Sports have the power to drive gender equality by teaching girls and women teamwork, self-reliance and resilience. Yet, in some instances, they are still being used to reinforce gender stereotypes and discrimination against women and girls.
In recent years, we have seen a number of positive developments including equal pay advocacy in sports, social media platforms dedicated to women’s sports, increasing recognition that women’s sports are ‘valueable’, and even some corporations incorporating gender equality initiatives into their business strategies (Cooky & Antunovic, 2022).
Unfortunately, this progress is not being evenly distributed across all sporting sectors, and it will take more than awareness campaigns and media advocacy to achieve gender equity. There is a need to invest in the development of women’s sport at the grass roots level, develop support structures for female athletes, promote coaching courses for women and girls and provide opportunities for girls and women to lead sports clubs, teams and organizations.
The belief that men are stronger, better at sports and faster than women remains a barrier to progress towards gender equality in sport. This internalized sexism can have negative consequences for girls and women who participate in sports, including decreased motivation, lower self-esteem and reduced future expectations of achievement.
This article fills a gap in quantitative research on attitudes towards gender equality in sports using Special Eurobarometer 525 data (April-May, 2022). Fuzzy-Hybrid TOPSIS is used to produce a synthetic indicator of Europeans’ Attitudes to Gender Equality in Sports and Latent Profile Analysis is applied to cluster respondents according to their attitude toward GE in sports. The findings reveal a clear ideological divide, with left-wing respondents showing greater support for GE in sport than right-wing respondents. This trend, in combination with wider political trends, indicates that it is crucial to develop strategies for making GE in sports a mainstream priority.