Women’s football performs well on level playing field

England's love of their women's football team, the Lionesses, has been growing steadily over the last few years. However, previous to this, women's football rarely crossed the minds of even the keenest football followers. The difference in popularity between men's and women's football has historically been quite stark.

Higher levels of skill is often cited one of the reasons why some people consider men's football to be better than women's. But is this really the case? A new study published in Sport Management Review explores this further.  

For this investigation, the team recruited 613 participants via MTurk (337 men, mean age 34 years), 96% of whom watched football, and 80% of whom reported watching it daily. These participants were shown ten videos from both men's and women's club and national team matches recorded in 2019. Clips were between five and fourteen seconds each, and depicted goals selected as season highlights by UEFA or FIFA. These videos were manipulated to conceal the genders of players, coaches, referees, and fans.  

The control group of 290 of the participants saw the videos without any manipulation, while the experimental group of 323 participants saw the same videos with the gender obscured. After each video, participants were asked to rate the overall performance of the players on a five point scale, and indicate whether they would pay to watch the match. 

When gender was apparent in the videos, participants rated women's videos significantly lower. However, when gender was obscured, participants no longer rated men and women differently. Interestingly, those who watch football on a daily basis were more likely to rate the non-blurred videos lower, suggesting that their engagement with football and football culture has led to stereotyping behaviours. Women participants gave higher ratings when the videos were blurred. 

Participants who prefer men's football evaluated the blurred videos significantly lower – initially suggesting that they could tell the difference between genders. However, they also rated the original videos lower than other participants too, meaning that a more likely explanation is that they required higher levels of skill overall to be impressed. 

One area the team did not investigate further was the gendered difference in evaluations. Why women gave higher ratings when the videos were blurred was not fully explored, and could provide further insight into this effect. Participants were also of various nationalities, and while this allows for a broad view across cultures, MTurk limitations mean that nationalities were not equally represented in each condition. Given cultural differences around both gender and sport, this may have negatively impacted analyses.

The fact that participants rated women lower, even when there was no discernable difference in skill level, could lead to what the team describes as a "circular logic... that justifies comparatively low allocation of resources and investments for women's soccer, thereby perpetuating inequality." That is, if women's football is seen as 'lesser' than men's football, fewer resources are allocated to it – in turn leading to lower amounts of coverage, development, and investment. These results give reason for those who believe that women's football is less impressive to evaluate the reasons for their stance – or at least a reason to give the Lioness' next match a try.

Read the paper in full: https://doi.org/10.1080/14413523.2023.2233341