 2018 . In Australia, participation in sport among women and girls between 2015-2019 grew at a faster rate than among men and boys .

Improved opportunity and exposure has also occurred in professional settings, and public interest has increased significantly. For example, the 2020 Women’s Cricket World Cup saw attendance records tumble, with the final played at the MCG in front of 86,174 fans .

Many sports now enter a complex new era of professionalisation, as we’re seeing in AFLW .

Despite positive trends, critical issues remain.

Read more: The Tokyo Olympics are billed as the first gender equal Games, but women still lack opportunities in sport

Gender bias in research

Any growth in women’s sport must be supported by the underlying evidence base that informs it.

As mental health researchers in the field of elite sport, we aim to make real-world impacts through rigorous applied research. Our team has previously explored gendered mental health experiences among elite athletes, finding women report more significant symptoms of mental ill-health and more frequent negative events like discrimination or financial hardship .

Research like this is critical for informing the services and systems which support peak performance. But the research has to represent its target, or else progress will be limited.

It’s now well understood that the field of medical and scientific research is rife with examples of the ways in which unequal participation by gender has caused negative health effects. With men’s experiences and bodies considered the norm , inaccurate understanding of causes, tools, and treatments have been frequent.

Medical and scientific research in sport is not exempt.

Our findings

As sports become increasingly competitive and pressurised, sport psychology is critical to supporting athletes within these high-stress environments.

Following concerns about gender bias in scientific research, we wanted to understand whether the field of sport and exercise psychology was appropriately representative.

We recorded the gender of study participants across research published in key sport and exercise psychology journals in 2010, 2015 and 2020, to estimate gender balance over the last decade. This included studies on topics such as: physical and mental health, personality and motivation, coaching and athlete development, leadership, and mental skills.

Across more than 600 studies and nearly 260,000 participants, there were significant levels of gender imbalance.

This imbalance varied, depending on the area being investigated. While sport psychology research focuses on performance and athletes, exercise psychology is more focused on areas of health and participation. Our findings showed that the likelihood of including male rather than female participants in sport psychology studies was almost four times as high as for exercise psychology.

We also identified that those studies which specifically explored themes relating to performance (such as coaching, mental skills, or decision-making) all featured samples with fewer women and girls, as compared to those focused on topics like health, well-being, or activism.

What our findings mean

Our findings, along with those of others , hint at a number of worrying conclusions.

Women and girls in sport are likely to be instructed in strategies and approaches informed by research that does not sufficiently represent them.

Among many factors, topics like coaching methods, injury management, and performance psychology are critical to sports performance. For some or all of these, women athletes’ experiences may differ from those of men.

Changes to policy have made a significant difference to gender equity in sport. But researchers and funding bodies must follow suit, ensuring we develop the understanding and methods to properly represent all groups we seek to serve. Only then can women’s sport truly flourish.

• Sport science
• Sport psychology
• Gender bias
• Gender bias in academia
• Exercise psychology
• Gender bias in medicine
• Gender bias in sports

Business Support Officer

Director, Defence and Security

Opportunities with the new CIEHF

School of Social Sciences – Public Policy and International Relations opportunities

Deputy Editor - Technology

Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / Gender Inequality / Breaking Barriers: Gender Equality in Sports

Breaking Barriers: Gender Equality in Sports

• Category: Sports , Social Issues
• Topic: Gender Inequality

Pages: 3 (1576 words)

• Downloads: -->

--> ⚠️ Remember: This essay was written and uploaded by an--> click here.

Found a great essay sample but want a unique one?

are ready to help you with your essay

You won’t be charged yet!

History of Taekwondo Essays

Taekwondo Essays

Muhammad Ali Essays

Michael Jordan Essays

Soccer Essays

Related Essays

We are glad that you like it, but you cannot copy from our website. Just insert your email and this sample will be sent to you.

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service  and  Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Your essay sample has been sent.

In fact, there is a way to get an original essay! Turn to our writers and order a plagiarism-free paper.

samplius.com uses cookies to offer you the best service possible.By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .--> -->