While gender equality is a global priority, advancing it in sports must involve a holistic approach. This includes equal access to facilities and training programs for both men and women, and gender-equal media coverage. It also involves addressing social barriers and educating all stakeholders in the sports community. As the Paris 2024 Olympic Games demonstrate, this can be accomplished through ensuring that female athletes receive the same support and opportunities as their male counterparts.
In the early 1900s, athletic clubs for girls and women began to flourish. But as society grew more conservative, it became increasingly common to restrict the participation of women in sports. It was widely believed that a woman’s primary responsibility was to care for her family and children, while unladylike sports could detract from their domestic responsibilities.
The resulting discrimination can be subtle—a lack of attention to the performance of female players may seem harmless—but it still has a significant negative impact on their careers and lives. It is especially harmful to young female athletes, as it can lead them to doubt their own abilities and create internalised stereotypes about the appropriate roles for women in sport. It also reduces their motivation and self-esteem, and may discourage them from continuing to participate in sport at a competitive level.
As more young people grow up to be active sports participants, the need to achieve gender parity in both amateur and professional sports becomes more important than ever. UNESCO shares concrete measures to achieve this objective, including guaranteeing equal access for girls and women to both recreational and sporting activities, and providing funding and prize money that is at least equal to that received by men. This article explores the European dimension of this issue by analysing the results of the Special Eurobarometer 525 (April-May 2022). Fuzzy-Hybrid TOPSIS was used to construct a synthetic indicator of Europeans’ attitudes towards gender equality in sports, and Latent Profile Analysis and Multinomial Logistic Regression were employed to analyse their determinants.