Throughout the history of sports, women have struggled with barriers ranging from limited funding to entrenched stereotypes and discrimination. The passing of Title IX in 1972 paved the way for a more equitable future in sports, however, achieving gender equality in the field remains a challenge.
The notion that men are better athletes than women should be abandoned if we are to make progress towards gender equality in sports. Instead, sports groups should pursue the goal of gender equity in a strategic manner. This means that female athletes who put in an equivalent amount of effort should be entitled to the same participation opportunities, financial support, pay, and perks as male athletes.
Furthermore, a culture of transparency and accountability must be promoted in sport. This includes having an easy-to-use, secure whistleblowing platform that allows anyone to come forward with discrimination or harassment complaints. Finally, there is a need to encourage female spectators to attend sporting events and to support women’s teams.
The aim of this article is to analyze the current state of gender equality in sports by analyzing the Special Eurobarometer 525 (April-May 2023) dataset on attitudes Towards Gender Equality in Sport (ATGEQS). Fuzzy-hybrid TOPSIS is used to construct a Synthetic Indicator, followed by Latent Profile Analysis and Multinomial Logistic Regression. The results show that a number of socio-economic factors, including education level, employment status, and family situation, influence Europeans’ ATGEQS. Furthermore, gender-related attitudes differ by political ideology. Those who are more left-wing tend to be more positive about GE in sport, while those on the right are more negative.