research questions about gender inequality in sports

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

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

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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.

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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

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• Published: 01 March 2016

Gendered performances in sport: an embodied approach

• Ian Wellard 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  2 , Article number:  16003 ( 2016 ) Cite this article

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Despite significant advances in recent years, gender inequalities remain apparent within the context of sport participation and engagement. One of the problems, however, when addressing gender issues in sport is the continued assumption by many sport practitioners that the experiences of women and men will always be different because of perceived physiological characteristics. Adopting a focus based solely on perceived gendered differences often overlooks the importance of recognizing individual experience and the prevailing social influences that impact on participation such as age, class, race and ability. An embodied approach, as well as seeking to move beyond mind/body dualisms, incorporates the physiological with the social and psychological. Therefore, it is suggested that, although considerations of gender remain important, they need to be interpreted alongside other interconnecting and influential (at varying times and occasions) social and physical factors. It is argued that taking the body as a starting point opens up more possibilities to manoeuvre through the mine field that is gender and sport participation. The appeal of an embodied approach to the study of gender and sport is in its accommodation of a wider multidisciplinary lens. Particularly, by acknowledging the subjective, corporeal, lived experiences of sport engagement, an embodied approach offers a more flexible starting point to negotiate the theoretical and methodological challenges created by restrictive discourses of difference.

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Introduction.

Debates relating to the role of gender in sport participation continue to be contested. Although, more recently, there have been significant advances in the ways that women are able to take part in sports, it is still difficult to provide convincing arguments that women do have equal opportunities. One of the problems, however, when addressing gender issues in sport is the continued assumption by many sport practitioners that the experiences of women and men will always be different because of perceived physiological characteristics. Adopting a focus based on perceived differences often overlooks the importance of recognizing individual experience and the prevailing social influences that impact on participation.

In the majority of studies of gender within the context of sport, the focus tends to be on the experiences of women. Historically, the disparity between men and women in terms of the opportunities to participate in sport is unquestioned and has been documented in detail ( Hargreaves, 1994 ). However, the inequitable treatment that women have experienced needs to be understood alongside the influence of other social discourses such as ability, age, class and race. These (and others) can be seen as significant factors contributing to present patterns of participation and inclusion. Further fuelling this complexity are more recent discourses developed within contemporary, populist thinking about gender informed by neo-liberal claims that women are “empowered” and free to choose their own identities ( Phipps, 2014 ). Although these discourses can be seen to be seductive in that they encourage individual assessments of being “in control”, they tend to operate in a performative way ( Butler, 1993 ) where simplistic binary divisions between men and women remain uncontested. Bearing this in mind, the discussion in this article focusses on exploring ways to think beyond “just” gender when thinking about sport participation, at the same time keeping the central argument of inclusion at the heart of the debate.

In 2004, I was involved in a review of research exploring girls’ participation in sport and physical activities for the World Health Organisation (WHO) ( Bailey et al., 2004 ). The report explored current research within the field and highlighted evidence to suggest that, although there was enthusiasm among girls to take part in sports, many were still facing barriers because of a range of complex and competing external social factors. In particular, areas such as family life, friendship patterns and school sport were significant influences on how the girls could participate.

Although the focus in the WHO research was on girls’ participation in sport and physical activity, an important part of the analysis was the recognition of girls as children and young people and, as such, part of a broader discourse of childhood ( Jenks, 2005 ; Christiensen and James, 2008 ; Runswick-Cole and Goodley, 2011 ). Consequently, girls’ experiences of sport and physical activity could not be understood wholly in terms of gender, but as part of wider social thinking that included understandings of children’s physical, psychological and social development as well as discourses of health and well-being shaped through centuries of political, religious and scientific thinking. Nevertheless, current social constructions of what a “normal” or “healthy” girl/boy/child should look like continue to be formulated in contested ways. Therefore, it is suggested within this article that a way to unravel the complexities of gender within the context of sport and physical activity is to recognize the centrality of the body, so that the multiple social factors that influence and impact on how an individual is freely able (or not) to participate can be recognized and acted upon. In doing so, it is suggested that, although considerations of gender remain important, they need to be considered alongside other interconnecting and influential (at varying times and occasions) social factors such as age, class, race, religion and (dis)ability.

In recent years the social sciences has experienced a “somatic turn” where the body has been bought back into the field of sociology ( Frank, 1991 ; Shilling, 1993 ). Subsequent embodied approaches could be considered as a response to calls to incorporate not just a “sociology of the body” that analyses and writes about “the” body but an embodied sociology that emerges through living, breathing, corporeal emotional beings ( Inckle, 2010 ). Within the context of sport, while the discursive structures operating on the body revealed by Foucault (1979) and many subsequent post-structuralist accounts ( Butler, 1993 ; Markula and Pringle, 2006 ) have been extensively debated, there does seem room for more discussion about embodied experience, in particular, the ways in which individuals create corporeal understandings of their own bodies and in turn develop understandings of their own physical identities as well as others. However, rather than being a distinct discipline in its own right, an embodied approach might be more usefully viewed as a “frame of mind” or a specific orientation to the research process. In this way, it draws upon reflexivity in that consciousness of the embodied or, as Woodward (2015) describes, “enfleshed” aspects are considered significant in any attempts to understand human experience. The very fact that to engage in embodied research one needs to accommodate the physiological, the psychological, the sociological, and the temporal and spatial elements means that the researcher can accommodate a range of disciplinary perspectives. Akinleye (2015) suggests that embodiment moves meaning making beyond linear constructs, which ultimately helps us move from distinctions and separations of mind and body or time and space and allows us to fuse what have previously been considered separate realms and also move back and forth between ideas, experiences and thoughts.

Awareness of these broader discourses (of, for example, the able body, gender and sexuality) allows the researcher (and practitioner) to consider the implications that their embodied self has on their proposed activities as well as revealing the invariably limited ways in which the body can be expressed. This is where Pronger’s (2002) discussion about the limits that are placed on individuals through dominating discourses can help us negotiate fears of overstepping the mark. In terms of an embodied approach, there is more potential to look beyond the limits. In doing so, embodied approaches might provide the starting to point to reveal such limits and develop ways to counter uncritical neo-liberal arguments about sport and sport capital that are often offered as positive and unproblematic especially in relation to the benefits of sport. Taking an embodied or enfleshed ( Woodward, 2015 ) way of thinking helps us to accommodate the more nitty-gritty aspects of our everyday existence. Often this everyday existence is about negotiating and managing at an individual level as well as a social level the different experiences that are both positive and not so positive. As such things like pain, shame, pleasure, aggression, social status, poverty and so on have to be factored in to any of these considerations. The central foundation for neo-liberal arguments is generally based on the relationship between the benefits of sport and the economy. This focus often overlooks (or consciously ignores) the embodied experience of the individual in its attempt to explore broader economic and political agendas. An embodied approach allows for consideration of the influence of these (and other) forms of knowledge structure but more in line with the effect they have on the individual experience or, in other words, the broader everyday reality of embodied existence.

Body performances in sport

In contemporary sports the “type” of body that one has plays a central role in determining who the appropriate participants should be. It is worthwhile to note at this stage that when I speak about sport, it is within a “Western” formulation, as described by Hargreaves (1986) , one that has a historical trajectory that has constructed a particular understanding of sport as a male arena ( Hargreaves, 1986 ; Messner, 1992 ; Wellard, 2009 ). This formulation of sport and the subsequent relationship to an understanding of contemporary “Western” masculinity need to be considered within the context of what Connell (2007 : 44), in Southern Theory, describes the “northernness” of general theory and, in particular, what she terms a “metropolitan geo-political location”. She critiques the lack of recognition of the northern geo-political location and along with it the failure to recognize many alternate ways of thinking or being, which derive from non-Western cultures. In particular, it is empirical knowledge deriving from the “Metropole” that constitutes the erasure of the experience of a majority of human kind from having an influence in the construction of social thought. As much as I support Connell’s viewpoint, I cannot escape from the fact that the material generated in the research that I have been involved in is located within the Metropole that Connell describes. However, recognition of this position, combined with the knowledge that there are other ways of being, provides an opportunity to analyse the material with a broader viewpoint, much in the same way that feminist research has taught us to constantly take into consideration the gendered dynamics of social interactions and identity formation ( Woodward, 1997 ). Therefore, I have attempted to remain aware of the limits of the Metropole, especially as the version of sport that prevails does have its roots firmly entrenched in Western thinking. Nevertheless, it does not mean that the ideas developed are not relevant, as they seek to explore issues that have yet to be fully understood. Exposing the constant conflicting interpretations of what sport should be (and to whom) provides a way of incorporating broader ideas, particularly so in the case of school sport and physical education, where participation is mandatory for young people, although the benefits or outcomes are not necessarily the same ( Wellard, 2006 ). However, the point I am making in this article is that sport participation is not solely based on the actual physical ability to perform movements related to the specific sporting event. Bodily performance provides a means of demonstrating other normative social requirements that relate to the prevalent codes of gender and sexual identity, both inside and outside the sporting arena. There is, however, within the context of sport a form of what I have termed “expected sporting masculinity” ( Wellard, 2009 ) that is expressed through bodily displays or performances. These bodily displays signal to the opponent or spectator a particular version of masculinity based on aggressiveness, competitiveness, power and assertiveness, derived from sociocultural processes that have constructed what a sporting body should “look like” and “act like”. In this case, body practices present maleness as a performance that is understood in terms of being diametrically opposite to femininity ( Butler, 1990 ; Segal, 1997 ). Within the context of sport, the body takes on a greater significance where embodied “deeds” are prioritized and established on principles such as competition, winning and overcoming opponents. The combination of a socially formulated construction of normative masculinity as superior to femininity and the practice of sport as a male social space creates the (false) need for more obvious outward performances by those who wish to participate. Consequently, displays of the body act as a primary means through which an expected sporting (masculine) identity can be established and maintained.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of studies into masculinity and masculinities ( Hearn and Morgan, 1990 ; Connell, 1995 ; Whitehead, 2002 ), and Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity has become an established starting point for debate, particularly within the context of sport. Like many other forms of “dominant” theory, the concept has been subjected to many forms of criticism. However, Connell’s willingness to address criticisms of her earlier descriptions of hegemony as a response to developments in critical thinking, along with her original accommodation of a broader embodied approach has allowed her general theoretical arguments about hegemonic masculinity to weather the storm ( Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005 ). Indeed, within the context of gender and sport, Connell’s description of hegemonic masculinity is relevant, precisely because of the recognition of body-reflexive practices that contribute to the internalization by the individual of broader social discourses that ultimately affect participation.

My own interpretation of hegemonic masculinity is informed by Connell’s theory in terms of her recognition of the body but is also influenced by Butler’s (1993) descriptions of the “performative” aspects of the gendered body and Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of “Capital” (in particular, “sporting” and “cultural” capital) generated through performances of the body. Although I am aware of the conflicting tensions that emerge through the theoretical trajectories of these concepts ( Pringle, 2005 ), prioritizing the body allows for consideration of how these knowledge systems and relationships of power impact on the individual body. Subsequent investigations ( Wellard, 2002 , 2006 , 2009 ) convinced me that Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity, within the context of gender and sport, remained relevant particularly by reading these ideas through the body and body performances. Consequently, it is the lack of recognition of the embodied aspects of sport participation (and embodied experience) that is a telling gap within much of the sport literature and especially many subsequent critiques of hegemonic masculinity.

Recent claims made by Anderson (2009) about “inclusive masculinity” as a “new” theoretical insight to replace hegemonic masculinity fall short when they are subjected to the same type of scrutiny that Connell’s theories have been. For example, a failure by many critics to recognize the performative, embodied elements is neatly summarized by de Boise (2014) when he highlights the strengths of Connell’s original ideas.

Here is the crux of Connell’s (1995 : 77) argument; while gender is performative, hegemonic practices, in order to be legitimated, must correspond to institutional privilege and power, which have no basis in nature and are subject to change. Therefore, what is considered gender “identity” is not psychologically “fixed” or acquired, but dependent on arrangements of social power. In contrast, Anderson’s account wrongly seems to suggest that gender emanates from an internalized, psychological predisposition, rather than the performance as constituting gender. ( de Boise, 2014 : 7)

Although Anderson’s claims that there has been an increase in more inclusive forms of masculinity may have some substance within the context of broader, contemporary social discourses, it is less convincing when applied to sport. In my research into gendered bodily performances in sport, I initially employed the term “exclusive masculinity” ( Wellard, 2002 ) to describe a particular form of hegemonic masculinity that I found to be prevalent within sport. Subsequent further analysis ( Wellard, 2009 ) led me to suspect that this was slightly misleading in that performances of certain versions of masculinity do not necessarily “exclude” but rather compel specific performances within the sport setting, particularly during play. “Expected” sporting masculinity can therefore be seen as a form of embodied masculine performance that is considered appropriate or necessary within the specific location of taking part or playing sport and can be read alongside other “accepted” forms of sporting masculinity that occur off the playing field, but within the social space of sport. In this way, awareness of what is “expected” when entering the sports arena is necessary for an individual and consequent reflections by the individual about their ability to display what is expected can be assessed in terms of a range of broader social factors that affect them—such as gender, sexuality, age class and so on.

However, it is important to make it clear that expected sporting masculinity is not only based on the appearance of the body such as the possession of a muscular build or, indeed, the biological sex category of male. Within the context of sport, expected masculinity is expressed through bodily performances that adhere to traditional formulations of hegemonic masculinity, but embrace the values and ideals of sporting performance. Thus, outward displays of competitiveness, aggression, strength and athleticism are prioritized. Bodily capital is clearly understood in terms of how sport “should” be played and what it should look like as part of a social and historical process that Hargreaves (1986) describes. Consequently, the Muscular Christianity that Hargreaves describes as a significant element of contemporary sporting practice draws upon a particular version of an assertive, physical and heteronormative masculine body.

Within the context of sport, it is the performance of the body that is expected, not necessarily the social category such as gender or age. Although these play an important role, it is the bodily performance that provides the central focus. Being successful in sport requires specific knowledge about the body that, in turn, requires specific body performances. These replicate the performative aspects of gender within wider society, as described by Connell (2005) and Butler (1990) , but here the bodily performances are emphasized. For example, in an elite sport such as professional tennis, players in the men’s and women’s events whether physically large or small tend to display exaggerated versions of what could be described as aggressive masculinity through their on-court manner. They will talk about “being” aggressive in their play and their general on-court performances, and these are seen as essential elements for success. These bodily performances are replicated in other sporting contexts where certain behaviours become “expected”.

In the case of women players, they are performing “expected” sporting behaviours that are heavily influenced by historical, social formulations of traditional masculinities that are considered appropriate within the context of competitive sports, rather than in the way Halberstam (1998) talks about (broader, social discourses of) female masculinities. In the “on-court” sporting context, men and women adopt similar embodied strategies such as strutting about the court, pumping their clenched fists and acting aggressively towards their opponents. In this way, the body is prioritized over other social categories, and women, in order to “play”, need to accommodate the expected bodily performances. However, these expectations are at the same time regulated by broader social constructions of gender and essentialist understanding of difference through mechanisms such as separate spaces to play (for example, in tennis there is the ATP for men and the WTA for women).

In this way, it could be argued that a disabled person in a wheelchair could still perform expected sporting masculinity within the context of, for example, wheelchair basketball and, in doing so, reinforces the discriminatory gendered practices found within able-bodied sports. Indeed, here the notion of ability is equally important as it highlights the need for it to be read alongside gender to provide a fuller understanding of the way in which established codes of an able body and normative gender reinforce discourses of normalcy ( Peers, 2012 ). However, while the presence of those not necessarily considered as most “able” to perform expected sporting masculinity might suggest that traditional forms of masculinity are threatened or subverted when it is performed by women, gay men, lesbians or the disabled, the broader social discourses of gendered, sexual and disabled identities still operate. For instance, the tennis player Serena Williams may present outward signs of aggression and expected sporting behaviour on court, although, at the same time she presents accepted social signs of traditional femininity by wearing dresses and make-up. However, it is not sufficient to understand Serena’s on-court performances through gender alone; her body performances need to be read alongside a social context that has been informed by cultural and historical discourses that of race and women’s bodies ( McDonald, 2006 ). Consequently, whereas the context of professional, competitive sport may allow women to perform in ways that are expected within the context of sport, the broader social structures still operate to dictate how men’s and women’s bodies are constructed as different. This is particularly the case outside of professional sport, where displays of expected sporting masculinity become even more problematic for women ( Caudwell, 2006 ; Drury, 2011 ) as well as other disadvantaged groups.

“Real” masculinity and femininity

The notion, provided in the example above that Serena Williams can successfully perform in a hitherto male-dominated arena while still maintaining her “femininity”, highlights the contradictions of contemporary sport. Throughout the research that I have conducted with sportsmen ( Wellard, 2009 ), I have continually found that there is an assumption of a “real” or authentic version of masculinity. However, it has also been apparent that a definitive explanation could not be offered by the men, and in many cases there appeared to be a slippage in the use of the term. Indeed, the themes that recurred in their descriptions highlighted interplay between formulations of working-class sensibilities, heterosexuality and evidence of hard work and effort. The use of the body was central in the presentation of this version of masculinity. “Real” masculinity was constantly equated with presentations of the body that were considered “ordinary, ‘everyday’ or ‘run of the mill’ ” ( Wellard, 2009 ). Particularly within the context of sport, the men found it difficult to accept alternative versions of masculinity or “types” of body. For instance, among a group of male trainee PE teachers, the understanding of “normal” masculine behaviour extended to ways in which the body could (or should) move ( Wellard, 2007 ). In this particular case, these men found it difficult to accept the role of dance within their training. For them, the “ordinary” movements found in sport had been formulated through a combination of perceptions of class, expected masculine performances in sport and a narrow depiction of the sporting body. These were in opposition to the movements found in dance and their understanding of it. Dance was equated with non-sporting movements that were simultaneously associated with the feminine, considered non-working class and required a different approach to the body, both physically and emotionally.

However, even though there was a general sense of an authentic version of masculinity among nearly all the men I interviewed, their interpretations did not hold up to theoretical unpacking or scrutiny. The very fact that the men were positioning their identities within a “central” territory that was considered normal suggested that they felt little need to unduly question masculinity in general. The notion of “ordinariness” was not solely confined to heterosexual men. Many of the gay men I interviewed who played sport also considered themselves as “real” men who happened to be gay and their descriptions of “real” masculinity echoed those of the heterosexual men ( Wellard, 2009 ). Often, criticisms of “real” masculinity were considered to be voiced from those “outside” of what was considered to be a legitimate world view. As such, alternative arguments were considered less valid.

Belief that there is a real version of masculinity continues to reinforce gender binaries, and is particularly the case in sport where there is the expectation that only “real” men know or appreciate sport ( Connell, 2008 ). Those without “evidence” of such knowledge are considered “less than” real men. These simplistic formulations not only consolidate the belief that there is an authentic version of masculinity that creates unnecessary distinctions between groups of men but also continues to position women as occupying a separate gender binary.

It is because of the continued presence of a general perception of real masculinity as a basis for identity formation, that hegemonic masculinity ( Connell, 2005 ) as a theoretical concept remains relevant. It still has value in that it can be read as a way of explaining how particular sections of society remain subordinate and in that the claims made for authenticity do not destabilize the broader distributions of power, but rather offer useful justifications or appeals to less material forms of self-worth.

The centrality of the body: thinking about body-reflexive practices and pleasures

As I mentioned above, the findings from our report to the WHO indicated that the majority of girls enjoy taking part in sport and physical activity (or would like to, given the right circumstances). In order to understand when, how and why they found it enjoyable requires a greater understanding of individual experience so that any contributing factors that may have made it less enjoyable or not worth engaging in can be understood. Consequently, focussing initially on the body and embodied experiences provides an opportunity to consider more effectively the complex processes through which engagement and continued participation occur.

Although the discursive structures operating on the body revealed by Foucauldian and many post-structuralist accounts (for example, Butler, 1993 ; Markula and Pringle, 2006 ) have been extensively debated, there does seem room for more discussion about embodied experience ( Harre, 1998 ; Woodward, 2009 ; Wellard, 2013 ). In particular, the ways in which individuals create corporeal understandings of their own bodies and in turn develop understandings of their own physical identities as well as others. At the same time, it is acknowledged that there has been a growing interest in the meaning and experience of movement within the context of physical education, which could be described as a phenomenology of movement ( Smith, 2007 ). However, much of the focus here is to address the perceived lack of understanding about the qualities and characteristics of movement among physical education practitioners ( Brown and Payne, 2009 ).

Nevertheless, the concept of a “phenomenology of movement” is undoubtedly a significant influence in the way that experiences of fun and enjoyment can be understood in relation to sport participation. However, it is equally important to incorporate other theoretical positions that acknowledge the role of the body in shaping external social practices. As such, I have found the concept of body-reflexive practices ( Connell (2005) to be useful within this context as it enables the application of a social constructionist approach that incorporates the physical body within these social processes. Obviously, there are discourses that seek to explain social understandings of areas such as bodily health and sickness, but all too often they do not take into account the individual, corporeal experience of the body. Often there is a fear that this will involve a movement towards biological essentialism, but this need not be the case. I have described elsewhere ( Wellard, 2013 ) how my own enjoyment of sporting and physical activities has often been compromised by the requirements to manage and negotiate my body (particularly in relation to performances of hegemonic masculinity) in socially expected ways. I am not alone in this, as the potential bodily pleasures experienced through sporting activity have to be managed within social understandings of a range of discourses such as gender, sexuality, age and ability, which may ultimately prevent or diminish my ability or willingness to take part. It is here that Connell’s arguments have resonance as they form the basis of an understanding of the importance of the social and physical body and bodily practices. Connell attempts to incorporate the role of the biological (in this case, in the social construction of gender) and also applies a sociological reading of the social world where social actors are exposed to the restrictions created by social structures. She explains that,

With bodies both objects and agents of practice, and the practice itself forming the structures within which bodies are appropriated and defined, we face a pattern beyond the formulae of current social theory. This pattern might be termed body-reflexive practice. ( Connell, 2005 : 61)

Body-reflexive practices are, she argues, formed through a circuit of bodily experiences that link to bodily interaction and bodily experience via socially constructed bodily understandings that lead to new bodily interactions. As a result, Connell argues that social theory needs to account for the corporeality of the body. It is “through body-reflexive practices, bodies are addressed by social process and drawn into history, without ceasing to be bodies …. they do not turn into symbols, signs or positions in discourse” ( Connell, 2005 : 64).

Connell’s concept of body-reflexive practices helps us understand how social and cultural factors interact with individual experiences of the body. This in turn creates a need to recognize not only the social forms and practices that underpin the individual’s ability to take part in sport, or any other physical activity, but also the unique experiences or physical thrill of body-based expression.

Consequently, in order to adapt the concept so that it could be applied to a more specific embodied sporting and physical activity context, I developed the term body-reflexive pleasures ( Wellard, 2013 ). Within this context it is equally important to recognize the range of factors that contribute to the experience of pleasure (or not). Thus, if we apply the concept to an individual’s experience of a sport, we can see that consideration needs to be made of the social, physiological and psychological processes that occur at any level and with varied influence. Fun, enjoyment and pleasure are, therefore, central elements within a circuit of interconnected factors that determine the individual experience.

Recognizing the whole (embodied) package of sport

The example of fun and pleasure, above, is made specifically to highlight that there are multiple ways in which sport and physical activity can be experienced. The point here is not the case that men and women will experience sport and physical activity in an entirely different way, but rather that social constructions of gender contribute to the “way” that sport and physical activities are experienced. For children, young people and adults (particularly in the context of recreational sport), participation in sport is often expressed in terms of the potential for fun rather than as an emotional reaction that occurs during the activity. The notion that activity is considered in terms of “it could be” or “it was” fun suggests that a broader “process” is in operation and not a one-off moment of subjective gratification. A simplistic explanation that fun is trivial undermines the diverse ways that individuals anticipate, then experience and reflect on the fun elements within a sporting activity. Anticipation of fun may relate to many things such as potential achievement, learning something new, a social activity, an embodied experience or a thrill. In whatever way, they add to a personal memory bank, as an experience in itself and as an additional contribution to identity assessment. Understood in this way, even a hedonistic experience can be seen as significant, if considered in relation to its contribution to the memory bank of pleasurable moments and its impact on how the individual makes assessments about future participation.

However, the point about recognizing the broader dimensions of fun and enjoyment is that it is also necessary to acknowledge the wider dimensions of sport and physical activity experience, or the whole package of sport. Acknowledgment that participation in a sporting activity is influenced by a range of competing and conflicting factors allows for consideration that participation often relies on awareness of the “full contents” of the package and then navigation of the social, cultural, psychological and physiological expectations demanded for access to and continued participation. All of these contribute in varying ways that an individual is allowed entry (to a particular sporting activity) and, once in, is able to enjoy the experience.

Take, for instance, the example of tennis that I have been incorporating within this article. To get to the stage of experiencing the pleasurable aspects of actually playing the game, there is a process of learning, understanding and interpreting what tennis signifies within one’s immediate social, political and geographical situation. This process involves an understanding of the relationship of one’s embodied self to a socially constructed form of physical, adult play (sport). Consideration of one’s physical body, gender, age and race has to be applied to general perceptions of who is considered “able” to play. This is not to say that participation is excluded from the start in certain cases, but awareness of the “entry stakes” ultimately orientates the individual to make assumptions about whether they will be welcomed or not.

From a personal perspective, my introduction to tennis was through my parents, and during these early experiences I was able to “learn” more than not just the technical skills of how to play but also the social rules and etiquette expected within the game. Consequently, later attempts to join tennis clubs (in order to play a sport that I enjoyed) were uneventful in that I was able to demonstrate my knowledge of the whole package and “fit in”. Being male was obviously a significant part, but equally so were my physical and technical abilities, combined with my “knowledge” of how tennis should be played. My point is that “becoming” a fully fledged member of a sports club requires conformity of some sort, which means adapting to further “rules” and codes of play, much like a “hidden curriculum” ( Fernandez-Balboa, 1993 ) of sport that operates in addition to taken for granted prerequisites such as an ability to play the game. Seen in this light, it not only is the young person that is restricted by having to operate within adult discourses of what school- (or club-)based sport should look like, but also is an adult regulated in the way that they only have certain outlets in which to be able to experience sport pleasurably because of the way that many forms of club sport are internally “policed”, for instance, age, ability, gender, sexuality, class and race (see Ismond, 2003 ; Caudwell, 2006 ; Wellard, 2006 ; Tulle, 2008 ; Evans and Bairner, 2013 ).

Awareness of the hidden curriculum of many sports may also be a reason for the popularity among many adults for more individual pursuits such as running, cycling and swimming. Correspondingly, the social practices peculiar to specific sports may be an attraction for participation, in that much of the appeal of many club-based sports is the additional pre and postmatch social activities. Rituals, hazing, initiation rites, drinking games can all add to, if not play a central part in, a sense of belonging to a group ( Jonson, 2011) and, possibly, what an individual enjoys most in taking part. In many cases, it is the social activities that contribute more to continued participation than does actually playing the sport. Consequently, if we recognize that there are many other (covert and open) factors operating in any sporting activity, the suggestion is that in order to understand participation for an individual we need to be aware of the competing, influencing factors, which may or may not be solely related to gender.

Nevertheless, in most cases, within sporting contexts gender does play a significant part in how an individual ultimately experiences the activity. For example, recent research on the gendered perceptions of girls and boys who played Korfball, Footnote 1 ( Gubby, 2015 ) found that, although there were many gendered dynamics to be observed in a sport where boys and girls played together on the same teams, there were also other significant embodied factors that contributed to how the game was played and could be experienced. For instance, one integral aspect of Korfball was for all team members to be vocal during the games.

Although many team sports rely on a degree of communication in order to perform strategies and tactics, this is often no more than players shouting to signal that they are available to receive a ball, or to communicate the way forward for tactical play. Being vocal, however, has become an integral part of the game and is embedded deeply into the way it is played. “Calling” to inform teammates what their opponent might do next so that said teammate can mark and defend to the best of their abilities, is a necessary part of the game. ( Gubby, 2015 : 92)

In this particular case, the relevance of the vocal aspect read within the context of a sport that was developed to provide a gender neutral space highlights the importance of recognizing other factors that influence the experience of the game. In her research, Gubby (2015) observed how it was two girls who were identified by the other players as being the most vocal. However, where Korfball could be seen to offer some glimpses of gender equity, the sport was originally developed within the context of “difference” between boys and girls. The game itself provided a space for girls and boys to play together rather than, necessarily, being treated as equal. As Gubby suggests,

Whereas the positive aspects of playing together were considered favourably, it was equally difficult for the young people to leave behind their restricted formulations of how to “do gender” that had been developed in everyday social reality. At the same time, the rules of korfball could be considered equally restrictive in that they had been (historically) shaped from an initial premise of gender difference. ( Gubby, 2015 )

Conclusions

In summary, although it has not been the intention in this article to undermine the importance of gender within any debate about sport and physical activity, it is clear that positioning gender as an automatic starting point is not necessarily always the way to reveal the complexities of participation and how an activity is experienced . Recognition of the “whole package” of a particular sport allows assessment of the various influencing factors that shape the way that an individual is able to reflect upon an experience as enjoyable and, subsequently, whether participation or continued participation is either possible or worthwhile. Although the contexts in which children, young people and adults are able to access sport are different, particularly in terms of the prescriptive nature of school-based sport in comparison with the relatively greater opportunities available to adults, the ways in which assessments are made about participation invariably position fun and enjoyment as a major factor in continued or potential participation. Indeed, taking the body as a starting point might open up more inclusive ways of manoeuvring through the mine field that is gender and sport participation. The appeal of an embodied approach to the study of gender and sport is in its accommodation of a wider multidisciplinary lens. Particularly, by acknowledging the corporeal and “enfleshed” ( Woodward, 2015 ), an embodied approach offers a more flexible starting point to negotiate the challenges created by restrictive discourses of difference. Providing a more flexible starting point allows greater possibilities to accommodate the theoretical and methodological issues created by these discourses of difference that, ultimately, continue to limit the possibilities for many girls and boys to experience sport in a positive way.

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Original research article, re-thinking women's sport research: looking in the mirror and reflecting forward.

• 1 Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2 Pompea College of Business, University of New Haven, West Haven, CT, United States
• 3 Lang School of Business and Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
• 4 School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States
• 5 College of Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, United States

Despite decades of research and advocacy—women's professional sports continue to be considered second class to men's sports. The goal of this paper is to rethink how we state, present, and solve problems in women's sport. To affect true change, the wisdom of a broad stakeholder group was embraced such that varied perspectives could be considered. A three-question survey was developed to examine what key constituents believe is working in women's sports, what they believe the salient challenges are for women's sport, and how they would prioritize the next steps forward in the post-pandemic sport landscape. Results indicated siloed differences of opinion based upon the age and role of the stakeholder in the women's sport ecosystem. We discuss the implications and offer recommendations as to how we as scholars might recalibrate our approach to women's sport scholarship to maximize the impact of our research and affect change.

Introduction

While women's sport research has undoubtedly progressed, only a few token statistics have broken through into mainstream conversation and informed industry decision-making over the past decade. Arguably the most popular academic reference in women's sport refers to research that has tracked media coverage inequities. The oft-cited 4% statistic refers to the percentage of coverage afforded to women's sport in sports media. It is regularly used to provide context in industry conversations and simultaneously exists as the most viewed, downloaded, and cited statistic in the Communication and Sport academic journal ( Cooky et al., 2015 ). Why have so few other scholarly contributions been able to achieve this kind of reach? While we recognize that research alone will not create change ( Fink, 2015 ), as we reflect, reset our collective agendas and begin to build back and step forward in the post-pandemic sport landscape, rethinking our research contributions to more closely align with key stakeholders could help us to better serve both women athletes and the growth of women's professional sports.

Scholars have commonly shared and challenged the same linear storylines about women's sport for decades—comparing women's sports to men's sports, relating pre-Title IX to current day, highlighting the gendered participation gap and resource disparities, noting the decline and stagnation of women in sport leadership positions, documenting the dismal and marginalized media coverage, and detailing a perceived lack of fan interest (e.g., Hardin, 2005 ; Schultz, 2014 ; Burton, 2015 ; Bruce, 2016 ; LaVoi, 2016 ). Despite our best intentions to educate and inform around gender equity, in practice, we've witnessed little perceptible change. Amidst a time of rapid disruption and innovation, perhaps it is time to also reframe the ways in which we collectively study, think, and talk about women's sport.

Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) suggested the process of reframing can be a helpful strategy to solve difficult, complex problems. His framework encourages problem solvers to look outside of traditional frames, re-think their goals, examine bright spots, and then look in the mirror to let go of past assumptions and narratives, which ensures outside perspectives are taken into account. The goal of this framework is to maintain momentum and move forward. As we consider our academic expertise, it's critical to remember that we tend to frame problems that match our preferred solutions ( Wedell-Wedellsborg, 2020 ). However, are there stakeholders whose influence and insights we might be missing? Are we overlooking systemic factors that might influence different stakeholder groups in ways we haven't conceived? What are we not paying attention to? How is functional fixedness—a type of cognitive bias that involves a tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way—affecting our research?

Grant (2021) noted recently the art of reconsidering has never been more critical. Accelerated change is evidenced in a number of fields by the global COVID-19 pandemic, causing us all to doubt previous practices and re-imagine new possibilities. While momentum for gender equity in sport was building prior to COVID-19 ( Leberman et al., 2020 ; Bowes et al., 2021 ), the forced pause necessitated by the pandemic inarguably served as a pivot point for women's sports, showcasing its great potential for growth. We now find women's sports in a moment of transition. The sports industry is actively re-thinking how women's sports are produced, measured, and distributed ( Sport Innovation Lab, 2021 ). As thought leaders in academia, we too must grapple with the idea that facts and the context may have changed over the past decade and recognize the potential value of reframing our own minds ( Grant, 2021 ).

Our mission with this research is to cultivate curiosity, challenge assumptions, question the status quo, and promote an innovative research culture that can help to move the entire field of women's sport forward by driving strategy and building theory. We want to pause and rethink how we state, present, and solve problems in women's sport so that we are better positioned to affect sustained and real change. In line with Wedell-Wedellsborg's problem-solving framework, the first step in this re-framing journey is to embrace the wisdom of crowds. The purpose of this research, therefore, was to actively engage a wide variety of stakeholders in the women's sport ecosystem (i.e., all those with an interest in women's sports) to better understand the state of the women's sport landscape from a variety of perspectives and determine whether or not differences exist between stakeholder groups.

Literature Review

The following review addresses the key elements within Wedell-Wedellsborg's problem-solving framework. We begin by prefacing how we as academic researchers might begin to look outside of our traditional frames and rethink our research goals. We then look to the “bright spots” in women's sport research, summarizing the types of research that are working well. This is followed by a critical “look in the mirror” where we consider potential blind spots in our research and examine academic bias in our field. We conclude with a preliminary reflection on the variety of stakeholders in the women's sport space and the diversity of problems each may be trying to solve as we look forward.

Looking Outside the Frame

What are we missing? Solving complex problems requires us all to get curious about what we do not know, let go of past ways, dated assumptions, and familiar narratives. We all need to admit that “we don't know what we don't know,” and trust that other women's sport stakeholders could bring value to the reframing process with new perspectives and insights. Nutt (2002) noted that one of the most powerful things one can do when solving problems is generate multiple opinions to inform the ideation process ( Nutt, 2002 ). Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) built on this and promoted inviting outsiders to come up with alternative framings, suggesting that the strategy of zooming out to ask others what's missing can be a powerful way of bringing about a more people-oriented lens to a problem. This approach helps us to look beyond our traditional framing tendencies and/or see old problems in new ways. It also has the potential to be particularly effective as it relates to the industry-academic chasm in women's professional sport which has traditionally fractured around industry desire to monetize research findings on an efficient timeline and academic interests that value quality, rigor, and theoretical development for long-term sustainability. Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) highlights Kaplan's Law of the Instrument, noting that while it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a default solution, if you've repeatedly failed to solve a problem with your preferred solution, there's a good chance you need to reframe the problem. Specific to the challenges of women's sport, we recognize that real change will require multiple perspectives—from industry and academia, across a range of stakeholders, ages, backgrounds and identities—coming together to challenge one another and move women's sport forward into the future.

Examine Bright Spots

What type of research piques industry interest or impacts practical change? As we move to “look outside” of our academic frame, Wedell-Wedellsborg encourages us to look for “bright spots” to help gain new perspectives (p. 84). Grant (2021) similarly suggests the creation of “a specific kind of accountability—one that leads people to think again about best practices” (p. 216). So, what in women's sport research is working well? As noted, the media representation work of Cooky et al. (2015) and the most recent iteration of the longitudinal study, Cooky et al. (2021) , have become leading industry references. What sets this work apart? The research offers “sticky stats” that can be easily distilled for industry amplification while also serving to effectively quantify the vast inequities in women's sport media. Sticky stats are typically publicly available (as opposed to being behind a paywall) and they can be easily visualized and shared, which means they can simplify the translation of academic work and increase reach and traction. What's more, sticky stats are often startling.

The sticky stat strategy is being used more frequently in both industry reports and media reporting around women's sports. For example, the commercial investment audits conducted by the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation popularly revealed that women's sport sponsorship accounted for just 0.4% of total sports sponsorships between 2011 and 2013 ( WSFF, 2014 ). Ernst and Young's sticky stat that 94% of women in C-suite offices played sport has also been widely shared ( EY, 2015 ). Deloitte made headlines with their forecast that women's sports were on track to become a billion-dollar industry ( Lee et al., 2020 ). The longitudinal report cards that track the progress of women sport coaches and leaders (i.e., the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women's annual Women in College Coaching Report Card or The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport Diversity Reports) are also widely cited data points and have become well-regarded industry sources.

In the media, sticky stats have started to make for great headlines. Journalists seem to be drawn to flashy viewership numbers, social media engagement records and social activism. For example, several outlets reported on the fact that the WNBA's viewership was up 74% after just five games in the 2021 season ( Carp, 2021 ). It was also widely reported that NWSL teams received a league-high 12 million Twitter impressions during the 2021 Challenge Cup tournament ( Brennan, 2021 ), and Naomi Osaka's tweet focused on engaging conversation around mental health ahead of the French Open was not only lauded around the world, it was also noted for generating more than 41 million impressions across Twitter and Instagram ( Irelan, 2021 ).

The concept of data journalism or data-driven journalism has also become a popular means to elevate journalistic storytelling ( Boyle, 2017 ). In the case of women's sport, data are a wonderful tool to educate audiences. Letting the data tell the story is an effective way to push back against the deeply-engrained opinions and stereotypes that have plagued the women's sport space. This practice is being successfully employed in women's sports by journalists on untraditional platforms like Lindsay Gibbs' PowerPlays newsletter, The Black Sportswoman Newsletter , or the social media news source, Shot:Clocks Media . We could also look to the example of new media platforms like The Gist or Just Women's Sports , both of which recently received millions of dollars in seed funding for their roles in filling the void in the women's sport media marketplace. If one of our goals as advocates for women's sport is to broaden the reach of our work, infusing these journalistic styles into the reporting of our research through accessible media (e.g., opinion editorials, podcasts, infographics), or even collaborating with these noted outlets to help support their research needs could be effective ways for academics to re-think our knowledge translation plans and educate a broader population through public scholarship ( Yapa, 2006 ; Colbeck and Weaver, 2008 ).

Information does not simply manifest itself into public discourse. Colbeck and Weaver (2008) encouraged faculty to see, explore, and exploit the connections between public scholarship and other faculty responsibilities including research, teaching, and service, noting it is “an important way to leverage public scholarship engagement” (p. 28). Yapa (2006) advocated for intentionality in academic research, arguing “new knowledge is created in its application to the field” (p. 73). To this end, we examine what Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) refers to as a “positive outlier.” In lieu of the traditional mode of publishing an academic paper and then promoting work in media outlets, Isard and Melton (2021) recently teased the results of their research on the media coverage of Black players in the WNBA in a Sports Business Journal OpEd. They discussed a topline finding—that Black WNBA players receive significantly less media coverage—and were immediately afforded a series of high-profile press opportunities after the piece was published. The research was praised by ESPN employees and Paige Bueckers, a top collegiate basketball player, referenced the research in her nationally televised acceptance speech upon winning an ESPY for college athlete of the year, further amplifying the research. In this example, the reconsideration of traditional academic processes allowed the research findings to be reframed for multiple audiences, vastly extending both its reach and impact.

It's easy to fall victim to negativity bias when working to solve problems ( Wedell-Wedellsborg, 2020 ). In studying the bright spots of women's sport research, we enjoy an opportunity to pay more attention to situations in which things went particularly well. Perhaps unconventional by academic standards, Isard and Melton's decision to re-think the traditional order of knowledge transfer in academia allowed the researchers to capitalize on a moment in women's sport and embrace an opportunity to educate the industry. Had they waited to publicly unveil their work until the typically slow academic publication process was complete, would the same opportunities have existed? Could this strategy be successfully replicated with future research? Perhaps paying attention to the behaviors and circumstances that surround bright spots, could lead us to rethink the ways in which we communicate our research.

Look in the Mirror

What does academia bring to the table? What is our role in creating the problem? Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) notes that when considering problems, we often overlook our own role in the situation. Collectively, both scholars who specifically research women's sport and those involved more generally in the sport management academy, offer a nuanced understanding of the sport landscape and provide a vast methodological toolkit that allows us to advance understanding and create new knowledge. If we are to look in the mirror, however, it's incumbent upon us to recognize the bias toward men's sports that exists in both the current body of sport-related academic literature and sport management curricula.

When it comes to research, Fink (2015) provided a thorough review highlighting the broad scope of research dedicated to the media coverage, marketing, and promotion of female athletes, and women's sports. Burton (2015) and LaVoi (2016) similarly conducted a multi-level examination of the range of scholarship documenting women in sport leadership and coaching respectively. Bruce (2016) synthesized four decades of research on media representations of women's sports. Together, these reviews underscore the progress in scholarship dedicated specifically to women's sport. A recent study by Delia et al. (2021) , however, noted that nearly all academic studies related to team identification have exclusively dealt with men's sport. Their review of hundreds of articles examining team identification as a focal variable found only five articles in which scholars explicitly studied the women's sport context ( Delia et al., 2021 ). A review article of social media research in sport management featured 70 studies of which only two specifically focused on women's sports ( Filo et al., 2015 ). These findings are not isolated examples in sport management literature, rather they are emblematic of the long-running assumption that men's and women's sport contexts are the same. The exclusion of the women's sport context in sport management research illustrates the extreme imbalance that exists across sport management literature and accentuates how we as scholars are “perpetuating the disparities between women's and men's sport” through our research agendas ( Delia et al., 2021 , p. 67).

Relative to sport management curricula, the women's sports context has to date been erased, ignored or omitted from course content in our field. Women are severely underrepresented in sport management programs with 40% of institutions offering a sport management degree reporting a female student population of 20% or less ( Jones and Brooks, 2008 ). The perception of sport as a male dominated field gives the impression that an education in sport has limited options for women upon graduation (Tiel, 2002) 1 . Harris et al. (2014) examined female sport management students' perceptions toward their sport management degree and queried them about the sport management educational environment. Participants indicated experiencing negative feedback relative to their degree choice from parents, family members, friends, and college peers studying other majors. They also reported perceptions of a “chilly climate” in the program, detailing negative experiences that they believed were the result of their underrepresentation. We can and should do more to fix the gender imbalance within our own discipline. We must be more attuned to our internal and external self-awareness as academics and work toward overcoming our blind spots ( Wedell-Wedellsborg, 2020 ).

Take Their Perspective

What problems are other women's sport stakeholders trying to solve? Do we understand the variety of “crowds” we are trying to reach through our research? Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) implores problem solvers to invest time and energy into learning how others see the world, and perhaps more importantly, understand how their views might differ from our own. Perspective-taking is cognitively complex. It involves understanding alternate contexts and worldviews ( Wedell-Wedellsborg, 2020 ). In the case of women's professional sport, it also means understanding the current state of the women's sport landscape and recognizing the full variety of stakeholder perspectives that exist across the ecosystem. This is a key gap in our current understanding and in a rapidly changing sport environment, arguably the element of Wedell-Wedellsborg's framework where we have the most to learn.

If we are to effectively advance women's sport through scholarship, it is imperative that we understand the views and priorities of those we are trying to educate and protect against the pitfalls of academic groupthink. As such, the purpose of this research was to cultivate our understanding of women's sport stakeholders and explore their perspectives on the state of women's sport to determine both where differences might exist and where our energy as researchers might best be spent as we rethink the study of women's sport.

Participants and Procedure

This study employed an exploratory, cross sectional design with purposive sampling aimed to collect insights from stakeholders in women's sport (i.e., those with an interest in women's sport) regarding the state of women's sports. Following IRB approval, the survey was broadly shared through a combination of academic and industry listservs and social media postings in October 2020. We encouraged participants to share the survey among their own networks to broaden and diversify our sample, while also attempting to eliminate potential bias by opening access to the survey beyond the listservs we accessed. No incentives were provided, and the survey remained open for one month. A total of 1,034 survey attempts were captured. The total sample of usable surveys for analysis was 383, as many surveys were incomplete. A largely recognized disadvantage of open-ended questions is the heavy burden on respondents ( Dillman, 2007 ). Existing research suggests that while open-ended questions, can yield rich insights, they also have much higher rates of item non-response than other types of survey items ( Miller and Lambert, 2014 ).

Respondents were predominantly from the US (71%) and Canada (14%), white (79%), and female (74%). The sample included representation from a variety of age groups and sport occupations, however, with 42% of the sample identifying as academic faculty, 47% identifying as industry practitioners, and 11% identifying as students. Within the industry practitioner group, respondents reported careers in advertising, corporate sales, promotions, ticket sales, community relations, media relations, player personnel, and medical and athletic training. A combined 8% of the industry practitioner group noted executive experience (e.g., CEO, COO, CMO, CFO). The sample also included coaches (5%), athletic administrators (4%), and sport practitioners currently out of work (4%). Table 1 includes a full description of respondent demographic characteristics.

Table 1 . Demographic characteristics of respondents.

Instrument and Analysis

A short survey was constructed in Qualtrics to collect insights on the state of women's sports with three questions posed: (1) What do you believe was working well in women's sport before COVID-19?, (2) What are the key challenges facing women's sport post COVID-19?; and (3) Going forward, what one change would you make that would provide the biggest impact for women's sport? In addition to the three open-ended questions, respondents' age, gender, ethnicity, country of residence and occupation were gathered. Respondents with missing data were removed from the dataset, and the remaining data were imported into Leximancer where a thematic analysis of the responses was conducted on the three open-ended questions. Comments were examined for each question separately by occupation group and age cohort, given these were the two variables with the greatest range.

Leximancer software was used to analyze the text responses to each of the questions. The software conducts a thematic analysis of written words ( Bals et al., 2012 ). The analysis began with a few seed words and then continued to analyze large amounts of texts. The process generated a concept list (i.e., descriptors) that was statistically reliable and reproducible, as it was generated from the input text itself. This automated approach does not require investigation of coding reliability and validity ( Angus et al., 2013 ) it is capable of analyzing vast sets of texts making it an effective tool for qualitative analysis ( Bals et al., 2012 ), and it removes potential concerns around researcher bias. The output from Leximancer is a concept map or clustering of themes based on their relevance and connectivity within the data set. All content within each Leximancer-generated theme had the same context (see Frederick et al., 2016 ), and the relevance and connectivity of the themes provided the basis for identifying frames within the data. Once the themes were identified by the software, the researchers were able to dig deeper into the data to discover the nature of the dialogue within each theme and understand its nuance and context more accurately.

Upon reviewing the content of each theme and its relevance and connectivity to other themes, frames were formed within each of the three questions based upon occupation and age cohort. The meaning uncovered within each frame is discussed in the subsequent sections.

Frames Within “What's Working”

The first question examined the perspectives of seven occupation groups on what they believed was working well in women's sports prior to the pandemic. Comments from these groups revealed two key frames among stakeholders: “ Growth of Women's Sports” and “ Public Support for Women's Sport and Equity .”

Growth of Women's Sports

“ Growth of Women's Sports” emerged as a common frame within the comments of all occupation groups. However, respondent's perspectives of growth varied by occupation.

For athletic administrators and coaches, growth referred to increases in girls' and women's sport participation, the number of female coaches in college sports, a greater number of women athletes, and increased availability of women's sport programs. An athletic administrator noted “ making strides in equity both in playing conditions and remuneration, more opportunities for female student-athletes and better resources for women coaches ” as things that were working well, while a coach articulated that “ more opportunities were being created for female athletes, momentum was shifting toward hiring more females and coaches of color, and Title IX regulations [were helping administrators move forward] with an equal number of male and female sports at institutions .”

Industry executives discussed the “ Growth of Women's Sports” in terms of increased public awareness, corporate support, and a higher quality of media coverage. They also saw the athletic success of women athletes and the support of male allies as reasons driving this growth. One executive noted, “ sponsorship deals were starting to invest more than in the past ,” another highlighted that, “ within the last couple years, women's sports have had more exposure in the media in regards to televised events and having more support from men's major league sports and other organizations .”

Respondents, who were out of work at the time of data collection, acknowledged increased coverage of women's sports on mainstream media during prime time and focused on increased visibility and awareness as indicators of growth. They also credited the COVID-19 pandemic for increased, higher quality media coverage of women's sports due to the canceled seasons of mainstream men's sports. One participant noted “ some professional leagues like NWSL and WNBA benefitted from extra coverage due to a lack of other sports .”

Industry practitioners echoed the emphasis around the momentum of media coverage and noted the increased social media reach of women's sports in their explanation of growth. A member of this stakeholder group noted “ the momentum drew media attention/coverage and in turn drew in new fans/eyeballs .” In addition to growth indicators, the practitioner group also elaborated on perceived reasons behind this positive trend. The athletic success of female athletes at the Olympic Games and other mega sport events were highlighted, especially in instances where men's teams lacked success, which they believed helped to drive interest, excitement, and business. Highly skilled and talented women athletes were identified as driving forces behind the momentum in women's sport. One participant noted they were “ starting to see more women's sports in mainstream media; USWNT success (especially during years where the men's team wasn't as successful on the field); Olympic years .” The student stakeholders similarly stressed the visibility of successful women athletes and women's sport teams such as the USWNT and elaborated on the impact of their on-field success in driving media attention and visibility.

Academic stakeholders were found to echo the sentiments of previous occupation groups, capturing aspects relevant to both amateur and professional sports. This group, however, acknowledged increased participation in sport by girls and women at middle schools and high schools, outdoor adventures, and endurance events. This academic stakeholder group did not mention the growing opportunities for women to play at the collegiate or professional level. Academics identified increased media coverage and visibility as key elements that were working—their perception of this success was viewed through the lens of improved media framing and increased sponsorship support. Beyond this, academics attributed the growth of women's sports to the support and influence of high-profile male athletes, the talent levels of women athletes, and their high quality of play and success on the field. These factors were believed to play a role in the increased hype, visibility, and public popularity around women's sports.

While there was consistency in the overall sentiment of this frame, there were also nuances specific to each occupation group. Stakeholder perceptions of the growth in women's sport ultimately appear to be impacted by their occupational lens, with industry executives and practitioners focused on business aspects and athletic administrators and coaches more focused on participation, availability of sport programs, and coaching opportunities.

Public Support for Women's Sport and Equity

Another frame prevalent among all occupation groups was “ Public Support for Women's Sport and Equity .” Athletic administrators, coaches, professors, students and industry practitioners all discussed the consistent efforts made and the momentum gained toward equality for women in sports as things they believed were working well. Sample comments included: “ Women in sports fighting for equality and equal pay ,” “ Boycotts/strikes /lawsuits over more equitable pay ,” and “ More teams and leagues fighting for equality through the legal system for equal pay and access to resources such as facilities, coaching, tv coverage etc. particularly with pro teams .” In addition, the stakeholder groups recognized the solidarity among athletes and public support of women's sports as impactful change agents. For example, “ When the US soccer team supported the US women's hockey team's fight for equal pay, it created a greater feeling of solidarity ,” “P ublic support of most pro leagues trending toward equal coverage and equal pay ,” and “ Men's sports and athletes showing support for equal pay .” While the current state is subpar, public awareness of issues and support for change were seen as starting points and a move toward a more positive direction.

Industry executives and respondents who were unemployed at the time of the study reverberated similar sentiments, but also emphasized the greater societal movement toward gender equality in their comments. They associated public support for women's sports and solidarity among men and women athletes with the cultural shift and desire for more equitable rights within society. Sample comments to this end included “ people pushing the narrative of equal pay ,” “ more positive momentum around equity (pay, resources, etc.) ,” and “ Women have been silenced for so lon—and we're seeing a dramatic shift during COVID more than ever .”

In addition to the two common frames discussed, unique opinions emerged within two occupation groups, namely “ Hiring of Women in Men's Sports ” and “ Women's Sports as Change Agents .”

Hiring of Women in Men's Sports

Industry executives identified the recent hiring of women in men's professional sports as a positive trend in their comments. A sample quote noted, “ We were starting to see women stepping into coaching and admin roles within professional male sports leagues, like Katie Sowers with the SF 49ers .” They discussed this as a much-needed improvement in the industry that they believed would open up doors to women beyond sports. Collectively, industry executives were focused on the business aspects of sport within the professional sport context, and they saw evolving societal views and expectations as a driving force impacting hiring practices, public support, and solidarity.

Women's Sports as Change Agents

Individuals who were out of work during data collection also presented a unique perspective around what they believed was working well for women in sport and in women's sports. They recognized the leadership of women athletes and women's sports in driving the social justice movement and contributing to social change. Sample quotes read as “ Women's sports seem to incorporate issues of equality and social justice to a greater degree in the foundation of their leagues and organizations ” and “ athletes are using their own platform to bring about social change .” While women athletes have been very involved in raising awareness on social justice issues and serving as leaders in their communities, this emerged as a unique perspective within the positive trends in women's sports pre-pandemic within this stakeholder group. Please see Figure 1 for the thematic representation of the frames discussed.

Figure 1 . Thematic representation of the frames for question 1.

Perspectives by Age Cohort

Similar to the perceptions of occupation groups, our examination of generational perspectives revealed some consistency among respondents in their responses to what has been working well in women's sports. All age cohorts perceived the growth of women's sports as a positive development in the industry along with girls' and women's increased participation in sport. Generation Z and Millennial respondents tended to focus their comments around gender equality and the influence of women athletes in driving change. Generation Z discussed gender equality in sports heavily, especially at the collegiate level, focusing on equal opportunities to play, availability of better resources, and athletes and coaches advocating for their sports. A sample comment included “ The continued progress of fighting for equality (even though there's still a long way to go) and amplifying the voices of female athletes and coaches .” Millennials emphasized the influence of athletes in raising the popularity of women's sports, raising awareness of the issues surrounding women's sports such as equal pay. Some comments were “ Some names were starting to become really well-known around the world, esp. in soccer, basketball and, in Europe, handball ,” “ continued rise of female athlete voice on a more mainstream level” “More female athletes speaking out and fighting for equality .”

Frames Within “Challenges”

Consistency was noted across stakeholder occupation groups relative to anticipated challenges in women's sports post-pandemic. With some nuances, groups generally agreed that the potential decline or loss of hard-earned resources could be problematic, with many fearing an interruption to the momentum women's sport had developed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maintaining Momentum

As previously discussed, “ Growth of Women's Sports” was identified as a positive trend across all occupation groups. In coherence, “ Maintaining Momentum ” was brought to the fore by all occupation groups as a key obstacle for women's sports post-pandemic.

Athletic directors and coaches discussed the potential impact of declining resources and voiced fears around the possible elimination of women's programs and/or coaching positions/staff. Sample comments illuminate this noting “ Decreased revenue for programs mean funds tend to be funneled to the men's programs with the explanation of COVID as an alibi ” and “ The ability to function with excellent coaches and have the funds to continue to run will be a challenge .”

For industry executives, practitioners and respondents who were unemployed, anticipated challenges were related to the business impacts and bottom line of women's sports. The disappearance of live attendance and its impact on game day revenues, sponsorship, and media rights were discussed in relation to the sustainability of women's sport leagues, accessibility, and the need for consumer support. Sample quotes include “ TV revenue remains, corporate sponsorship has declined, and so has merch/F & B, revenue dollars are a major concern ,” “ Governing bodies are facing major financial burdens with limited access to revenue via broadcasting, ticket sales, merchandise etc .” and “ Huge $$$ investment in resources for female athletes & their respective leagues are needed to continue with game play .” Furthermore, these groups discussed the continuation of media attention and momentum built prior to the pandemic as a perceived challenge noting, “ Male sports will push to capture programming and look for ways to make up for the lost revenues, which may take funds away from women's sports .”

The perspectives of academic respondents aligned with stakeholders from collegiate sports and professional sports. They also shared concerns around the loss of women's sports programs due to budget cuts and women's sports ability to maintain media attention, visibility and corporate support at the professional level. Sample comments read “ With the state budget cuts, youth sports and collegiate programs might be cut, opportunities to play may decline for women and girls ” and “ Maintaining the momentum women's pro sports had prior to pandemic might be a concern. Media attention, visibility, sponsor support/investment, fan attendance, resources, interruption to international mega events .” Student stakeholders echoed their professors' perspectives, elaborating on potential challenges in both the collegiate and professional sport contexts.

The various occupation groups identified unique challenges relevant to their day-to-day experience. Athletic administrators and coaches, for example, foresaw the status quo persisting and the sports industry remaining a gendered institution favoring men, while industry executives discussed corporate support as “All Talk.”

Persistence of Status Quo

The second frame emerging from the comments of athletic administrators and coaches was “ Persistence of Status Quo .” Prior to the pandemic, although some improvements were taking place, the gendered institutional structure within the sports industry was still dominant. Athletic administrators foresaw a continuum of status quo through old-school hiring patterns, a lack of opportunities provided to women and people of color, and hiring practices along gendered lines. A sample comment was “ Until the NCAA, government, and University presidents require change, athletics will continue to be modern day slavery in which white males and white women benefit from the labor of minorities, majority Black students and staff while keeping them in poverty .” For coaches, “ Persistence of Status Quo” was related to a lack of Title IX compliance, limited pay persisting for women coaches and administrators, and challenges in preserving non-revenue programs. Some comments reflecting these ideas were “ Many colleges and universities continue to run athletic departments that are not Title IX Compliant—and NCAA seems to look the other way ” and “ Many coaching positions already do not pay enough, this will continue to be an issue and impact female coaches .”

This frame refers to the perceived issue of corporations' voicing verbal commitment to gender equality and women's sports but failing to follow through with meaningful actions like financial or in-kind support. Representative quotes note “ we also need people, companies, brands etc. to action their words ,” “ Everyone says they care about women and they care about equality. But are you watching the games? Are you supporting the growth of these leagues? Are you opening your wallets and using your voice to propel women in sports? ,” and “ How men in positions of power act not matching what they say .” Industry executives expressed deep frustration with the limited actions taken by potential corporate sponsors. Please see Figure 2 for the thematic representation of the frames covered.

Figure 2 . Thematic representation of the frames for question 2.

Analysis of responses to challenges anticipated post-pandemic showed coherence in generational perspectives. Baby-boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z all expressed deep concern around the interruption of momentum in women's sports as a result of the forced stoppages caused by the pandemic.

Frames Within “One Change to Make”

For the final question, respondents were asked to identify the change they believed would have the greatest impact on women's sports. All occupation groups identified greater media coverage as an essential change required in women's sports. Beyond this, improved marketing approaches, male advocacy, improved representation, and collegiate athletic reform were highlighted by the various occupation groups.

Greater Media Coverage

All occupation groups identified “ Greater Media Coverage” as an essential driver critical for change in women's sports. Respondents recognized the power of the media and saw media coverage as a centerpiece that could be used to propel improvements around public awareness while enhancing broader appeal for women's sports, sponsor interest, and ultimately higher revenues. Greater media coverage, especially on mainstream media outlets during primetime programming, was viewed as a precursor to sustainable women's sports and key to better overall business outcomes. Respondents noted “ Women's sports need more mainstream media support ” and “ Increased visibility and promotion drive awareness and get fans to tune in. This needs to come from the major sports networks .”

Beyond enhanced programming and coverage, the content of media stories, proper framing, and engaging programming were also acknowledged. A representative comment read “ Creating engaging behind the scenes programming of the journey, trials and tribulations of our women athletes—giving current and prospective fans a better connection to the players, teams and leagues .”

Better Marketing

Industry executives, respondents who were out of work, and academics all noted “ Better Marketing” as a key element for women's sports and athletes moving forward. These occupation groups suggested complementing increased media coverage with better marketing and branding strategy to develop emotional connections with consumers. Comments to this end recommended “ More storytelling about the athletes to connect with fans ” and “ Develop the athletes off of the court/field—the better business-minded they are about their own brand, the more opportunity for revenue they will have individually .”

Male Advocacy

Industry executives and academics also discussed male allies and advocates as an instrumental factor for change. They identified male athletes as influencers and highlighted their potential to drive awareness around women's sport, improve equal pay and work conditions, and expand women's sport fan bases. Sample comments explained that “ Male athletes supporting and advocating for women's sport will be a catalyst that leads to male fans supporting ” and “ If people see the most talented male athletes talking about their female counterparts and advocating for equal pay, I'd hope that it would have a ripple effect .”

Can't See Can't Be

Athletic administrators, coaches and students all mentioned the importance of increased representation of women in leadership positions. For these occupational groups, having women in leadership positions was not only about visibility and gender equity, but also about having the power to make decisions and influence change. They suggested “ policies and quotas at the governance level that support gender equity in administration and leadership, women need genuine decision-making power in sport organizations ” and “ You can't be what you can't see, so this is the time and opportunity in 2020 to unite, have a shared voice and to lead the changes we all want to see .”

Collegiate Athletic Reform

The last frame identified was “ Collegiate Athletic Reform” and it emerged within the comments of coaches and academics. Within this frame, respondents discussed two separate aspects of collegiate athletics. The first theme focused on gender equity and the need for a formal reform of NCAA mandates that hold universities more accountable for their actions. Sample comments included “ Equal opportunity and facilities at all colleges/universities enforced by NCAA pressure ,” “ Progressive policy changes, structural changes especially now that seasons are canceled” and “ There needs to be collegiate athletics reform legislation that stops lavish expenditures on facilities and puts caps on coaches' salaries .”

The second frame was devoted to the needs and rights of student-athletes, especially their right to have medical coverage and a safe environment, free from abuse. Sample comments called for “ a reform that mandates significant expenditure increases on student-athlete health and protection—full coverage of medical expenses, athletic injury insurance, long term disability and a trust fund to cover the anticipated long-term costs of dementia, ALS, CTE for athletics ” and “ reinforcement of regulations and by-laws to keep student-athletes safe from predators, abuse .” Please see Figure 3 for the thematic representation of the frames uncovered from respondent comments to key change to improve women's sports.

Figure 3 . Thematic representation of the frames for question 3.

Our generational analysis for this question revealed a new frame based upon the comments of Generation X participants. “ Improved Governance of Sport ” was a common theme among this cohort with a focus on the need to improve the governance of Olympic sports and develop and enforce policies to establish gender equity and better funding. Participants advocated for “ Policies and quotas at the governance level that support gender equity in administration and leadership, women need genuine decision making power in sport organizations ,” “ funding and public support for funding toward women's sport—especially at the national sporting body level where there isn't transparency as to the % of national sports spending on women's vs. men's sport ,” “ support of non-broadcast Olympic sports, remove federated model from sport, force diversification across leadership .” In addition to this new frame, age cohorts suggested increased media coverage and better framing as key changes to improve the status of women's sports.

This research was inspired by an academic problem—the issue wherein so little of our research on women's sport seems to break through to inform key stakeholders or affect change across the larger women's sport landscape. The purpose of our research was therefore to apply a problem solving framework to evaluate the current women's sport landscape through the perspective of a variety of women's sport stakeholder groups in order to enhance our understanding of the larger women's sport ecosystem and inform the re-framing of our research agendas. Our findings suggest while similarities across stakeholder groups exist in terms of perceptions of the women's sport space, one's occupational lens and age impacts how individuals frame problems and set goals, creating siloed differences in perspectives. While it is not novel to suggest that we frame problems in different ways based upon our circumstances or that we establish different goals accordingly, it is imperative for stakeholders in women's sport to understand that our respective occupational strengths are necessary to fully realize our individual occupational goals. Perhaps more importantly, our collective goal of advancing gender equity in sport cannot be solved by any one individual, team, sector, or organization. We are stronger and better resourced problem solvers as a collective force.

Giles (2008) spoke to the value of broadening scholarship to include practitioner voices as co-generators of knowledge. But how do we move forward with this notion in mind? What needs to be done to close the re-framing loop and turn ideas into action? Among the various stakeholder groups represented through this work, we found broad acceptance of the notion that the growth and public support of women's sport are viewed as key markers of success, a decline in resources due to the impacts of the pandemic was a shared concern, and enhanced media coverage was collectively deemed an essential necessity to drive change. Beyond this, however, we found several strategy differences, underscoring the need to improve communications between stakeholder groups to better understand the many narratives of practice. Moreover, a need to gain the perspectives of outsiders was made evident through stakeholder views that championed the role of male allyship and athlete influencers as vehicles for change. Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) refers to these types of “outsiders” as “boundary spanners” and defines them as people who understand but are not fully part of your world (p. 156). The observations of boundary spanners function to stimulate new ways of thinking. When dealing with a complex problem like gender equity in sport, outsiders' perspectives can be a powerful shortcut to identifying new framings and may offer researchers a more complete understanding of the current sport landscape ( Wedell-Wedellsborg, 2020 ).

The ultimate integration of multiple perspectives into our research strategy has the potential to provide for a more interactive approach to our work and could help overcome the identified problem of siloed thinking ( Wedell-Wedellsborg, 2020 ). It is important to note the point of the reframing process is not to arrive at one final conclusion—rather it is to move us into discovery-oriented conversations that embrace a learning mindset to better position us as problem solvers in order to move toward more creative solutions ( Wedell-Wedellsborg, 2020 ). The key tactical challenge of course, is knowing which frames to focus on and prioritize in our exploration. Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) suggests organizing frames into three categories: those that are surprising, simple, and significant if true.

Surprising frames are defined as those that break with a mental model that problem owners may have grown accustomed to. Within our findings, perhaps the most surprising outcome was not a specific frame, but rather the combined variety of frames and the more granular nuances that shaped various stakeholder perceptions. Alongside this, the identified disconnect between academics and practitioners was eye-opening. While we were united around the belief that the current growth of women's sports and the broader public support of the women's sports movement were hallmarks of success prior to the pandemic, the antecedents behind these beliefs appear to be marked by important variance. Industry executives, among the key decision makers in women's sports, viewed growth in terms of increased public awareness, better corporate support, and enhanced media coverage. They also highlighted the importance of women being hired in men's professional sports and emphasized the growing reach of social media in the women's sport space which reinforces the motivational divide that exists between stakeholder groups in women's sport. Sport practitioners are focused on business imperatives and are looking for bite-sized research insights that can be readily digested and leveraged to impact their bottom line today . Comparatively, academics are not bound by the same industry demands, and thus have greater flexibility to consider the longer-term goal of sustainable change in the women's sport space. As we re-frame our research agenda, we must ask ourselves how much of our current research is directly devoted to practitioner issues? What “sticky stats” might we be able to develop through our research to help our industry colleagues negotiate better corporate investment? Are there opportunities to reposition our research with different framings for different audiences? If we are to truly embrace a “learning mindset,” these are all important questions to consider, particularly given our findings are representative of individuals who are all highly invested in the women's sport realm. Existing variance among these stakeholder groups alone underscores the impact of functional fixedness and highlights the range of factors and influences we are missing in our research.

The second organizational strategy recommended by Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) is the simple frame, meaning straightforward solutions wherein a small change in behavior could potentially have a profound, far-reaching impact. In light of our findings, it appears the simplest solution at our disposal as academics may be to ensure that our research findings are appropriately framed for different audiences and accessible to audiences outside of academia. In short, we need to improve our messaging and consider how we engage with industry to help them better understand the benefits of our academic lens. The value proposition for industry to engage with academia is more than undergraduate projects and internship opportunities. Academics are professionals trained to think critically and we have the knowledge to apply deep contextual expertise. Strategic academic partnerships could offer industry colleagues data, metrics and strategy grounded in academic rigor and in addition, provide rich insights that help drive revenue and innovative business decisions. In the case of women's sport, a collaboration of stakeholders who embraced data sharing could help to fill the data void that exists across the women's sport market with research thoughtfully tailored to craft the best possible business case for women's sport. The uniqueness of this rigorous brand of knowledge could serve to keep industry top of mind and simultaneously support our academic goal of sustainable change. Communication, however, is required to educate industry colleagues of the value of collaborations, develop realistic goals, define respective expectations, and ensure appropriate attribution.

Finally, Wedell-Wedellsborg (2020) recommends testing framings that challenge our assumptions and beliefs about problems with a focus on frames we may not believe in. When re-framing, he notes problem solvers must be careful about trusting their intuition given “intuition is built from your past” and creative solutions often involve “transcending past experiences” (p. 147). To this end, we focus on the generational divide that emerged from our findings. Millennial and Gen Z respondents were more attuned to the role of women athletes driving change and bringing increased awareness to women's sports. Their responses reflected the observations of women's sports scholars who point to the importance of athletes' voices on digital platforms ( Bruce, 2016 ; Pegoraro et al., 2019 ). They also starkly contrasted with Gen X participants who viewed change from a more traditional lens, calling on policy reform to affect change (e.g., Sabo et al., 2016 ; IOC, 2018 ). Gen X respondents, by virtue of their age, are more likely to find themselves in decision making roles. Their experiences are also more likely to be groomed by the impact of Title IX and rooted in the idea that women's sports are a moral imperative. Next-generation respondents, however, have been shaped by different cultural contexts and their experiences may be more attuned with the changing model of sport delivery. It is noteworthy that their perspective also appears to be better aligned with the industry focus of building the business case for women's sport through data-driven insights. In reality, the overarching challenges facing women's sports likely require thoughtful solutions that are informed by both of these perspectives. It is not an either/or situation, but rather a both/and scenario. Re-framing research questions that are informed by our past, but open to cultural immediacy have the potential to provide us with both new perspectives and more impactful solutions.

Limitations

As with all research endeavors, our work is not without its limitations. First, while the COVID-19 global pandemic enforced an unprecedented global sports stoppage which provided a unique opportunity for this research, it may have also impacted how respondents answered the questions. Second, using a purposive sampling to collect insights from sport industry professionals and academics alike may have also provided a narrow response sample. The respondent demographic profile was not reflective of intersectional identities, as it was predominantly Caucasian, dominated by respondents who identified as female, and had limited representation from Generation Z. Lastly, the respondents were all knowledgeable of women's sport, which was the goal, but this may have also provided narrowed response data while including those less knowledgeable may have provided some additional data to help re-frame the issues.

This research provided insight into what key stakeholders in women's sport thought was working, what the perceived challenges were, and where they believe efforts need to be focused for women's sport to continue to grow. Through the analysis of responses, and the use of a reframing process, we have provided examples of where stakeholders can come together—opportunities where we could begin to think differently. Previous work has suggested underlying differences in functional background, education, and personality can be positively related to performance, particularly as they contribute to the facilitation of creativity and group problem solving ( Mannix and Neale, 2005 ). Moreover, the asset of diversity has been found to help bridge understandings of the marketplace and enhance the power of minorities ( Mannix and Neale, 2005 ). This work points to a similar conclusion. We believe the possibilities are endless if we push ourselves, and others, toward “rethinking and unlearning,” a critical cognitive skill set in our increasingly turbulent world ( Grant, 2021 , p. 2). This means getting out of our own way and thinking beyond traditional structures. This means letting go of past assumptions and making room for multiple solutions at multiple levels. It means working together for the common good in women's sport. We do not need a monolithic statistic or policy but given the dearth of knowledge specific to women's sport, there is no time for us as key stakeholders to be repetitive in our work or competitive with one another. It is inefficient for us to be working on similar problems in individual siloes, developing solutions that lack the wisdom of crowds or applicability to the stakeholders we are trying to serve. Time is of the essence. We are strongest together when all stakeholders have the chance to apply their individual strengths, whether it be through occupational insights, generational insights, or data sharing. As stakeholders of women's sport, we are not serving each other to the highest potential until we are able to make this happen! It is time for us all to find comfort in the discomfort of change and as we rethink our research agendas as academics, we have an opportunity to multiply our force by reaching across the aisle to our fellow stakeholders to better achieve our individual and collective goals—bringing gender equity in sport closer to fruition.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

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.

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Keywords: women's sport, women athletes, professional sport, sport industry, sport strategy

Citation: Lebel K, Mumcu C, Pegoraro A, LaVoi NM, Lough N and Antunovic D (2021) Re-thinking Women's Sport Research: Looking in the Mirror and Reflecting Forward. Front. Sports Act. Living 3:746441. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2021.746441

Received: 23 July 2021; Accepted: 13 September 2021; Published: 11 October 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 Lebel, Mumcu, Pegoraro, LaVoi, Lough and Antunovic. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Katie Lebel, klebel@ryerson.ca

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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.

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Taking up the field as women: the question of gender equality in sports

Interview with nathalie boy de la tour and adèle stern.

• Taking up the field as…

Former President of the French Professional Football league Nathalie Boy de la Tour and Adèle Stern , a former high-level athlete (modern pentathlon) and member of the Paris 2024 Organising Committee for Olympic and Paralympic Games, share their experiences and take on gender equality in sports.

Hi Nathalie, Hi Adèle — you both are involved in sports at a very high level, whether by being an athlete yourself or on the business side of the industry.

What challenges did you face to get to these positions? Has being a woman influenced your experience?

Nathalie Boy de la Tour: When I worked in counseling or entrepreneurship, I was already in a male environment, but I did not see it as a challenge because I had integrated the needed codes. When I became president of the French Football League (FFL), I noticed that being a woman had not been a problem as long as I remained number two. But once I became the Number One leader, I started to feel that I was not as listened to as my predecessors. Tonie Marshall, who was a movie director I really admire, talks about “benevolent misogyny” applied to women as long as they are not in the position of leader. Men tend to put women forward at first, but once you get to the highest position, things get more difficult. You have to stand your ground, and in a particularly masculine environment, it can be hard not to feel isolated. Some studies have shown that in order for a female voice to be heard in governing bodies, it would require the presence of at least 30% of women among the board members.

Compared to other industries, would you say sport is lagging or leading the pack?

Adèle Stern: In my opinion, sport is actually leading the pack in terms of gender equality. In the sport industry, people are much more aware of gender equality. I feel like the question is tackled more efficiently than in other industries. When I first joined the Paris 2024 Organising Committee, I felt that everyone was aware of how important gender equality is. And from what I see now, there are a lot of things put into place to make sure women have a voice in every part of the Committee.

Has the inclusion of women improved? How are sports professionals fighting sexist harassment and homophobia in sports?

Nathalie Boy de la Tour: I am very committed to diversity issues. When I became president of the FFL, I immediately decided to set up a corporate social responsibility (CSR) department to work through these questions. We signed partnerships with various associations that fight against sexist violence, homophobia or racism. What happens in stadiums is a reflection of society. And if football as a sport cannot radically change society, it can at least be used to pass on some important messages. We have worked with SOS Homophobie, Foot Ensemble and other NGOs to promote respect on and outside the field. I believe prevention is the best way to work on those issues. Through the Fondation du Football , which I helped create with Philippe Séguin, we organise workshops for younger kids to help them approach those questions at an age when sexual orientation starts to become evident.

Adèle Stern: Regarding the sports industry, I sometimes feel that women are well represented at junior or intermediate positions but the gap seems to show up for very high-level positions. Paris 2024 is putting a lot of effort into making sure women are well represented in the highest governing instances. On another note, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games will be the first gender-equal games in history, meaning there will be exactly as many women athletes as male athletes. It’s a very strong engagement from Paris 2024. 

What kinds of problems regarding sexism remain in the sports industry today?

Nathalie Boy de la Tour: I’m starting to think that in order to have more women in leading positions, we should implement quotas. Most club presidents are men, and today it’s still hard to have perfect gender equality in football institutions. There still are barriers for women to be more involved in football. One of them is contained in the fact that football is highly publicised and it can be harder for women to be confronted with media exposure when it comes to the political nature of that sport. It’s also a very testosterone-fuelled universe, so you have to be really passionate and convinced in order to succeed as a woman.

Adèle Stern: When I started training as a pentathlete, boys and girls were trained together. Later, when I arrived at INSEP (National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance) boys and girls were trained separately. I really wanted to be trained with boys because I was very good at running and performed better than most girls and always thought it would reinforce the overall French Pentathlon team spirit. At that time, it was difficult for them to understand how hard we were training since we were not able to reach the same results. Then, they decided to group the boys and the girls, and they saw that our results improved a lot. At that point, boys started to understand that girls were training very seriously, and were amazed by our ability to push ourselves so hard.

Nathalie, there was a debate around the mediatic treatment of the Women’s Football World Cup back in 2019, which is still less popular than the “men’s world cup”. American female players also protested that same year regarding their inferior pay compared to men’s and filed a gender discrimination lawsuit. 

What kind of changes have you noticed in football regarding women athletes since then?

Nathalie Boy de la Tour: Those are unjustifiable gaps but we have to acknowledge the underlying economics of football. Women’s football is not as developed as male football. In order to pay women football players as much as male players, we have to create the right economic environment: so let’s create a melting pot of female players, work on the image of feminine football, enhance the value of TV rights, and create a real economy that will enable them to be better paid.

How can sports be leveraged for women’s empowerment?

Nathalie Boy de la Tour: Sport is very important in female empowerment. It helps develop self-confidence from an early age. A study conducted in kindergarten and primary classes in France showed that boys occupy 70% of the space in the playground and little girls only 30%. Boys are raised to physically occupy the space. This figure means everything. If you occupy space physically at this age, it will be less difficult to occupy it in a professional environment. The day when little girls play football, things will change relatively naturally because they will learn to occupy space. The practice of football by little girls is crucial. Women referees like Stéphanie Frapard are examples to be proud of. The numbers shown by the Federation are positive though: women in the football industry (players, coaches, and referees) have grown from less than 90,000 players ten years ago to 200,000 today.

Adèle Stern: I think one of the most important aspects of sport is the generated awareness of what your body can do. Sometimes when you’re a girl, you can feel like your body won’t let you do as many things as you’d like, if you’re uncomfortable with it for example. And for me, doing all these different sports is a way to feel complete and free with the body that is mine.

What piece of advice would you give to women who dream of making it in the sports business or as athletes? What are the main qualities required to succeed in this domain?

Nathalie Boy de la Tour: To me, essential qualities would be courage, resilience, and the ability to listen, to build consensus. It’s also about having the right attitude: I think women should not be afraid of taking advantage of their singularity, not copying codes that are not ours. I truly believe in collective intelligence and the fact that different profiles bring something to the table.

Adèle Stern: My advice would be to look at who is in the same industry you want to work in or get inspired by female leaders you wish to become. Being a woman should not be thought of as a disadvantage. Women should not be scared of being different. Our way of seeing the world can be a real asset to a team.

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• J Sports Sci Med
• v.9(2); 2010 Jun

Women and Men in Sport Performance: The Gender Gap has not Evolved since 1983

Valérie Thibault

1 IRMES, INSEP, Paris, France

Marion Guillaume

2 Université Paris-Descartes, Paris, France

Geoffroy Berthelot

Nour El Helou

Karine Schaal

Laurent Quinquis

Hala Nassif

Muriel Tafflet

3 INSERM U970, Centre de Recherche Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

Sylvie Escolano

Olivier Hermine

4 Service Hématologie, Hôpital Necker and CNRS UMR, Paris, France

Jean-François. Toussaint

5 CIMS, Hôtel-Dieu, Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France

Sex is a major factor influencing best performances and world records. Here the evolution of the difference between men and women’s best performances is characterized through the analysis of 82 quantifiable events since the beginning of the Olympic era. For each event in swimming, athletics, track cycling, weightlifting and speed skating the gender gap is fitted to compare male and female records. It is also studied through the best performance of the top 10 performers in each gender for swimming and athletics. A stabilization of the gender gap in world records is observed after 1983, at a mean difference of 10.0% ± 2.94 between men and women for all events. The gender gap ranges from 5.5% (800-m freestyle, swimming) to 18.8% (long jump). The mean gap is 10.7% for running performances, 17.5% for jumps, 8.9% for swimming races, 7.0% for speed skating and 8.7% in cycling. The top ten performers’ analysis reveals a similar gender gap trend with a stabilization in 1982 at 11.7%, despite the large growth in participation of women from eastern and western countries, that coincided with later- published evidence of state-institutionalized or individual doping. These results suggest that women will not run, jump, swim or ride as fast as men.

• Sex is a major factor influencing best performances and world records.
• A stabilization of the gender gap in world records is observed after 1983, at a mean difference of 10.0% ± 2.94 between men and women for all events.
• The gender gap ranges from 5.5% (800-m freestyle, swimming) to 36.8% (weight lifting).
• The top ten performers’ analysis reveals a similar gender gap trend with a stabilization in 1982 at 11.7%.
• Results suggest that women will not run, jump, swim or ride as fast as men.

Introduction

Sex has been identified as a major determinant of athletic performance through the impact of height, weight, body fat, muscle mass, aerobic capacity or anaerobic threshold as a result of genetic and hormonal differences (Cureton et al., 1986 ; Maldonado-Martin et al., 2004 ; Perez-Gomez et al., 2008 ; Sparling and Cureton, 1983 ). Some authors have suggested that gender differences in race records may disappear (Beneke et al., 2005 ; Tatem et al., 2004 ; Whipp and Ward, 1992 ); other have studied physiological limits in sport with non linear models, but with limited data (Nevill and White, 2005 ; Nevill et al., 2007 ). However, men and women differences should first be studied through the complete panel of quantifiable Olympic disciplines. Over the modern Olympic era (1896-2007) the evolution of time, distance or height values of world records was shown to follow a piecewise exponential model (Berthelot et al., 2008 ). Further, women presently display lower record values compared to men. An asymptote for all events has been suggested, with a limit in women’s performances that remains inferior to men’s. Thus, gender gaps will probably be settled when men and women reach their physiological limits. Here we compare the improvement of male and female world records and ten best performances (ie. the best performance of the top ten performers of each gender every year) over the modern Olympic era in order to measure the evolution of gender gaps.

The data set included 82 events from five quantifiable Olympic disciplines (International Olympic Committee, 2008 ; Official Fina website, 2008 ; USA Swimming website, 2008 ): athletics, swimming, speed skating, track cycling and weightlifting. The number of each Olympic event by discipline is given in Table 1 . Only events strictly comparable between men and women were studied. For track events, selected races have the same distances for both (women’s 100m hurdles and men’s 110m hurdles have been excluded) and of field events, only jumps were included. Throws were excluded as projectile weights are different for men and women. All weight categories in weightlifting do not exactly match (8 divisions for men from 56kg to 105+kg and 7 for women from 48kg to 75+kg). Therefore weightlifting world records analysis was performed through 3 classes only: the heaviest (Heavyweight), the lightest (Flyweight), and an in-between matching category (Lightweight, 63-69kg for women and 64-70kg for men).

Comparable events between male and women. Only events strictly comparable are included in the study (100m Hurdles Women, 110m Hurdles Men and throws excluded).

* No data for TBP

For all 82 Olympic events, world records progressions were compiled. Each gender gap series started with the first common chronological record for both men and women. An unbeaten record was extended until it is improved (there is not one newly established record every year); 2768 gaps were measured for world records ( Figure 1 ).

World Record and Gender Gap evolution over the Olympic era in A. 800m, Athletics world records B. 500 m, Speed skating, world records C. 800m, Athletics D. 500 m, Speed skating.

Ten best performers database

For 60 swimming and athletics events, the best performance of the first ten performers were collected every year from three data sources (International Olympic Committee, 2008 ; Official Fina website, 2008 ; USA Swimming website, 2008 ) over the 1891 - 2008 period for 26 athletics events and the 1963 - 2008 period for 34 swimming events; 23864 performances were analysed (ie. 11932 ten best performances gaps) from a compiled International Olympic Committee database collecting 45968 best performances (International Olympic Committee, 2008 ) with associated gender and citizenship.

Estimate of gender gaps

The gender gaps between world records (WR) and between ten best performances were calculated, as well as their scattering evolution and number of records beaten yearly.

For each year, the gap between the two records is calculated as follows:

for chronometric events (WR m < WR w )

for non-chronometric events (WR m > WR w )

Where WR wi is the world record of women at year i, WR mi is the world record of men at year i.

The gaps of the top ten performers were measured each year. Ten gaps were calculated; the first female performance compared to the first male performance, the second female to the second male and so forth. The yearly ten best performances gender gap TBPi is the mean of the 10 individual gaps:

Where ∆ ij is the gender gap for the j-th performance at year i.

Change of incline

A breaking slope method was used for the gender gap (GG) curves of 66 Olympic events in swimming, athletics, speed skating and track cycling. It aimed to find the best combination of two linear regressions, which showed the largest difference between their slope - a significant decrease in gender gaps variations. For each event, a first model was performed with a minimum of eight points (eights years of records or performances) to fit the first linear regression. The second regression was fitted with the points that were left (from the ninth point to the last one). An eight year segment representing two Olympiads was chosen as the minimum time span over which a period could be considered as stable. Then, a second model was created with the first slope now including one more point, and the second slope including the points left.

All possible two part linear models were thus performed until all points were included in the first slope. For each model, coefficients of each slope, differences of slopes and global R 2 of each regression are collected. Finally, the model with the greatest R² and the most significant slope difference was kept. The breakpoint date was then determined by the cross point of the two linear regressions of the chosen model.

Gender gaps evolution according to time was modelled by

Where l [t ≥ τ] is an indicator function taking value 0 if t < τ and 1 if t ≥ τ.

Stated otherwise, the trends before and after the breakpoint date τ are linear, but the slope of the two lines may differ on either side of the breakpoint. Regression parameters α, β, α' and β' were estimated by maximum likelihood; the R 2 coefficient measured the global fit of the model to the data.

Analyses were conducted using SAS software 9.2 version (SAS Institute, Cary, NC, USA)

Estimation of stabilized gender gaps

After the breakpoint dates, the stabilized gender gaps ∆ m were calculated and expressed as follows:

with j being the date of stabilization.

Variation coefficients

The standard deviation of the ten best was measured for each event in order to calculate the yearly coefficient of variation c v (t):

with representing the mean value of the 10 performances vector at year t and σ p(t) : standard deviation of the performances vector.

Wilcoxon test

The coefficients of variation of the gender gaps for the two periods (before and after breakpoint date) were compared by a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. This non-parametric test was used since the data (performances values) could not be assumed to be normally distributed.

Historical analysis

The annual cumulative proportions were used to describe the secular evolution of world records (Guillaume et al., 2009 ).

Factor a c,t is the annual ratio of the number of world records for the country c over the total number of world records:

P is the annual cumulative proportion over the Olympic era:

for the first year t 0 , year t and the country c. Factor P defines the annual cumulative world records progression rate for each country.

For the evolution analysis of factor P, the mean slope of annual cumulative proportions (S) was calculated by linear regressions over 4 periods: 1921-1940, 1951-1970, 1971-1990, 1991-2008. S was defined as:

Statistical analysis was performed with the R software (R Development Core Team, 2008 ). One way linear regressions were used to calculate the slopes of factors G and P. Statistical significance was considered at p < 0.01.

World records’ evolution profile

In two disciplines (athletics and swimming), a graphic representation of the number of world records obtained each year through a 4-year smoothing mean illustrated the gender profile of their evolution since the beginning of the Olympic era.

Descriptive analysis: Gender gaps

The breaking slopes method shows a breakpoint date separating the events into two periods. The first one fits the fast reduction of the gender gaps, while the second one corresponds to a period of stability (after 1978, Figure 1C ). Results of the Wilcoxon test show that the two periods are significantly different, with the coefficients of variation of the second period being inferior to the first one. Slope breaks results are listed in Table 2 .

Breakpoint dates; GG at stability; and Variation coefficient before breakpoint date (CV BD) and after (CV AD) for all events. * If a breakpoint date is not detectable (recently officialised women event), the given value is the last 2008 GG.

Athletics analysis

Analysis of world records in athletics shows that global stability was reached in 1983.7 (± 9.57). Gender gaps have been stable in jumping and running events since 1982.3 and 1984.8 respectively. Gender gaps decreased in the running events from 30.0% (± 6.48) in 1922 to 10.7% (± 1.85) since their stabilisation, and from 30.1% (± 8.52) to 17.5% (± 1.11) for jumping events. For the ten best performances, the global stability date is 1983.9 (± 4.45). The ten best performances’ gender gaps evolved from 25.3% (± 4.46) for races at the beginning of the Olympic era to 11.2% (± 1. 25) since stabilization and from 30.0% (± 3.86) to 19.0% (± 2.57) after 1984 for jumps.

Swimming analysis

Gender gaps have been stable since 1979. 9 in swimming events. In swimming, world records gender gaps evolved from 22.9 % (± 5.44) at the beginning of the century (1916) to 8.9 % (± 1.54) since their stabilization. For the ten best performances, results show stability in 1981.5 at 10.16 % (± 1.60) while it was 13.4% (± 1.86) in 1963.

Cycling, speed skating and weightlifting

Only one event was comparable in cycling. The gender gap in the sprint has been stable since 1993 at 8.7%. In speed skating the gender gap no longer fluctuates since 1989.7 (± 2.1) at 6.95% (± 0.16).

The gender gap in weight lifting world records is at 36.8% (± 6.2) since women officially started competing in 1998. With 10 years of hindsight only, no breakpoint date has been detected yet.

World records evolution ( Figure 2 ) was altered by both world wars, with a decreasing number of records during these two periods. A similar trend is also observed at the beginning of the 1980s for swimming and of the 1990s for athletics. A major peak in swimming for both male and female appears around 1970, while such peaks occur at different dates in athletics: 1960 for men and 1983 for women.

Number of world records per year and gender. Solid line is 4 year-smoothing mean for men’s world records and dotted line for women’s world records.

Since the beginning of the Olympic era, the United States of America has dominated men’s athletics and men and women’s swimming ( Figure 3 ). The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was the first European country to dominate women’s athletics and swimming, starting after the Second World War.

Annual Cumulative Proportions of world records, by major contributing country, illustrating the geographical dispersion of world records for each gender in A. Athletics Men B. Athletics Women C. Swimming Men D. Swimming Women (0,1 = 10%). USA: United States of America. RUS: USSR and Russia, FRG: Germany, Federal Republic of Germany and reunited Germany. GDR: German Democratic Republic. CHN: China. GBR: Great-Britain. AUS: Australia.

The linear regression slopes for swimming and athletics are listed in Table 3 . For the USA, the largest slope corresponds to the period from 1950 to 1970, except for women’s athletics (1970-1989). In athletics, the men’s slope is greater (0.007) than the women’s (0.002). The GDR’s greatest slope corresponds to the period from 1970 to 1989 and is more important for the women (0.009 for swimming and 0.007 for athletics) than for the men (0.004 and 0.0015, respectively). The greatest slopes observed in the Chinese performances occur after 1990.

Slope of linear regressions of annual cumulative proportions of WR for the major 6 countries.

P <0.001 for all the results except those indicated

* T & F = Track & Field

World record evolution profile and participation

The number of participants in the Olympics and number of records did not follow the same evolution ( Figure 2 , Figure 4 ). Indeed, the number of women participating has increased over the last two decades, while the frequency at which world records occur has been decreasing.

Participant number at the Olympic Games by gender.

Our results show that the gender gap in Olympic sport performance has been stable since 1983. These suggest that women’s performances at the high level will never match those of men. This stabilization is the expression of a significant narrowing of gaps for all events (Cheuvront et al., 2005 ). Indeed, even when performances still improve, these progressions are proportional for each gender. The reduction and stabilization of the gender gaps in performance is a general pattern observed in all athletes and all disciplines ( Figure 4 ). Stability appears through all of the parameters studied: coefficients of variation, slope coefficients, coincident breakpoint dates between world records and ten best performances. This stability is not affected by external, non physiological factors such as technology and doping advancements that could challenge it.

The yearly analysis of the number of world records shows a major, 22-year time lag in athletics between the men’s and women’s peaks, corresponding to the period where the fastest reduction in the gender gap occurred. After 1950, women began to benefit from improvements in training techniques that were developed from the men’s training experience during the first half of the XX th century. Like men, they also benefited from a better medical and nutritional environment. The fast improvement rate of female performances' observed since then could also be explained by the increasing number of events proposed to women and by the investment of East European nations in women’s sports (Geipel, 2001 ; Seppelt and Schück, 1999 ). In fact, the last period of acceleration in these improvements prior to the breakpoint date of the early 1980s coincides with published evidence of institutionalized doping. According to former GDR athletes, many of them were being administrated drugs to enhance muscle strength, aggressiveness and performance since 1966 (Franke and Beredonk, 1997 ; Geipel, 2001 ). However the trend linking performance-enhancing drugs and women in particular is still unknown. While it should be considered that the technological advancements leading to increased efficiency of some androgenic drugs on the physiology of female athletes could have played a role in some countries' investment in women’s sport programs, the inverse could also be true. It may have been the idea of a potential progression margin in female sport as analyzed just after the Second World War, associated with the discovery of ergogenic and androgenic steroids that could have induced the interest and investment in the development of doping techniques to be applied to female athletes. Women doping during the 1970s could have sped up female progression and accelerated the gender gap reduction.

During the Cold War, many countries were fighting for the largest political influence. One manner in which to obtain international prestige was realized through athletic performance (Guillaume et al., 2009 ). While women’s sports were not as developed as men’s, east European countries, such as GDR, invested in female performance programs (Staatsplan 14.25) (Franke and Beredonk, 1997 ; Seppelt and Schück, 1999 ). With the use of androgenic steroids, beating records and winning medals were probably seen as an easier challenge for women than men. Such a strategy of optimized returns may have translated into an early and intense investment of communist countries in women’s sport (Geipel, 2001 ; Seppelt and Schück, 1999 ), later followed by other countries or individuals (Guillaume et al., 2009 ). In fact, the geographical repartition analysis of world records evolution ( Figure 5 ) shows a wider distribution of nations for women’s athletics than for men’s, with a women’s domination by Russia after the Second World War, while men’s competitions show a larger dominance by USA athletes.

Global GG evolution in percentage for A. Track and field WR. B. Swimming WR C. Track and field TBP D. Swimming TBP (missing data in 1964 and 1974). The peak after 1960 is due to the introduction of female marathon WR.

Unlike athletics, a time lag is not observed in swimming, where women’s competitions chronologically started much earlier. While men’s first records were obtained in 1927 on average for all swimming races, women’s world records were first set in 1932. Only 5 years separate the beginning of swimming competitions for each gender while 28 years separated the first men records (1914 on average for all events) from first women records (1942) in athletics.

In women’s weightlifting, we did not detect a breaking point due to the recent introduction of women into this sport. Performances and gender gap have nevertheless both reached a plateau. Besides, 50.4% of world records in women weightlifting are set by Chinese athletes (Guillaume et al., 2009 ).

A recent and slight increase in gender gaps can be observed for 12 out of 38 events. This is not specific to any particular discipline, and corresponds to the enhancement of men’s performances with a simultaneous regression or stabilization of women results. Also a small discrepancy is shown between the predicted year where women and men will reach world records asymptotic limits (2028 vs 2042 respectively) (Berthelot et al., 2008 ). Taking into consideration that men may continue to progress in a few events, gender gaps may slightly increase before reaching full stability (Seiler et al., 2007 ; Holden, 2004 ).

Random and unannounced drug testing was introduced in athletics in 1989. The declining use of banned performance-enhancing drugs may have also contributed to the most recent and slight increase of gender gaps. Men still improve, though at a lower rhythm, while women stopped their progression. Men are more likely to adopt behaviours at increased risk, whereas a higher percentage of women engage in preventive actions linked to health and longevity (Courtenay, 2000 ; Mercer et al., 2007 ). Another explanation could be the higher interest of media in male sport, and the greater rewards offered.

This major investment of East European countries in women’s sport can be assessed by the annual cumulative proportions slope coefficient. Soviet Union has a slope twice as high as the USA’s for women’s world records during the 1970s and the 1980s. East Germany’s progression slopes are always greater for women than for men and similar to the Russian women’s progression for athletics. The percentage of women’s world records obtained by GDR athletes is about 33.1% between 1970 and 1989 and 30.7% for the Soviet Union, compared to 11.2% for the United States of America and 3.2% for West Germany. This massive representation of two countries (Riordan, 1996 ; Seppelt and Schück, 1999 ), in which the incidence of doping was proven or highly suspected, could have accelerated the reduction of the gender gaps (Franke and Beredonk, 1997 ; Geipel, 2001 ). However, it should be clear that these are not the only nations in which female athletes have resorted to illegal performance enhancing procedures.

The connection between women’s participation in international events and performance may not be quite relevant. On average, the mean date of the first men’s world records was 1925 (± 21), while mean date for women first world record was 1955 (± 36). Despite a 30 year time lag average between men and women mean debuts, women rapidly progressed before the gender gaps stabilized. The number of participants in the Olympic Games is a measurable indicator of the involvement of elite athletes globally. Quotas and incentives of organizing authorities encourage the participation of women. While only 37 women attended the 1908 Olympic Games, in 2008 they represented 42.4% of all registered athletes (4746 women and 6450 men) at the Olympic Games in Beijing (International Olympic Committee, 2008 ). The number of competing women is still increasing while the number of men has reached a maximum at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul ( Figure 4 ). After taking into account the evolution of world records previously studied in this analysis, there is no measurable effect of the increasing number of women participating in the Olympic Games on world records, ten best performances and gender gaps evolution. The major increase in women’s participation takes place in the 1980s, while the world record peak already occurred (Berthelot et al., 2008 ), and the gender gaps stability period has begun.

A breakpoint date could not be detected in 3 events: pole vault (a female event not contested from 1930s to the 1960s), 5000m and 10000m due to their recent introduction into the Olympic program. Women’s weight lifting world records only began in 1998, when most of men’s world records had already reached their maximal values. This explains why gender gaps are still narrowing in this discipline (though at a slower pace in the last few years). The wide discrepancy between the magnitude of gender gaps in weightlifting and jumping events and the four other disciplines studied here could be explained by the different physiological mechanisms involved to mobilize energy. The predominantly explosive type of effort required in weightlifting and jumping (Maldonado-Martin, 2004 ; Wilmore and Costill, 2004 ) could explain the greater disadvantage that women have to face against men, compared to other disciplines.

It appears that gender gaps in sport performance have been stable for a long time: women may never catch up with men. This stabilization of 26 years is the expression of a significant drop in the variation of these gaps' magnitude. After a significant narrowing of gender gaps, women and men now evolve in parallel, in the same direction. The late implication of women in competition, their increasing participation, as well as the individual doping behaviours and state programs for performance enhancement may all have had a historical role but no longer reduce the gap. Without any technological improvement specifically dedicated to one gender or the other, performances will probably evolve in a similar manner for both men and women. The gap may be set.

Acknowledgments

We thank all INSEP teams for their full support, Caroline Carpentier, Ghislaine Quintillan, Elisabeth Rosnet and Nadine Dubois for fruitful discussions, and the Centre National de Développement du Sport for financial contribution.

Biographies

IRMES, Institut de Recherche bioMédicale et d'Epidémiologie du Sport, INSEP, 11 Avenue du Tremblay 75012 - Paris - FRANCE

Research interest

Sport pathophysiology and epidemiology

E-mail : [email protected]

IRMES, Institut de Recherche bioMédicale et d'Epidémiologie du Sport, INSEP, 11 Avenue du Tremblay75012 - Paris - FRANCE

E-mail : [email protected]

E-mail : [email protected]

E-mail : [email protected]

E-mail : [email protected]

E-mail : rf.pesni@semri

E-mail : [email protected]

Engineer in biostatistics and informatics

Cardiovascular epidemiology and sudden death, sport pathophysiology and epidemiology

E-mail : [email protected]

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When Gender Equality at the Olympics Is Not So Equal

The Games are nearing gender parity for the first time, but a series of gaffes by officials and persistent gaps in the makeup of the I.O.C. overshadow the gains.

By Talya Minsberg

TOKYO — For the first time since the founding of the modern Olympics 125 years ago, the Games have nearly reached gender parity.

Of the nearly 11,000 athletes arriving in Tokyo, almost 49 percent will be women, according to the International Olympic Committee, up from 45.6 percent at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and 44.2 percent at the 2012 London Olympics. (The I.O.C. does not have data on the number of nonbinary athletes at these Games.)

Many countries credit the strides to broad policy changes, increased funding and promotion of female athletes in mainstream media. But for other nations, equality is far off: Men enjoy far more funding, news coverage and opportunities than their female counterparts.

Even as gains are made on the field of play, the makeup of the overwhelmingly male I.O.C. remains behind. Women make up 33.3 percent of its executive board, and 37.5 percent of committee members are female.

The organization in recent months has wrestled with a series of gender-related blunders on the public stage. Most recently, on Wednesday, John Coates, an I.O.C. vice president, had a tense exchange with Annastacia Palaszczuk , the premier of Queensland, Australia. He ordered her to attend the opening ceremony, despite her having said she would not do so.

“You are going to the opening ceremony,” he said sternly, crossing his arms.

While the committee has lauded an initiative it began to promote gender equality, Olympic athletes who are new mothers have complained about Covid-related restrictions in Tokyo that prohibit them from bringing their babies to the Games, a challenge for those nursing their young children .

The I.O.C. reversed its decision at the end of June, allowing nursing mothers to bring their infants. Some athletes, including the Spanish swimmer Ona Carbonell , said the restrictions in place made accommodations impractical.

The president of the Tokyo Olympics Organizing Committee was replaced this year after he publicly suggested that women speak too much in meetings. In March, the creative director for the opening ceremony stepped down after it was discovered that he had made insulting remarks about the physical appearance of Naomi Watanabe , a plus-size fashion designer.

Still, there has been steady, if uneven, progress in the gender representation of athletes.

“When you have policies and resources that are dedicated to girls and women in sports, you get an equal number and high performances,” said Nicole M. LaVoi, the director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “Evidently, many nations have found this very challenging.”

Consider the starting point.

The founder of the I.O.C., Baron Pierre de Coubertin, barred women from competing in the inaugural 1896 Games. In 1900, 22 women were welcomed to compete in five ladies’ sports — croquet among them — while 975 men competed in everything from athletics to rowing.

Women did not make up more than 10 percent of participants until 1952; that ratio has crept up since then. Women were not allowed to compete in every sport until 2012, and it was not until 2014 that the I.O.C.’s planning agenda included working “to achieve 50 percent female participation in the Olympic Games.”

Before the opening ceremony on Friday, many countries — including the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada and China — announced team lineups that had more women than men.

In the United States, Title IX, the 1972 law that provided girls equal opportunity in high school and college sports, has propelled women to higher levels at a pace few nations have been able to match.

But this is the first Summer Olympics in which Britain has more female athletes, 201, than men, 175.

“There isn’t a comparable piece of legislation in the United Kingdom in respect to the sport, so there is still a significant gap between boys’ and men’s opportunities and girls’ and women’s opportunities in sport,” said Dr. Heather Dichter, an associate professor of sport history at De Montfort University, in Leicester, England. “Until recently, funding has been tied to success.”

It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg game when it comes to providing adequate resources for women’s sports, she added. Some nations fund their athletes and teams based on previous success, which is challenging to achieve without funding. The cycle continues.

“So many countries fight this battle: Do we fund elite athletes, or do we fund grass-roots organizations?” Dr. Dichter said. Supporting elite athletes might result in more Olympians; money for more grass-roots organizations might increase the pool of potential elite athletes. Funding both, of course, is rare.

“If a country hasn’t provided resources for a sport,” Dr. Dichter said, “it’s quite difficult to ever qualify.”

Numbers aside, men still hold an advantage in the competition for the most advantageous slots for their races, matches and television time.

Nevertheless, the organizing committee continues to make symbolic gestures pointing to equality.

For the first time, the I.O.C. has encouraged each participating country to nominate one man and one woman to be flag bearers in the opening ceremony. For some, such as China and Mongolia, that means a woman will be a flag bearer for the first time.

These Games will also include the debut of new sports : baseball, softball, karate, skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing . They all have men’s and women’s competitions, funneling new kinds of athletic talent to the Olympics. More mixed-gender events — 18 in total — will be held, with the highest profile of those in track and swimming relays. There will also be a mixed triathlon relay, a mixed doubles event in table tennis and mixed events in judo, archery and shooting.

Still, some events continue to exclude women. The Olympic decathlon — a series of 10 track and field events — is for only men. Jordan Gray, the U.S. record-holder in the women’s decathlon in world track, is leading a campaign to have the event added to the Games in time for 2024. The 50-kilometer race walk is also offered as an Olympic event for only men.

Despite and because of it all, the biggest stars of the Games may be women. Two of them are Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles , returning medalists and fan favorites.

“The punchline here is that you see women in some countries — mostly white, westernized countries — really outperforming their male teammates, despite the fact that they get less resources, less support, less viability, less whatever else,” LaVoi said.

“Despite that, they are still outperforming the men,” she added, pointing to the enduring star power of female athletes like Biles. “That’s kind of amazing.”

Achieving gender equity in sports

Gender parity has been a problem since the dawn of society. Numerous historical records show women encountering inequalities in their careers, education, homes, etc., and sports is not an exemption. The perceptions of dominance, physical strength, and power typically portrayed by men manifest in violence against women, exploitation, non-inclusion, and discrimination. This narrative needs to stop.

Sports has always been associated with men and their interests. This has alienated other genders who wish to participate in sports. There are several ways to encourage gender equity in the sporting world, and the following must be put into practice for a more inclusive future.

Work to reduce the investment/financing gap in women's sport

Insufficient finance is one of the issues many sports teams face. Men’s teams most times receive the majority of sponsorships and television deals. 

Most companies are hesitant to support women's sports, and those that do view it as a moral obligation rather than an investment. Women's sports are developing and can reach greater levels with the appropriate financial assistance.

The economic gap can be closed by increasing funding for women's sports. Women can then have more options to participate in sports as a result.

Boost media exposure

Media representations of sports and athletes contribute to the construction of harmful gender stereotypes, as the media tends to represent women athletes as women first and athletes second. 

The media is a powerful tool, if strategically engaged to address the gender disparity in sports. It is also a source of hidden power, affecting societies, influencing and reinforcing attitudes, beliefs, and practices, without realizing it.

Together, collaborating organizations and the media can use their power and voice, take action, and show leadership in increasing visibility for women in sports by addressing the inequality in sports and journalism.

The training and recruitment of female reporters into the sports industry can also contribute to promoting women's sports and addressing gender inequalities in sports.

Stop assuming that men are superior athletes

Another way to promote gender equity in sports is to stop assuming and portraying men as superior athletes. Men are often perceived to be stronger, better, and faster at sports than other genders due to the build of their body. This is not always true, as women have unique strengths and weaknesses. For example, they tend to be less likely to injure themselves and perform better than men in sports.

Create policies for gender equality

The gender equity goal needs to be pursued strategically by sports groups. Women who put in an equivalent amount of effort should be entitled to the same participation possibilities, financial support, pay, and perks as men.

Establish a whistleblower program

An easy-to-use, secure, and anonymous whistleblowing platform can capture discrimination and harassment complaints in sports organizations. Coming forward to expose unfair practices can be daunting, so maintaining the whistleblower’s security and privacy is essential.

Encourage female-led sports team

It is essential to support women's teams the same way as you would men's teams. This is a great strategy to encourage female athletes and advance gender equality in sports.

This can be done by paying women the same attention given to men's sports. You may also consider joining a club, going to games, and attending sports events for all genders as a strategy to promote gender equality.

To promote equity in sports, equal opportunities must be provided for all genders. Promoting gender equality in sports requires the participation of everyone. As an individual, be mindful of your words and actions, as you may inadvertently support gender inequality. When discussing gender equality on social media, exercise caution and use inclusive language. It is also important to try to find materials and information on how other people are promoting gender equity in sports.

As Nelson Mandela said, “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

Anna Mambula is the Programme Manager at FAME Foundation , a gender not-for-profit organization using sports as a tool to advocate for the SDGs.

Emma Abasiekong is the Assistant Project Officer at FAME Foundation.

• Read more: Reshaping sport and development
• Related article: Implementing sports governance and fostering social development
• Visit the FAME Foundation website

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Steering board members.

Gender equity in college sports hampered by sluggish, underfunded oversight

While changes in collegiate athletic finances are accelerating like a champion sprinter, the federal agency overseeing an element of that race is dragging its feet.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) oversees Title IX , a section of federal law that prohibits gender discrimination in education programs receiving federal funding.

But in college athletics, Uncle Sam seems to have pulled a hamstring with his sluggish, under-resourced enforcement of the law, even as its significant achievements were widely celebrated during its 50th anniversary in 2022. That’s the picture painted by a critical government watchdog report.

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit reviewed 26 college Title IX compliance agreements to improve gender equity. Although Title IX deals with education generally, the GAO audit focused on the OCR’s shortcomings in its oversight of gender equity in college athletics.

It took the OCR at least a year to respond in 10 of those cases. In five others, there was no communication from the OCR for five years or more. Advocates blame too few employees for the workload.

“Such delays can prevent colleges from addressing compliance concerns,” the GAO said, and hinder attempts to “promptly address potential compliance issues.” Auditors reported:

● Years of OCR delay after a complaint that a women’s softball team had lower-quality facilities and fewer coaches than the men’s baseball team. The agency took almost seven years to approve a school’s equity plan, “causing a significant delay in the college’s ability to address any compliance concerns.”

● Hesitation by a college to upgrade women’s athletic facilities that were poorer than those for men by building a women’s locker room, because administrators didn’t hear from the OCR about compliance issues. At the time of the GAO’s review, “more than 2 years later, OCR had not provided any feedback to the college.”

● A long pause for a college that needed the OCR’s authorization to add a new sport for women, which would provide them increased athletic opportunities. “The college waited for feedback from OCR before taking steps to add the sport, leading to a 10-month delay in recruiting a new coach.”

Education officials agreed with a GAO recommendation to establish timelines for responding to colleges. “OCR officials told us that resource constraints can cause delays in communicating with colleges,” the GAO reported.

A department spokesman did not respond directly to a Washington Post question about the long lag times in responding to colleges. “The Department remains committed,” said his email, to “fulfilling its mandate from Congress to protect every student from discrimination.”

But funding too low for the job can hamper, and even be counterproductive to, the mandate for equity.

The agency “has been woefully underfunded for many years, especially when comparing the number of staff to the number of complaints,” 91 coalition organizations with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote to President Biden in February. They urged him to double the OCR’s funding.

“Although OCR received more than six times as many complaints in 2022 as the office received in 1981, the number of staff was cut in half over that same time period,” the letter said. “OCR must urgently be provided the necessary resources to meet the moment.”

Far from a doubling, Biden’s 2025 fiscal budget sought $162 million for the OCR, a $22 million increase over the previous year.

The current explosion of interest in women’s basketball, set off by Caitlin Clark’s history-making, attention-demanding play, is one example of how the law is involved in not only the transformation of collegiate athletics but ultimately professional sports too.

“There’s no way to separate Title IX” from today’s soaring popularity of women’s basketball, said Shiwali Patel, the National Women’s Law Center’s director of safe and inclusive schools.

The availability of the athletic opportunities and resources that Title IX envisions affects participation. That’s reflected in the GAO’s data. While women are 56 percent of all undergraduate students, women are just 42 percent of student-athletes. Those figures are reversed for men, who are 44 percent of all students and 58 percent of student-athletes.

Additionally, gender and racial disparities remain, 52 years after the law’s enactment. “Athletic opportunities for female athletes of color have grown at double the rate of those for white female athletes” since enactment of Title IX, according to a 2011 Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF) document , the latest available. Female athletes of color were more than one-quarter of female students but received less than one-fifth of “female athletic opportunities.” The report did not break down athletes of color by race and ethnicity.

Inequities in men’s and women’s opportunities and facilities were shamefully displayed in 2021 when Sedona Prince, then a University of Oregon basketball player, posted a video showing a large, fully equipped March Madness fitness facility for men — and one rack of dumbbells for women. An NCAA official apologized. The association did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

The GAO report comes as new money-generating opportunities for college athletes are quickly increasing their earning potential. New rules allowing college athletes to be paid directly for use of their name, likeness and image, commonly called NIL, intensify the importance of efficient, robust Title IX enforcement.

Last week, the NCAA approved direct pay to athletes from their schools, defeating the soon-to-be quaint notion that collegiate athletes are amateurs. Since 2021, college athletes have been permitted to personally profit, by advertising products, for example, from NIL programs generally run by donor-funded collectives.

If women don’t have equitable athletic opportunities in college, they can’t have equitable opportunities to profit from their athletic abilities. This situation is compounded, as shown in the WSF report, for Black and Hispanic athletes.

For Meghan Kissell, an American Association of University Women senior director, Title IX “is a promise, and it’s a promise that we’re always working toward to achieve. I think that what the [GAO] report is showing is that we’re not there yet.”

It also shows that the resource-starved OCR is unable to do enough to make the promise real.

Returns Heterogeneity and Consumption Inequality Over the Life Cycle

A recent literature argues that persistent heterogeneity in wealth returns ("type dependence") as well as a positive association with wealth levels ("scale dependence") play an important role for explaining features of the wealth distribution, especially its extreme concentration at the top. In contrast, traditional models of wealth accumulation emphasize the role of persistent differences in labor earnings. Using panel data from the PSID, we first document that a common unobserved component (which we interpret as the endowment of cognitive and non-cognitive skills of an individual) drives persistent heterogeneity in both wealth returns and labor earnings. We embed these features of the joint wealth return-earnings process in a life-cycle model of consumer behavior and show that ignoring them would dramatically understate average returns for people at the top of the wealth distribution as well as the level and rise of consumption inequality over the life cycle.

We are grateful to various conference and seminar participants for comments and to Gabriela Rays Wahba for research assistance. All errors are ours. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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