We test the hypothesis that women’s empowerment correlates with women’s international athletic success. Greater gender equality (measured using the Gender Inequality Index) is associated with higher participation and medal counts in the Summer Olympic Games from 1996 through 2012. This relationship persists even after controlling for previously identified nation-level predictors of Olympic success and across alternative measures of success (such as shares of the total, percentage within each country, and medals per athlete). These results provide direct evidence for the long-standing claim that girls’ and women’s international athletic achievement is linked to women’s empowerment.
BaimbridgeM. (1998). Outcome uncertainty in sporting competition: The Olympic Games 1896-1996. Applied Economics Letters, 5, 161–164.
2.
BernardA. B.BusseM. R. (2004). Who wins the Olympic Games: Economic resources and medal totals. Review of Economics and Statistics, 86, 413–417.
3.
BillingsA. C.AngeliniJ. R.DukeA. H. (2010). Gendered profiles of Olympic history: Sportscaster dialogue in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 54, 9–23. doi:10.1080/08838150903550352
4.
BrakeD. L. (2010). Getting in the game: Title IX and the women’s sports revolution. New York: New York University Press.
5.
BrennanC. (2012, 929). Title IX offers a blueprint for rest of the world to share in success enjoyed by US. The Times (London), p. 2.
6.
BrownK. J.ConnollyC. (2010). The role of law in promoting women in elite athletics: An examination of four nations. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 45, 3–21.
7.
BucciarelliE.MuratoreF.OdoardiI.PagliariC. (2011). Is it possible to define gender effects of the human capital on the processes of well-being? 3rd World Conference on Educational Sciences (Vol. 15). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier Science.
8.
CahnS. K. (1994). Coming on strong: Gender and sexuality in twentieth-century women’s sports. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
9.
DeanerR. O.SmithB. A. (2012). Sex differences in sports across 50 societies. Cross-Cultural Research, 47, 268–309. doi:10.1177/1069397112463687
10.
DiekmanA.EaglyA. (2000). Stereotypes as dynamic constructs: Women and men of the past, present, and future. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1171–1188.
11.
DufloE. (2012). Women empowerment and economic development. Journal of Economic Literature, 50, 1051–1079. doi:10.1257/jel.50.4.1051
12.
ForrestD.SanzI.TenaJ. D. (2010). Forecasting national team medal totals at the summer Olympic Games. International Journal of Forecasting, 26, 576–588.
13.
HargreavesJ. (1994). Sporting females: Critical issues in the history and sociology of women’s sports. New York, NY: Routledge.
14.
HershP. (2012, 727). London 2012: The summer Olympics; A sporting time. Los Angeles Times, p. V10.
15.
HoffmanR.GingL.RamasamyB. (2002). Public policy and Olympic success. Applied Economics Letters, 9, 545–548.
16.
Hogshead-MakarN.ZimbalistA. (2007). Equal play: Title IX and social change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
17.
Human Development Report Office. (2011). Gender inequality index. New York, NY: United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved fromhttp://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/gii/
18.
International Olympic Committee. (2012a). Factsheet: Women in the Olympic movement. Lausanne, Switzerland: Author.
19.
International Olympic Committee. (2012b). Sports. Retrieved November 2012, fromwww.olympic.org/sports
JohnsonD. K. N.AliA. (2004). A tale of two seasons: Participation and medal counts at the summer and winter Olympic Games. Social Science Quarterly, 85, 974–993.
23.
KietlinskiR. (2011). Japanese women and sport: Beyond baseball and sumo. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.
24.
KlasenS.LamannaF. (2009). The impact of gender inequality in education and employment on economic growth: New evidence for a panel of countries. Feminist Economics, 15, 91–132.
25.
LongmanJ. (2000). The girls of summer: The U.S. women’s soccer team and how it changed the world. New York, NY: Harper.
26.
LuiH.SuenW. (2008). Men, money, and medals: An econometric analysis of the Olympic Games. Pacific Economic Review, 13, 1–16.
27.
MarshallM. G.JaggersK.GurrT. R. (2011). Polity IV project: Political regime characteristics and transitions, 1800-2010: Dataset Users’ Manual. Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace. Retrieved fromwww.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
28.
MortonR. H. (2002). Who won the Sydney 2000 Olympics? An allometric approach. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series D (The Statistician), 51, 147–155.
29.
Official site of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. (2012). Athletes. Retrieved December 21, 2012, fromhttp://www.london2012.com/athletes/
PermanyerI. (2013). A critical assessment of the UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index. Feminist Economics, 19, 1–32.
32.
Pew Research Center. (2011). The Pew forum on religion & public life: The future of the global Muslim population. Retrieved May 8, 2012, fromhttp://features.pewforum.org/muslim-population/
33.
ReesR.RiezmanR. (2012). Globalization, gender, and growth. Review of Income and Wealth, 58, 107–117.
34.
ScanlanS. J. (2010). Gender, development, and HIV/AIDS: Implications for child mortality in less industrialized countries. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 51, 211–232.
StevensonB. (2007). Title IX and the evolution of high school sports. Contemporary Economic Policy, 25, 486–505. doi:10.1111/j.1465-7287.2007.00080.x
37.
StevensonB. (2010). Beyond the classroom: Using Title IX to measure the return to high school sports. Review of Economics and Statistics, 92, 284–301. doi:10.1162/rest.2010.11623
Van TuyckomC.JoreskogK. (2012). Going for gold! Welfare characteristics and Olympic success: An application of the structural equation approach. Quality and Quantity, 46, 189–205.
42.
WuJ.ZhouZ.LiangL. (2010). Measuring the performance of nations at Beijing Summer Olympics using integer-valued DEA model. Journal of Sports Economics, 11, 549–566.
43.
ZirinD. (2008). A people’s history of sports in the United States: 250 years of politics, protest, people, and play. New York, NY: The New Press.
