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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sport, Leisure, Tourism, and Events
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1537064
This article is part of the Research Topic Sport Practice and Physical Activity - The Social Function of Sport in Contemporary Societies View all 7 articles
Does Gender Equality in Sports Matter? Examining the Socio-Economic Impact on Public Perceptions
Provisionally accepted- School of Theology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland
Gender equality (GE) is increasingly becoming a key point on modern political agendas. While governments and civil societies strive to achieve this goal, we may be far from 'perfect' equality between women and men. Sport is a good example of some of the inequalities that men and women face, such as pay, discrimination, and unequal opportunities. The study uses data from the Special Eurobarometer 525 (April-May 2022) to understand attitudes towards GE in sports (ATGEQS). By applying Fuzzy-Hybrid TOPSIS approach, and other methods like Latent Profile Analysis and Multinomial Logistic Regression, I investigate how gender, age, income, education, political beliefs and nationality affect these attitudes. The Nordic countries have the highest ATGEQS, while support for EU GE policies, left-wing views, and life satisfaction is positively related to favourable attitudes. The findings highlight the need for awareness and policies for sports participation to be created, with greater emphasis on disadvantaged groups.
Keywords: Gender Equality Attitudes, Fuzzy-Hybrid TOPSIS, LPA, Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) models, Eurobarometer
Received: 29 Nov 2024; Accepted: 10 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Indelicato. 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) or licensor 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:
Alessandro Indelicato, School of Theology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland
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