Matildas player Mary Fowler running with the ball against Thai women's football team

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

gender in sports research papers

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

gender in sports research papers

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

gender in sports research papers

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

Disclosure statement

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

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

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

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

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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.

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Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies

Bethany alice jones.

1 Nottingham Centre for Gender Dysphoria, 3 Oxford Street, Nottingham, NG1 5BH UK

2 School of Sport, Exercise, and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

Jon Arcelus

3 Division of Psychiatry and Applied Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Walter Pierre Bouman

Emma haycraft.

Whether transgender people should be able to compete in sport in accordance with their gender identity is a widely contested question within the literature and among sport organisations, fellow competitors and spectators. Owing to concerns surrounding transgender people (especially transgender female individuals) having an athletic advantage, several sport organisations place restrictions on transgender competitors (e.g. must have undergone gender-confirming surgery). In addition, some transgender people who engage in sport, both competitively and for leisure, report discrimination and victimisation.

To the authors’ knowledge, there has been no systematic review of the literature pertaining to sport participation or competitive sport policies in transgender people. Therefore, this review aimed to address this gap in the literature.

Eight research articles and 31 sport policies were reviewed.

In relation to sport-related physical activity, this review found the lack of inclusive and comfortable environments to be the primary barrier to participation for transgender people. This review also found transgender people had a mostly negative experience in competitive sports because of the restrictions the sport’s policy placed on them. The majority of transgender competitive sport policies that were reviewed were not evidence based.

Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.

Introduction

Transgender people are those who experience incongruence between the gender that they were assigned at birth (based on the appearance of their genitals) and their gender identity/experienced gender. Gender identity, or experienced gender, can be defined as a person’s internal sense of gender, whether this be male, female, neither or somewhere along the gender continuum. Some transgender people, but not all, will choose to affirm their gender identity by socially transitioning (i.e. living as their experienced gender socially, at work or at an educational institution, with friends and family, outside the home) and some, in addition, will choose to medically transition with cross-sex hormones and gender-confirming surgeries [ 1 , 2 ]. Although over time various different terms have been used, the term ‘transgender female individual’ will be used to describe individuals assigned male at birth, based on their genital appearance, but who later identify as female. ‘Transgender male individual’ will be used to describe people who are assigned female at birth, based on their genital appearance, but later identify as male. ‘Cisgender’ will be used to describe people who do not experience incongruence between their gender assigned at birth and their gender identity.

Recent reports indicate that the number of transgender individuals who attend transgender health services has increased substantially over the years in many European countries [ 3 – 5 ]. There has also been a significant increase in the number of people who self-identify as transgender and do not necessarily attend transgender health services [ 6 ]. For example, Kuyper and Wijsen [ 6 ] found that 4.6 % of people who were assigned male at birth and 3.2 % of people who were assigned female at birth in their Dutch population sample reported an ambivalent gender identity (equal identification with the other gender as with the gender they were assigned at birth). The authors also reported that 1.1 % of the people who were assigned male at birth and 0.8 % of the people who were assigned female at birth identified as transgender. It remains unknown how many of these people will seek treatment through a transgender health service. The increase in people who identify as transgender may be at least partly explained by the increase in visibility of transgender people within Western society [ 4 , 5 ]. For example, Caitlin Jenner, a former athlete and current television personality, recently came out as transgender during a television interview that was viewed all over the world [ 7 ]. Increases in visibility may have prompted some people to reflect and question their gender identity [ 8 ].

Some transgender people experience stigma, transphobia, prejudice, discrimination and violence as a consequence of their gender identity [ 9 – 11 ]. Ellis et al. [ 12 ] found that transgender people were more likely to avoid situations when they were afraid of being harassed, identified as transgender or ‘outed’, such as in clothes shops, public toilets and gyms. Gyms are a popular outlet to engage in sport-related physical activities (i.e. gym fitness exercises) and therefore it is important to create an inclusive environment given the established mental and physical health benefits of physical activity and sport [ 13 , 14 ]. This is particularly important for transgender people as they have been found to report a high prevalence of depression and anxiety [ 15 , 16 ], which could be managed with physical activity. Furthermore, physical activity and sport can also contribute towards maintaining the appropriate weight necessary to undergo gender-confirming surgery, acknowledging that not every transgender person will wish to do so [ 1 , 2 , 17 ].

The premise of competitive sport is fairness (i.e. inclusion in the absence of advantage) and, owing to fears surrounding the perceived athletic advantage of transgender people, the question of whether transgender people should be permitted to compete in accordance with their gender identity has been raised and greatly contested within the literature, among sport organisations, fellow competitors and spectators. It is a commonly held belief that androgenic hormones (especially testosterone) confer an athletic advantage in competitive sport. Therefore transgender female individuals, because of high endogenous testosterone levels, are perceived to hold an advantage in sport (when testosterone has not been blocked to a cisgender female level). Transgender men are not thought to possess an athletic advantage, despite being injected with testosterone if they chose to medically transition with cross-sex hormones. However, there has been a paucity of research that has directly explored how androgenic hormone levels are associated with athletic competence in both cisgender and transgender populations (e.g. running time).

To facilitate the inclusion of transgender competitors, in 2004, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) [ 18 ] announced that transgender people could participate in all future Olympic games providing they had fully medically transitioned (i.e. had been prescribed cross-sex hormone treatment for 2 years and undergone gender-confirming surgery). Although the requirements of this policy appear to concur with the commonly held belief that transgender people hold an athletic advantage, they have been criticised for not being underpinned by an evidence-based rationale [ 19 ]. The IOC [ 20 ] has recently updated its policy to be more inclusive of transgender athletes (i.e. fewer restrictions); however, the 2004 policy has been extremely influential on other sport organisations’ policy development. The new (2016) IOC policy will be considered in Sect. 3 .

In an attempt to draw a consensus as to whether transgender people should be able to compete in accordance with their gender identity, in 2005 Reeser [ 21 ] conducted a review of the literature pertaining to gender identity issues in competitive (elite) sport. Reeser paid particular attention to the evolution of gender verification in competitive sport and whether current competitive sport policies for transgender people are fair. He concluded that, while gender verification has made significant advances, there is a lack of physiological performance-related data in transgender people. This is preventing an overall consensus from being made as to whether transgender sport policies are fair or not (i.e. fairness in the absence of advantage). Reeser’s review, although important, has some limitations. He did not adopt a systematic methodology and therefore did not include the majority of transgender sport policies. Additionally, Reeser only considered the implications of such policies in relation to elite competitive sport and did not consider the experiences of transgender people who engage in sport or sport-related physical activity for leisure or fitness (e.g. gym fitness activities, jogging).

With the intention of addressing the limitations of the previous literature review, this systematic review has two aims. First, to systematically analyse and critically review the available literature regarding transgender people’s experiences in relation to competitive sport (elite and recreational) and sport-related physical activity participation (e.g. jogging, gym fitness activities). Second, to systematically review the available transgender competitive sport policies with regard to their fairness (i.e. competition in the absence of advantage). It is hoped that this systematic review will further enhance the understanding of sport participation and competition amongst transgender people. It may be expected that as more people define themselves as transgender, the issues that transgender people experience in competitive sport and sport-related physical activity will become more pronounced. It is therefore important that those who work to facilitate and promote sport and develop policies for their own sport organisations (e.g. sport medicine specialists, sport policymakers) are informed about the issues that this vulnerable population face. This will allow for a non-discriminatory atmosphere in sport, whilst ensuring a fair system for all participants and competitors (regardless of their gender identity).

Search Strategy

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines were followed to undertake this systematic review [ 22 ]. To obtain relevant peer-reviewed articles, an electronic search of literature published between January 1966 and August 2015 was conducted using the following search engines: ScienceDirect, Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed. Within each search engine, the following search terms were entered: gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, trans people, trans individual, transgender and transsexual. These terms were combined with three terms relating to sport (physical activity, exercise and sport) using the “AND” operator. The reference lists of eligible papers were searched for potentially relevant publications. Sport policies were obtained through a Google search using the above search terms with the addition of “policy” at the end of all sport-related terms.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

To address the first aim, articles that were selected were concerned with the experiences and issues surrounding physical activity and sport participation for transgender people. This systematic review only considered articles eligible if they were research articles, as opposed to discussion papers. Case studies were also considered eligible, as research articles were limited. Peer-reviewed articles that were written in English only were included. For the second aim, all available national and international policies on competitive sport in transgender people were selected and reviewed.

Study Selection

Thirty-one research articles were considered potentially relevant to the remit of this review. The search also identified 31 competitive sport policies for transgender people. After screening the abstracts, ten research articles were excluded as six were concerned with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sport, one was a Scottish non-academic survey, one was a book chapter, one was concerned with an irrelevant topic and another focused on cisgender participants. The remaining 21 articles were downloaded for full-text review and 13 papers were excluded as they were discussion papers, as opposed to research articles. Therefore, eight research articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were consequently included within this systematic review (Fig.  1 ). All 31 competitive sport policies for transgender people were reviewed and included within this systematic review.

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Process of identifying eligible research articles. LGBT : lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender

This section presents the findings from the research articles and sport policies included within this systematic review. First, the findings from the research articles that explored participation in sports (both elite and recreational standards) and sport-related physical activities (i.e. gym fitness activities, jogging) are provided. Second, findings from the reviewed competitive sport policies relating to transgender inclusion are given.

Transgender People and Sport Participation

Characteristics of the eligible research studies.

The oldest research article included was published in 2004 [ 23 ] and the most recent publication was from 2015 [ 24 ]. The majority of the studies were qualitative in nature, all of which employed interviews [ 24 – 29 ]. The remaining two research articles included an experimental study [ 23 ] and a cross-sectional survey [ 30 ]. Most of the studies were concerned with transgender people who participated in sport competitively, at an elite or recreational level [ 21 , 23 , 25 – 29 ]. Some authors focused on a specific sport; ice hockey, netball and softball [ 26 , 28 , 29 ] while others were concerned with transgender people engaging in any sport [ 25 , 27 , 29 ]. Broadly, across all sports, Gooren and Bunck [ 23 ] explored whether transgender athletes have a physiological advantage in competitive sport. One study explored participation in competitive sports and sport-related physical activity [ 24 ] and another study discussed participation in sport-related physical activity only [ 30 ]. Details of all of the research articles included within this systematic review can be found in Table  1 .

Table 1

Study characteristics of research articles included within the review

Review of Transgender People and Competitive Sport Participation (Elite and Recreational): Research Articles

The same data were extracted from all research articles reviewed (Table  1 ). Below, we provide the most prominent findings in relation to competitive sport participation from each of these articles. Six research articles were concerned with competitive sport participation within this systematic review [ 23 , 25 – 29 ]. The only experimental study was by Gooren and Bunck [ 23 ] who aimed to explore whether transgender people taking cross-sex hormone treatment can fairly compete in sport. The authors measured transgender people’s muscle mass (via magnetic resonance imaging) and hormone levels (via urine and blood analyses) before and 1 year after cross-sex hormone treatment. They found that 1 year after transgender male individuals had been administered cross-sex hormone treatment, testosterone levels significantly increased and these levels were within a cisgender male range. They also found that 1 year after cross-sex hormone treatment, transgender male individuals’ muscle mass had increased and was within the same range as transgender female individuals (assigned male at birth) who had not been prescribed cross-sex hormone treatment. In relation to transgender female individuals, Gooren and Bunck found testosterone levels had significantly reduced to castration levels after 1 year of cross-sex hormone treatment. Muscle mass had also reduced after 1 year of cross-sex hormone treatment. However, muscle mass remained significantly greater than in transgender male individuals (assigned female at birth) who had not been prescribed cross-sex hormone treatment.

Therefore, Gooren and Bunck concluded that transgender male individuals are likely to be able to compete without an athletic advantage 1-year post-cross-sex hormone treatment. To a certain extent this also applies to transgender female individuals; however, there still remains a level of uncertainty owing to a large muscle mass 1-year post-cross-sex hormones. While this study was the first to explore, experimentally, whether transgender people can compete fairly, the sample size was relatively small ( n  = 36). Additionally, they did not explore the role of testosterone blockers and did not directly measure the effect cross-sex hormones had on athletic performance (e.g. running time). Many, but not all, transgender female individuals are prescribed testosterone blockers to help them to reach cisgender female testosterone levels, when administration of oestrogen alone is not enough to reduce testosterone levels. This is particularly important if the person aims to undergo gender-confirming surgery, as 6 months of testosterone suppression is a requirement for such procedures. However, if a transgender woman does not wish to undergo surgery or does not wish to have their testosterone blocked to cisgender female levels (e.g. as they wish to use their penis), their testosterone levels will be above cisgender female levels. Differentiating not only between those taking cross-sex hormones and not taking cross-sex hormones, but also transgender female individuals taking testosterone blockers, may be necessary when discussing an athletic advantage.

The remaining studies considered within this section are qualitative, and although they have provided insight into the experiences of transgender people participating in competitive sport, the findings cannot be generalised. Semerjian and Cohen’s [ 27 ] narrative account provides a good overview of how diverse and individual the issues and experiences of transgender people participating in competitive sport can be. Some participants felt anxious when engaging in sport because they felt their genitals may be revealed (e.g. when changing). In contrast, one participant used sport as a safe space to escape from the harassment he received at school. It must be considered though, that participants within the study engaged in different sports and their experiences could therefore be associated with the specific sport (i.e. some sports could be more inclusive then others).

Three qualitative studies described the implications that sport policies had on the experiences of transgender people who engaged in sport [ 26 , 28 , 29 ]. Cohen and Semerjian [ 26 ] published a case study about a transgender woman (pre-gender-confirming surgery) who was playing in the women’s national ice hockey tournament, but who was eventually banned from playing in the tournament because it was felt she had an athletic advantage. She described how she felt under constant surveillance when she was playing and at times felt ambivalent about what gendered team she should play on. It was apparent that although teammates were supportive, the issues she experienced in relation to inclusion in the tournament were primarily related to constraints put in place by competitive sport policies. Similarly, the discussions held by two former New Zealand transgender female netball players in Tagg’s [ 28 ] study gave the impression that although transgender sport policies were supposedly implemented to increase the inclusivity of transgender people, this was not always the case. They discussed how policy would allow a pre-gender-confirming surgery transgender woman to compete in a male or mixed-gender netball team only and they must obey male dress codes. However, the participants in this study were former netball players and therefore their discussions may not have been based on the current state of netball in relation to transgender participation. In contrast to the previously mentioned studies, the majority of participants ( n  = 12) in Travers and Deri’s [ 29 ] study discussed the positive experiences they had in relation to transgender participation in competitive sport. However, some of the transgender men did discuss how they had hostile experiences (e.g. incorrect pronoun use). Several of the participants in this study also felt that testosterone gave transgender women (endogenous) and men (when injected) an athletic advantage.

For the two young transgender male individuals in Caudwell’s [ 25 ] study, the stage of transition appeared to be instrumental in disengagement from participation in competitive sport. The discussion held by the participants highlighted how accessing sport during their transitional period was difficult as they would not be accepted or feel comfortable on either a male or female team during this period. However, this study again discussed sport very broadly and therefore it is unknown whether the participants’ experiences were associated with specific sports or whether they are generalisable across other sports.

In summary, there is limited research from which to draw any conclusion about whether transgender people have an athletic advantage in competitive sport or not. The limited physiological research conducted to date has informed the development of transgender sport policies that are implemented by sporting organisations all over the world. It is these sport policies that appear to be instrumental in transgender people’s experiences with competitive sport, most of which are negative.

Review of Transgender People and Sport-Related Physical Activities: Research Articles

Within this systematic review, only two studies explored sport-related physical activities [ 24 , 30 ]. Muchicko et al. [ 30 ] set out to quantitatively explore the relationship between gender identity and physical activity. They compared levels of physical activity between cisgender and transgender people. The study found that self-identified transgender participants ( n  = 33) reported engaging in less physical activity than cisgender participants ( n  = 47). Social support and self-perception were found to mediate the relationship between gender identity and physical activity. The authors suggested that their study highlights how leisure centres need to be more inclusive, and transgender people need to be given more social support to encourage physical activity. However, this study was limited by the sampling methods employed. The cisgender participants were recruited from a university campus where they potentially had more opportunity to walk around campus, and opportunity for discounted gym memberships, whereas the transgender participants were recruited from a support group for transgender people and were not associated with the university.

As with transgender people who engage in sport at a competitive level, transgender people who engage in sport-related physical activity also appear to experience a range of different barriers. Hargie et al. [ 24 ] found in their qualitative study that transgender people prefer to engage in individual, as opposed to group, sport-related physical activities. This was reportedly owing to their fear of being ‘outed’. Regardless of whether sport-related physical activities are engaged in individually or in a group, changing rooms appeared to be a significant barrier. Being excluded from sport-related physical activities was distressing for participants, as they could not maintain physical fitness, which they felt was important in preparation for gender-confirming surgery. Despite these interesting findings, the study is limited by the lack of sociodemographic information provided about participants. Within qualitative research, because of the small sample size, it is often desirable to provide a large amount of sociodemographic detail about participants so that the findings can be interpreted in relation to this information. For instance, in the context of sport-related physical activities, the stage of transition may be an important factor when interpreting the individuals’ current experiences of sport-related physical activities.

The limited research studies concerned with sport-related physical activities suggest that inclusive environments are not created for transgender people engaging in such activities, which may deter engagement.

Transgender-Inclusive Sport Policies

Characteristics of the eligible sport policies.

Of the 31 transgender inclusive policies reviewed, 13 were from the USA [ 31 – 43 ]. Ten of the policies reviewed were from the UK [ 44 – 53 ]. One policy was from Australia [ 54 ]. The rest of the policies ( n  = 7) were international [ 18 , 20 , 55 – 59 ]. Details of all of the sport policies included within this review can be found in Table  2 .

Table 2

Transgender-inclusive sport policies included within this systematic review

GCS gender-confirming surgery, CHT cross-sex hormone therapy, IOC International Olympic Committee, TUE therapeutic use exemption, n.d. no date

a Gender dysphoria is the diagnostic name included within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders , Fifth Edition, for people who experience an incongruence between their gender assigned at birth and gender identity [ 60 ]

Review of the Sport Policies

Policies within this section were systematically reviewed in relation to their inclusiveness of transgender competitors (i.e. maintaining fairness in the absence of advantage for all competitors). The fairness of the policy requirements was judged against the available physiological research that has explored athletic advantage. The time restrictions associated with each requirement were also reviewed (e.g. cross-sex hormones must have been administered for at least 2 years prior to competition). The requirements from each policy are summarised within Table  2 and the most salient points of these policies are then presented in the section that follows.

In 2004, the IOC [ 18 ] announced that transgender people who transition after puberty are permitted to compete in sport in line with their experienced gender identity providing they have had gender-confirming surgery, can provide legal recognition of their gender, have been prescribed cross-sex hormone treatment for at least 2 years and have lived in their experienced gender for the same amount of time [ 18 ]. Additionally, transgender people who had undergone gender-confirming surgery pre-puberty are eligible to compete in sport in line with their experienced gender identity [ 18 ]. This is an international policy and has been adopted by sport organisations all over the world.

While the 2004 IOC [ 18 ] policy has been praised for its efforts to address the inclusion of transgender athletes [ 61 ], several flaws have been identified [ 61 ]. First, the policy excludes transgender people who choose not to have gender-confirming surgery owing to a lack of genital dysphoria (distress), medical reasons, fears about risk during operations, and/or because of other personal reasons [ 28 , 62 , 63 ]. The 2004 IOC [ 18 ] policy also excludes transgender people who are in the process of transitioning. For instance, a transgender athlete may be prescribed cross-sex hormone treatment, but be yet to undergo gender-confirming surgery. The 2004 IOC policy [ 18 ] therefore adopts a very narrow definition and excludes a large proportion of transgender people [ 19 ]. In addition to this, the policy appears to have been developed with only transgender female individuals in mind, possibly as transgender male individuals are not thought to possess athletic advantages in the majority of sports, and therefore the policy discriminates against transgender male individuals [ 21 ]. Moreover, the 2004 IOC [ 18 ] policy fails to take into consideration the regional, national and international differences in accessing cross-sex hormone treatment and gender-confirming surgery [ 18 , 63 – 65 ]. Within this policy, there also appears a lack of an evidence-based rationale as to why a period of 2 years was chosen as the length of time cross-sex hormone treatment must be administered prior to sport competition and why individual differences in blood hormone levels are not considered [ 66 ]. As mentioned previously, the role of testosterone blockers in transgender women is also not considered. Although the rationale for the 2-year time period is not made explicit, it may be related to the fact that this time period was imposed by the IOC in 2004, when banning athletes from competitive sport to discipline them for doping violations. The evidence-based rationale for gender-confirming surgery is also not clear [ 61 ]; whether an athlete has a penis or vagina appears irrelevant, as this will not change the physiology of the body or the physiological advantage of the person [ 63 ].

Approximately 200 days before the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, the IOC announced changes to their competitive sport policy for transgender people. The new 2016 IOC [ 20 ] policy suggests that transgender male athletes are able to compete in a male category without any restrictions. Transgender female athletes may compete in a female category if they have declared their gender as female for at least 4 years and their blood testosterone levels are below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to competition. However, the latter requirement is a general guideline, and each case will be reviewed individually to determine whether 12 months is a sufficient amount of time to suppress testosterone levels to an appropriate level. If transgender female athletes do not meet these requirements, they will be able to compete in a male category. This is a great improvement in sport policy, which considers gender assigned at birth and individual difference in relation to bloody hormone levels and moves away from the requirement of surgery to compete in their experienced gender category. However, we could not find any evidence to support the requirement for testosterone levels to be below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months.

Despite its flaws, the 2004 IOC policy [ 18 ] has been adopted by several other sport organisations. Within this systematic review, 11 sport organisations adopted the policy outlined by the IOC in 2004 [ 33 , 36 , 38 – 40 , 45 , 46 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 57 ]. All but one (the International Tennis Federation) of these sport organisation policies are employed at a national level. Not only is it problematic that other sport organisations adopted the 2004 IOC policy, but elements of the 2004 IOC policy concerning children pre-puberty are not applicable to sport organisations in the UK and many other countries. Within the UK (and many other countries), children presenting with gender incongruence cannot undergo gender-confirming surgery before the age of 18 years, by which time puberty has usually started.

Three policies stated that it is only necessary to provide legal recognition of gender and to be prescribed cross-sex hormone treatment for a ‘sufficient amount of time’ (international policy) [ 56 ] or so that hormone blood levels are within cisgender female or male ranges (national policy) [ 44 , 52 ]. Policies from the National Collegiate Athletic Association [ 32 ] and British Rowing [ 50 ] also state that only cross-sex hormone treatment is required; however, the specifics of this requirement differ for both transgender male and female individuals. With both of these policies, transgender female individuals have to provide more evidence of cross-sex hormone treatment and their blood hormone levels in comparison to transgender male individuals. Similarly, the Association of Boxing Commissions [ 31 ] in its national policy has different cross-sex hormone treatment requirements depending on gender assigned at birth and how the athlete identifies themselves (transgender or transsexual). The language used within the Association of Boxing Commissions’ policy [ 31 ] may be seen as offensive by some transgender people and the difference between “transsexuals” and “transgender” people remains unclear. Policies held by the Ladies Professional Golf Association (international policy) [ 43 ] and the International Association of Athletics Federations [ 55 ] differ dramatically in relation to gender and gender-confirming surgery as a requirement. In both cases, it is necessary for transgender female individuals to have undergone this procedure, but not for transgender male individuals. Although some of the requirements of these policies are unreasonable and not evidence based (e.g. gender-confirming surgery), the gender difference in relation to the amount of evidence that is required about their gender change seems acceptable considering that only transgender female individuals (and not transgender male individuals) are currently seen to potentially have an athletic advantage [ 23 ].

The more inclusive sport policies reviewed here only required legal or medical recognition or do not ask for any evidence of gender; thus they encourage competition in line with the experienced gender (five were national policies and two were international) [ 34 , 35 , 41 , 42 , 53 , 54 , 59 ]. The Fédération Internationale de Volleyball [ 58 ] had the most invasive policy considered within this systematic review; they ask players to provide a birth certificate to verify gender. Additionally, female players may be asked to provide a gender certificate or submit themselves to a medical examination if the medical evidence is not sufficient. Both British Universities & Colleges Sport [ 47 ] and USA Triathlon [ 37 ] do not have their own policies, but suggest the adoption of other policies (i.e. those relevant to the sport in question or guidelines of the US Anti-Doping Agency, respectively).

Currently, the majority of sport policies unfairly exclude transgender people from competitive sport, as the requirements they place on them are not underpinned by evidence-based medicine. Until (and if) there is consistent and direct evidence to demonstrate transgender people have an athletic advantage, it seems unreasonable to exclude them on any basis.

The first aim of this systematic review was to explore the experiences of transgender people in relation to competitive sport participation (elite and recreational) and sport-related physical activity. The majority of the studies within this body of literature are qualitative in nature, which may be at least partly a reflection of the low numbers of transgender people in the general population. It is therefore difficult to draw any definite conclusions because of the lack of quantitative research. By its very nature, the findings from qualitative research cannot be generalised but the findings can be used to form a platform from which generalisations can be made. The research articles reviewed here described a generally negative experience of sport participation and sport-related physical activity for transgender individuals. It was evident from these studies that transgender people are facing barriers when engaging in competitive sport and sport-related physical activity. In relation to sport-related physical activity, lack of accessibility to an inclusive and comfortable environment appeared to be the primary barrier to participation. Charities and support organisations working with transgender people should consider developing campaigns to raise awareness about different gender identities. Leisure centres should also be made more aware of potential gender differences (i.e. via training and greater information provision) and be given advice on how to make such environments more inclusive of transgender people (e.g. gender neutral changing facilities with cubicles). In relation to competitive sport participation, the findings from this systematic review suggest that the requirements that transgender competitive sport policies place on competitors were instrumental in transgender athletes’ negative experiences.

While a distinction needs to be made between the issues and experiences transgender people have with regard to participation in sport and competitive sport, it also needs to be acknowledged that there is an overlap. Transgender male and female individuals have anecdotally discussed that access to sport participation (such as becoming part of the local football team) is restricted as even community and local sport organisations who play at a recreational level implement transgender competitive sport policies.

The second aim was to review the available sport policies regarding the fairness for transgender people in competitive sport (i.e. fairness in the absence of advantage). Owing to overinterpretation and fear of the athletic advantage in transgender athletes, the majority of the policies reviewed were discriminatory against transgender people, especially transgender male individuals (i.e. exclusion in the absence of advantage). Although the updated IOC policy may be perceived as more inclusive then the 2004 version, there are still flaws. The requirement for a transgender female individual to have declared their gender as female for at least 4 years is excessive. In the UK and many other countries, once a transgender person has accessed a transgender health service, it is likely to be less than 4 years before a person legally changes their name, undergoes irreversible treatments and, hence, fully commits to their experienced gender. There appears to be a lack of rationale regarding the 4-year time period for transgender athletes, although this time restriction is consistent with the current disciplinary action for cisgender athletes when a doping incident occurs [ 67 ]. The 2016 IOC policy [ 20 ] also states that to avoid discrimination against transgender female individuals, they are allowed to complete in a male category if they do not meet the requirements for transgender female athletes. For most transgender female individuals, competing in a male category, when their experienced gender is female, would be distressing and may deter engagement in competitive sport altogether. This particular requirement may be promoting exclusion of transgender female individuals in competitive sport, rather than avoiding discrimination.

Several sport policies, including the recently updated IOC 2016 [ 20 ] policy, have based their requirements for transgender competitors on indirect, inconsistent and unambiguous evidence. Physiological research involving cisgender people has shown that testosterone deficiency in young men is associated with a decrease in muscle strength [ 68 ] and testosterone injections in cisgender men are associated with an increase in some aspects of muscle strength [ 69 ]. However, this research did not determine whether these decreases and increases in muscle mass are within ranges for cisgender female and male individuals and the time required to reach cisgender male or female levels. Elbers et al. [ 70 ] expanded on this research by exploring the effects of oestrogen supplements and androgen deprivation on fat distribution and thigh muscle mass (by using magnetic resonance imaging) in 20 transgender female individuals. They found that 12 months after cross-sex hormone treatment, transgender female individuals had a more feminine pattern of adiposity and their thigh muscles had decreased. Other research has found that transgender female athletes who have hormonally and surgically transitioned have reported feeling weaker and their testosterone levels tend to be lower than average compared with cisgender women [ 19 , 71 ]. However, this research does not tell us anything about the relationship between androgenic hormones and athletic ability.

To date, Harper’s study [ 72 ] is the only one to directly explore androgenic hormones and athletic ability. The aim of the study was to explore the long-distance (5–42 km) running times of eight transgender female individuals pre- and post-testosterone suppression. It was found that post-testosterone suppression running times were significantly slower in comparison to pre-testosterone suppression. Harper stated that owing to reductions in testosterone and haemoglobin, transgender female individuals post-transition would have the same endurance capabilities as a cisgender female individual. However, the sample size was very small ( n  = 8) and participants were asked to self-report their race times, which might have been subject to recall or social desirability bias.

On average, men perform better than women in sport; however, no empirical research has identified the specific reason(s) why. Based mainly on indirect research with cisgender people, it is commonly believed that androgenic hormones (specifically high testosterone levels) confer an advantage in competitive sports (i.e. enhance endurance, increase muscle mass) and, while this belief has informed several sporting policies, testosterone may not be the primary, or even a helpful, marker in determining athletic advantage [ 73 ]. Karkazis et al. [ 73 ] have argued that there is no evidence to suggest that endogenous testosterone levels are predictive of athletic performance (apart from doping), as there is variation in how bodies make and respond to the hormone. Testosterone is only one part of a person’s physiology and there are other important factors (both biological and environmental) that should be considered if fairness (the absence of advantage) is the aim in competitive sport. For instance, having large hands is key for manipulation in some sports (e.g. basketball), but this is not seen as an unfair advantage. Establishing what an athletic advantage is in competitive sport would facilitate inclusion of all athletes (regardless of their gender identity) on the premise of fairness.

The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport [ 74 ] recently released a document offering guidance to sport organisations on how to develop inclusive competitive sport policies for transgender people. An expert panel maintained the viewpoint that everyone has the right to compete in accordance with their gender identity at a recreational and elite level. Cross-sex hormones and gender-confirming surgeries should not be a requirement at any level of sport. If any sport organisation requires transgender competitors to take cross-sex hormones for a specified time, they will have to provide evidence to support that this is reasonable. The panel suggests that when sporting organisations are concerned about safety, based on the size or strength of competitors, such organisations should develop skill and size categories, such as in wrestling.

The issues and challenges that transgender people experience when engaging in competitive sport and sport-related physical activity will undoubtedly become more prominent as the visibility and prevalence of transgender people become more pronounced. Consequently, health professionals working in sport will need to become more familiar with the specific issues and challenges that a transgender person may experience when engaging in sport. By doing this, these professionals will be able to ensure transgender people can start or continue to engage in sport in a safe and inclusive manner. The most common question of people working within the sport domain will likely be: When it is safe and fair to permit a transgender person to compete in sport in line with their experienced gender? At the current time, this is a difficult issue to address considering that there is a lack of direct and consistent physiological performance-related data with transgender people, which is preventing a consensus from being made as to whether transgender people (especially transgender female individuals) do or do not have an athletic advantage. It may be sensible to suggest that until there are direct and consistent scientific data to suggest that transgender competitors have an advantage, transgender people should be allowed to compete in accordance with their gender identity with no restrictions (e.g. no requirement to have cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery). The athletic advantage transgender female individuals are perceived to have (based on indirect and ambiguous evidence) may be no greater than widely accepted physiological (e.g. large hands) and financial (e.g. training opportunities) advantages that some cisgender people possess in competitive sport. Sport organisations wanting to exclude a transgender person from competing in their experienced gender category would need to demonstrate that the sport is gender affected and that exclusion is necessary for fair and safe competition [ 74 , 75 ]. At the current time, this would be difficult considering there is no evidence to suggest that androgenic hormone levels consistently confer a competitive advantage [ 74 , 75 ].

Limitations of the Area and Directions for Future Research

Within the area of sport, physical activity and transgender individuals, research is limited and mainly qualitative. More quantitative research needs to be conducted to increase the applicability and generalisability of the research findings and so that conclusions about transgender people and sport can be drawn. At a medical level, more physiological research is needed with the transgender population to accurately determine whether transgender people have an advantage in competitive sport or not. Future studies should investigate when a person can be considered physiologically as their experienced gender. This in turn should aid more inclusive (i.e. inclusion in the absence of advantage) sport policies for transgender individuals and a fair system for all. To date, the few studies exploring the experiences of transgender people have mainly been concerned with exploring experiences in relation to competitive sport. This research now needs to be extended to those who participate in sport-related physical activity for leisure and fitness. It is also important to understand transgender people’s experiences in the context of different sports. The barriers to, and facilitators of, football participation, for example, may greatly differ to those experienced when engaging in gymnastics, athletics, swimming or aquatic activities. For the latter four sports, clothing may be revealing and an indication of one’s gender. For example, feeling comfortable in swimwear may be an issue for transgender people, especially when they are in the process of transitioning, as the body is often more exposed than in other sportswear (e.g. a football kit) and swimwear is heavily gendered (i.e. swimming trunks are worn by male individuals and swimming costumes by female individuals). In light of this, it would be interesting to explore the experiences of transgender people who have previously participated, or are currently participating, in aquatic activates, gymnastics and/or athletics.

Overall, it appears that the majority of transgender people have a negative experience of competitive sport and sport-related physical activities. Accessibility to sport-related physical activity needs to be improved. Within competitive sport, the athletic advantage transgender athletes are perceived to have appears to have been overinterpreted by many sport organisations around the world, which has had a negative effect on the experiences of this population. When the indirect and ambiguous physiological evidence is dissected, it is only transgender female individuals who are perceived to potentially have an advantage as a result of androgenic hormones. Within the literature, it has been questioned as to whether androgenic hormones should be the only marker of athletic advantage or, indeed, if they are even a useful marker of athletic advantage. Given the established mental and physical health benefits of engaging in physical activity and sport [ 13 , 14 ], the barriers transgender people experience are a significant limitation to the promotion of healthy behaviours in transgender individuals. There are several areas of future research required to significantly improve our knowledge of transgender people’s experiences in sport, inform the development of more inclusive sport policies, and most importantly, enhance the lives of transgender people, both physically and psychosocially.

Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank Prof. Barrie Houlihan for his helpful advice and feedback on an early draft of this systematic review.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Bethany Jones was supported by a PhD studentship co-funded by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and Loughborough University. No other sources of funding were used to assist in the preparation of this article.

Bethany Jones, Jon Arcelus, Walter Bouman and Emma Haycraft declare that they have no conflicts of interest relevant to the content of this review.

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Original research article, women in international elite athletics: gender (in)equality and national participation.

gender in sports research papers

  • 1 Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
  • 2 Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Theoretical Background

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

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

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

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

• “Gender division of labor,” that is, the way in which production and consumption are arranged along gender lines;

• “Gender relations of power,” that is, the way in which control, authority, and force are exercised along gender lines;

• “Emotion and human relations,” that is, the way in which attachment and antagonism among people and groups are organized along gender lines; and

• “Gender culture and symbolism,” that is, the way in which gender identities are defined in culture, the language and symbols of gender difference, and the prevailing beliefs and attitudes about gender.

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

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

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

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

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

Gender Discrimination in International Athletics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. How does macro-social gender inequality relate to country participation in international women's athletics?

2. How did the IAAF's decentralization strategy affect the participation in international women's athletics?

Research Design

Data sources.

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

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

Dependent Variables

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

Independent Variables

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

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

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Table 1 . Dependent and independent variables for all regression models.

Analytic Strategy

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

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

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

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

Descriptive Findings

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

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

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

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Figure 2 . Country participation in women's athletics in 2001 and 2019 and difference between 2001 and 2019. (A,B) Displayed are the 5 quantiles of the number of women's athletics disciplines in which athletes from a particular country participate from white = 0 disciplines to black = 20 disciplines. (C) Displayed is the difference in absolute numbers of disciplines from white = −5 to 0 disciplines to black = more than 15 disciplines.

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

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Table 2 . Top-ten countries with regard to participation increases.

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

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Figure 3 . Development of participation in women's athletes between 2001 and 2019. The figure displays trends for different dependent variables.

Multivariate Analyses

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

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Table 3 . OLS regression models for parity.

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

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

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Table 4 . Ordered logistic regression models for Athletes.

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

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Table 5 . Influence of the interaction between Athletics and Year on Parity.

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

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

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Table 6 . Ordered logistic regression models for Hosting.

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

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

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Table 7 . Tobit regression models for Disciplines.

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

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

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

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

Limitations

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

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

Data Availability Statement

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

Author Contributions

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

Conflict of Interest

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

Publisher's Note

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

Supplementary Material

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

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

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Keywords: international athletics, gender inequality, women's empowerment, development programs, multi-level analyses

Citation: Meier HE, Konjer MV and Krieger J (2021) Women in International Elite Athletics: Gender (in)equality and National Participation. Front. Sports Act. Living 3:709640. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2021.709640

Received: 14 May 2021; Accepted: 04 August 2021; Published: 27 August 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Meier, Konjer and Krieger. 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: Henk Erik Meier, henk.erik.meier@uni-muenster.de

This article is part of the Research Topic

Exploring Distinctive Issues in Women’s Professional Sport

Frontiers in Sport Research , 2023, 5(9); doi: 10.25236/FSR.2023.050904 .

Gender Disparities in Sports Media Coverage: Phenomenon, Analysis, and Transformation

Sun Yingnan 1 , Wang Guoliang 2

1 Henan Polytechnic University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China

2 Henan Polytechnic University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China

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The purpose of this study is to delve deeply into the disparities in sports media coverage between male and female athletes across different sports, while also offering relevant strategies for analysis and change. Sports media wield significant influence in shaping societal perceptions and values; however, the issue of gender inequality remains glaringly evident in their coverage. Traditional conventions have steered sports media towards an overemphasis on the achievements of male athletes, often at the expense of recognizing the professional accomplishments of female athletes. Notably, the portrayal of female athletes in the media varies significantly across different sports, with male athletes in highly competitive fields receiving considerably more frequent and in-depth coverage compared to their female counterparts. The existence of pay disparities further compounds this problem, eroding the social status and media attention granted to female athletes.Nevertheless, the sports media possesses a unique opportunity to promote awareness of diversity and equality among viewers, thereby driving societal change. Initiating adaptation and optimization within the media industry is a critical step in this process. This includes providing training for practitioners, increasing the representation of women in media roles, and proactively launching initiatives to foster broader discussions and catalyze social change. Increased participation of female professionals within the industry will provide deeper insights into reporting, thereby sustaining a focus on the critical issue of gender equality.In summary, gender inequality remains a pervasive issue within sports media. However, the transformative potential of the media is pivotal in advancing gender equality. Through comprehensive and equitable coverage, as well as the promotion of gender equality, sports media can reshape viewer perceptions and enhance societal awareness of this important issue. Through concerted efforts within the sports media industry, we can anticipate the creation of a more equitable and diverse sports environment, paving the way for a future characterized by gender equality and diversity.

Sports Media; Gender Disparities; Media Coverage; Transformation

Cite This Paper

Sun Yingnan, Wang Guoliang. Gender Disparities in Sports Media Coverage: Phenomenon, Analysis, and Transformation. Frontiers in Sport Research (2023) Vol. 5, Issue 9: 20-25. https://doi.org/10.25236/FSR.2023.050904.

[1] Zhu, J., & Su, Y. (2022). On the Gender Order of Sports: Based on the Embodiment, Representation, and Expression of the Body. Zhejiang Sports Science, 44(05), 20-25.

[2] Kane, M. (2015). Playing Unfair: The Media's Coverage of Women's Sports. Report. National Center for Lesbian Rights.

[3] Bruce, T. (2016). New Rules for New Times: Sportswomen and Media Representation in the Third Wave. Sex Roles, 74(7-8), 361-376.

[4] Powell, S. (2019). United States Soccer Federation’s 2019 Financial Report. Report. U.S. Soccer.

[5] Li, L. (2016). Discussion on the Synergetic Development of Sports Media and Social Sports. Contemporary Sports Science and Technology, 6(15), 142-143.

[6] Cheng, S. (2023). Research on the Status and Countermeasures of Women's Basketball Development at Beijing Sport University from the Perspective of Social Gender. Bulletin of Sports Science and Technology, 31(05), 141-144+195.

[7] Xiao, L. Z. (2021). A Review of Research on Sports and Gender Inequality Issues. Science and Technology Information, 19(02), 212-216.

[8] Li, J. (2017). Research on the Influence of Sports Media. Anhui University of Engineering.

[9] Peng, H. X., & Zhao, H. Y. (2022). Identity Recognition of the "Other": "Gender Segregation" in Sports News Professions. Journal of Xiangtan University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 46(04), 182-188.

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