Minding the gaps in women’s sports

THERE IS A DATA GAP (ALSO) IN WOMEN’S SPORTS

About three months ago I was reading this article called “Relationship between Biological Maturation, Physical Fitness, and Kinanthropometric Variables of Young Athletes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”. So, although I was looking for more information about young athletes according to their sex, I was not really looking for gender gap problems. And then the following sentence came up in the text:

“Throughout the analysis, some limitations in the current literature were observed. The most remarkable was the lack of studies performed with female populations.”

Well, yes. That’s why I was reading that article in the first place! I’m looking for these studies performed with the female populations.

That’s also partially why I keep having these healthy debates with Tabata, a physical educator, and expert in the Physiology of Exercise. As for myself, someone that understands a little more on how the culture and the social aspects form the individuals, I’m just not very comfortable with the biological differences argument completely justifying why men and women are THAT different. And my curiosity relies on the hypothesis that MAYBE if we treated boys and girls more equally PERHAPS their bodies wouldn’t show so many performance differences later on.

I mean, we are aware that there are sensitive phases for motor development. And we know that most of the present cultures associate physical activities as a “boy’s thing” rather than as a “girl’s thing”. We also know that girls hit puberty earlier (but why, really, I wonder) than the boys and during this phase, the girls show some pretty clear advantages.

But according to the Women’s Sports Foundation, in America, boys got 1.13 million more sport opportunities than girls and 40% of teen girls were not actively participating in sport, between 2018 and 2019. So, we also know that girls usually enter sports at an older age than boys; they drop out sooner, and in greater numbers as well.

Where is exactly the line here and what’s up with everyone’s obsession with the testosterone argument? (Tabata is going to kill me for publishing this part). Why is it the most popular reference to explain performance? How relevant are the other variables?

I can’t tell if I’ve been listening too much to Simone de Beauvoir’s arguments, but I’m pretty sure that there is a lot to unpack here, especially looking at this problem with the opportunities lens. I mean, who got the chance, and the stimulus to be properly trained or even the incentive to be an active child during those formative years, and considering gender stereotypes in our society?

I’m sharing these questions to keep us progressing in our common knowledge, but, for now, we’ll make much simpler arguments. Let’s finish this part pointing out that there is a data gap — also in women’s sports.

THE DATA GAP IN WOMEN’S SPORTS

We understand that the school environment is a great influencer on the sports sector. So, it would bevery important to make these follow-ups on Motor Skill Development if we wanna make sure that the educational system is being effective and fair — to boys AND girls. It’s a public health matter and it is an educational matter. With that pointed out to start the conversation, when we’re talking about those girls that after school years became women participating in Sports, the data gap keeps going.

The data gap affects the scientific field — meaning that there is a problem with the lack of studies being conducted on girls and women — as well as the industry of sports. It’s very hard to find consistent data on women’s sports, be that for the present, be that about the past. So, women’s sports history constantly needs extra efforts to be organized and told in different cultures. It’s a fact giving the false impression that there isn’t much to know about women in sports because either the women in sports do not exist or are some sort of exception to the men’s rule.

And I wonder what is the effect of that over the imagination of this industry’s players. In Brazil, some professionals can’t even conceive the idea of working with girls AND soccer, even if they are very specialized in their technical areas, saying, for instance, physical educators or soccer coaches. So they have their schools, their clubs, their activities, and do not open opportunities for girls in the middle of 2021.

I came across a woman speaking on youtube on this matter in a lecture called “Caroline Criado Perez: Inside the data gender gap”. Later on, I found out that she was also the writer of a bestseller called “Invisible Women — Exposing the data bias in a world designed for men”. Anyway, she says that over her wide research she finds that Sports Science is really bad for not including women — worse even than the medical field.

One thing is asking ourselves if the data is being consistently produced on girls and women on topics that are sports-related or not — the data gap. Another thing is asking ourselves if the available information has been shown at all — the visibility gap. And a third thing would be evaluating if the information that has been produced and has been shown is being properly presented — the qualitative aspects.

CLOSING THE VISIBILITY GAP IN WOMEN’S SPORTS

To give an example on the visibility gap in Women’s Sports, the 2021 Portuguese campaign #WomenAlsoPlay (#ElasTambémJogam) organized by the Raparigas da Bola tried to visually make the argument that not too much space is given by the media for women that play sports.

Also in Europe, The Women’s Sport Trust, funded by Sport England, partnered with Two Circles to research the attitudes and behavior of sports fans and industry insiders around the visibility of women’s sport. They elaborated a report called “Closing the Visibility Gap”.

“Designed for sports industry stakeholders, this report and the toolkits provide insights from the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of women’s sport in the UK, as well as clear actions we can all take to help women’s sport succeed. We look forward to seeing how our industry takes on the challenge.”

- Tammy Parlour MBE, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Women’s Sport Trust.

There is a lot of information in this report, but even the media attached to the formal institutional environment around women’s football — such as The Football Association (The FA) — is not doing their part to achieve equal representation in their publications. According to the report, when it comes to the proportion of imagery featuring elite women athletes, while men achieved almost 50%, women got less than 15% of this “space” — considering imagery analysis from Sept 2019 to Sept 2020 inclusive.

But the great optimistic news is that the recently published RunRepeat survey with 5,000 football fans showed that people want to see more of women’s sports, and there is an appetite for regular access to professional women’s football:

“Considering the survey numbers, women’s league football should witness a 296.70% increase in the UK if it’s on TV. In the EU, the increase could be as high as 358.70%, and in the US, 304.6%.”

— Vyom Chaudhary, RunRepeat

THE PRO PATHWAY INSIDE AND AROUND THE FOOTBALL SCENE

And last — but not least — we should go back to the opportunities lens and the perception of the sports industry and the soccer itself as the economic sectors that have workers, and these workers also have gender among other social characteristics such as race, class, nationality, etc.

So, this part was sort of provoked by Neide Oliveira, who asked us if we have any studies on the post-career topic. We’ve sure mentioned the career of footballers in our publications on social media, but we haven’t produced any scientific research on it yet.

But as she asked, and since we’ve been thinking about women in the sector as workers, the pros pathways matter — a lot. So, I looked up and found this Master Thesis called “Football as Work: The New Realities of Professional Women Footballers in England” that propose the following questions:

How do women (professional women footballers) ‘do’ their work role and why are their work roles gendered in this way?

What employment and workplace policies exist to support women footballers in their new careers?

What are the implications of professionalization on the lives of professional women footballers?

Well, I won’t be answering these for now. Just wanted to share with you some of the questions in our minds on the gaps in women’s sports.

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Credits: Natalia Lopes