Gender Bias in Perceived Quality. An Experiment with Elite Soccer Performance

Abstract

Whether one looks at revenue, investment, or coverage, men’s sports do better than women’s.
Many assume that the differences are driven by absolute differences in quality of athletic
performance. However, the existence of stereotypes should alert us to another possibility: What if
perceived quality is filtered through gender stereotypes? We perform an experiment showing
participants video clips of elite female and male soccer players. In the control group, participants
evaluated normal videos where the gender of the players was clear to see. In the treatment group,
participants evaluated the same videos but with gender obscured by blurring. We find that
participants only rated men’s videos higher when they knew they were watching men. When they
didn’t know who they were watching, ratings for female and male athletes did not differ
significantly. The findings are consistent with the interpretation that gender bias plays a role in
the evaluation of athletic performance. Implications for research and the sports industry are
discussed.

Keywords: experiment, evaluation, gender bias, fans, soccer, women’s sport

JEL Classification: D70, J16, C90