On the cost of wearing white shorts in women's sport

Abstract

The menstrual cycle and associated issues are still considered taboo in many societies, causing a lack of understanding and sub-optimal decision making. Sport can effectively promote awareness of social issues in general, including those concerning the menstrual cycle. One such issue is the anxiety arising from wearing white shorts. Despite increased awareness, still over half the teams participating in the recent 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup played in white shorts. In this study, I investigated women's and men's football games from the World Cups and the European Championships between 2002 and 2023. Using regression analysis, and after controlling for teams’ abilities and other factors, I found that women's teams wearing white shorts achieved between 0.32 and 0.37 fewer points per game. No such effect was observed among men. This result illustrates that a lack of understanding of period anxiety has an immediate cost that is very easy to avoid by simply not playing in white shorts. Most importantly, given that sport is an important vehicle of gender equality, increased awareness of period anxiety could result in higher participation of women in sports and, ultimately, in narrowing other gender gaps.