For more than a century, female athletes have struggled to earn equality with male sports stars. They face glaring disparities in popularity, unequal funding, and open discrimination and sexism. They are also disproportionately underrepresented in pivotal sport institutions, decision-making bodies, and leadership positions in the world of sports. And gender inequality extends beyond men and women, impacting girls from marginalized communities such as racial/ethnic minorities, the socio-economically disadvantaged, disabled athletes, immigrants, and LGBTQ athletes.
Yet despite the challenges, many positive developments are taking place. These include increasing awareness of the problem through awareness-raising events, and greater investments in gender-equal programs. More importantly, new dynamics are shifting how we talk about and think about sports. These include a more critical lens, a re-evaluation of the category of woman, and an emphasis on the importance of social change and equality.
A new study, based on data from the Special Eurobarometer 525 (April-May 2022), fills a quantitative gap in research on European attitudes towards gender equality in sport. It uses Fuzzy-Hybrid TOPSIS to provide a synthetic indicator of Europeans’ attitudes towards Gender Equality in Sport (ATGEQS), Latent Profile Analysis to cluster respondents based on their ATGEQS scores, and Multinomial Logistic Regression to explore the influence of socio-economic factors on ATGEQS. Overall, results show substantial regional and socio-political differences in attitudes towards gender equality in sport. Countries with high ATGEQS are associated with strong welfare policies, progressive gender norms and good levels of female representation in leadership positions. By contrast, low ATGEQS are linked to a tradition of conservative religiosity and older socio-political structures that are resistant to progressive reforms.
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