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The womens soccer team won the 2015 FIFA world cup by defeating Japan 5-2.
Carli Lloyd scored a hat trick in just 13 minutes, as the USA womens team
clinched their third world cup.
The US mens team has struggled against other teams in the top level, but the
womens team has dominated the game for about a quarter century. In part, the
reasons behind this trend reflect the way women are treated in a country.
An analysis by Kuang Keng Kuek Ser shows the correlation between gender
equality and the performance in the Womens World Cup. Kuek Ser took into
consideration the 2013 Gender Equality Index from the UN, which measures
the comparative status of women with respect to men. The score of each of the
top 23 teams was charted in the 2015 WC, except Nigeria which doesnt have a
Gender Equality Index store.
The GII values, which range from 0 to 100, show the amount of disparity there is
between males and females. The FIFA points include the match results and were
from March 27.
From the chart, it can be seen that teams having more than 1800 points are from
countries with a gender equality of less than 30 per cent. However, Brazil, the
little orange circle on the right-hand side was an exception, with a gender
inequality of more than 40 per cent, but a FIFA score of close to 2000.
However, Brazil has high gender disparities even in soccer. Despite being the
most popular sport in the country, womens soccer was banned from 1941 to
1979 because the law stated that women nature is incompatible with the
beautiful game. There is no womens national league for soccer until today.
An alternate explanation is also given from the graph. With the bubble-size
showing the GDP, it can be seen that countries with a higher GDP are more
towards the right-hand side of the graph, with larger number of FIFA points. But,
according to Kuek Ser, gender inequality is more strongly related to the issue
than the GDP.
On plotting the GDP with the points of the countries as well as the GII with the
points, it can be easily seen that the correlation is better with gender equality. As
can be seen from the two graphs, the number of countries above and below the
average line are almost equal in case of GII. However. in case of the GDP, the
deviation is more, due to a higher number of countries having a low GDP.