The ball actually bounces too high at the edge of the penalty area to be able to hit it in a controlled manner. But with an artistic contribution, a volley from 20 meters, it succeeds. The ball bounced off the inside post and into the net. A dream goal. The next goal is also a treat: After a dribbling in the penalty area, two opponents run into space, a right-footed shot from maybe 14 meters – the ball sinks into the left corner. Both goals were rated as “highlights of the 2019 season” by the football associations Uefa and Fifa.
When the women’s soccer World Cup begins in Australia and New Zealand on July 20, many sports fans look forward to top-class games, sophisticated technology and magic goals. Another group of football fans, on the other hand, nurtures their well-established prejudices: women’s football? Too slow, technically poor – and these floppy shots only! Every C-teenager would hold that. Boring, no wonder women are paid less and there are fewer viewers, even when it comes to the soccer World Cup or the Champions League.
Whether Diego Simeone or Jürgen Klopp: World-class coaches have already recognized the importance of women’s football
How good that science puts prejudices to the test. In the journal Sport Management Review show researchers from Zurich and Stavangerthat men’s football is considered to be of higher quality – but only if the viewers know that they are men. If the players and gender could not be identified, the evaluation of the goals and game scenes did not differ – women’s football was then considered just as attractive as men’s football.
In their study, the researchers divided more than 600 subjects with an average age of 34 into two groups, men and women. One half saw five goals by men and five by women, which were considered highlights during football World Cups or in the Champions League. The other half of the study participants saw the identical video clips – but pixelated so that it was not possible to tell whether men or women played and scored the goals. “The widespread assumption that women’s football is less in demand and less well paid because the quality is lower is based on gender clichés and stereotypes,” the authors conclude. “From this it is deduced in a circular argument that it is obvious to pay women less in football and to invest less in it.”
If you don’t know who is playing, you won’t see any difference in quality between women’s and men’s football. Incidentally, the goal described at the beginning was scored by Croatia’s international Ivan Rakitić in 2019. The second goes to US national player Alex Morgan. Experts know the value of women’s football. Diego Simeone, Atlético Madrid’s rough-and-tumble coach, emphasizes that women in football have “just as much talent, technique and quality” as men and that the only difference is their physique. Jürgen Klopp, coach of Liverpool FC, said on the occasion of the 2022 Women’s World Cup that the “quality was amazing”. If you want to see for yourself, take a look at the ten goals from the study in pixelated form. One more beautiful than the other. From men as from women.