The Rise of Women’s Soccer

Image – Unsplash

Who doesn’t love soccer? It can be argued that it is one of the most followed sports in the world, and it is gaining new followers every day. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a bias towards women’s soccer, and it is time to change that. In this article, we will show you some background of this fascinating discipline and tell you some key facts about it.

The Evolution

Women’s soccer existed for a while now. You can trace its origins back to the 19th century, but let’s be honest, women might have played soccer much before that – it was just not a very researched and popular topic in several countries. It was only during the 1970s that organized women’s soccer actually started being normalized.  We remember one of the most critical moments in this sport, the 1991 Women’s World Cup by FIFA. If you’re into this topic, check out the latest 2023 FIFA women’s World Cup betting odds to find out more about the fascinating world of women’s soccer and to gain fundamental knowledge about this underrated facet of soccer as a whole. 

The Global Situation

Despite its humble and mysterious beginnings, women’s soccer has gained extreme popularity worldwide in the last decades. Many countries, such as the United States, but also Germany, Sweden, Brazil, and Japan, started investing in this field, and their teams are nowadays known by people all around the globe. There has also been a more institutional recognition of this discipline, with the establishment of professional leagues, such as the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States and the Women’s Super League in England. Today women can pursue soccer as a football career, and this has been an unprecedented event.

Mysterious Stereotypes

An interesting study has been recently done by the University of Zurich, where the premise was that people are biased towards this sport when played by female players. Well, this premise has been proved, as people have been shown clips of men’s and women’s football, lasting between five and 14 seconds. Headlines and videos were blurred so that viewers could not distinguish the player’s gender. Another group of people had to watch unblurred videos. This last group showed that people considered male soccer in much higher regard, but the first group did not observe any kind of difference. This is an exciting study that provides some valuable insights into the world of soccer.

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