{"id":725566,"date":"2026-06-09T17:19:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T17:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/725566\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T17:19:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T17:19:14","slug":"rich-countries-do-better-in-womens-football-but-understanding-why-matters-not-just-for-the-matildas-australia-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/725566\/","title":{"rendered":"Rich countries do better in women\u2019s football but understanding why matters, not just for the Matildas | Australia news"},"content":{"rendered":"

In about a week\u2019s time, the Socceroos will step up<\/a> against Turkey, their first opponents in this year\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n

Winning their first match will be a big ask; progressing beyond the first round<\/a> will be a bigger one.<\/p>\n

No disrespect to the men, but if it were the Matildas<\/a>, hopes would be higher.<\/p>\n

After reaching the semi-finals in 2023 on home turf and almost going all the way at the Asian Cup, we have lofty expectations for the Tillies that go beyond their 15th ranking.<\/p>\n

Fans of World Cup co-hosts US and Canada will know the feeling. Both have women\u2019s football teams that conspicuously outshine their male counterparts.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Tiya Banerjee, an economist at the e61 Institute, says these examples are not mere coincidences.<\/p>\n

Banerjee in a new report<\/a> has crunched the numbers and says it is in fact part of a broader pattern that would be familiar to enthusiasts of the beautiful game: that rich countries do better in women\u2019s football.<\/p>\n

Which raises the obvious question: why?<\/p>\n

Maybe richer countries are just better at sport in general. This first theory falls over immediately.<\/p>\n

If being rich by itself was enough to explain a nation\u2019s sporting prowess, the women\u2019s and men\u2019s teams of wealthy countries would be equally successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means that at least part of their [wealthy countries\u2019] advantage is specific to women\u2019s football, not football in general,\u201d Banerjee says.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s because richer countries tend to be more progressive and so more supportive of women and girls playing sport, providing a bigger talent pool.<\/p>\n

With a lack of data on female participation in sport, Banerjee used female labour force participation as a proxy to test the idea.<\/p>\n

She found there was indeed a correlation between the share of women in the workforce and that country\u2019s Fifa world ranking.<\/p>\n

But further analysis showed that while gender norms played their part, they only had a \u201cminor effect\u201d on the relationship between a nation\u2019s income and the ranking of its women\u2019s national team.<\/p>\n

\u201cGender norms explain some of it, but not all of it,\u201d Banerjee says.<\/p>\n

What explains the phenomenon better is \u2013 no surprise \u2013 money. Or more specifically, how much a country invests in women\u2019s football.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means some of the difference might be how men and women footballers are trained. And here the resources and the training infrastructure of your country matters a lot more for women than for men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public money in the women\u2019s game gives much more bang for the buck because it lacks the huge sums of private money associated with the men\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe privatised, global transfer market is the dominant force in talent development for men\u2019s football,\u201d Banerjee says.<\/p>\n

Transfer fees in men\u2019s football reached a record $US13.08bn in 2025. Fees paid in the women\u2019s game also climbed to a record last year.<\/p>\n

But at just $US28.6m, \u201cthey remain a rounding error in the global market\u201d, Banerjee says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat gap matters,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

While clubs scour the world to recruit and then train talented young male players, \u201cnothing like this exists in the women\u2019s game\u201d.<\/p>\n

Despite the development in the women\u2019s game over the past two decades, most young players are trained in their own country and play in the local leagues.<\/p>\n

Banerjee says she isn\u2019t advocating for public funding for the women\u2019s game at the expense of the men\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But \u201cthere is every chance that if we fund them both equally, we might get higher returns in women\u2019s football, and some success\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In about a week\u2019s time, the Socceroos will step up against Turkey, their first opponents in this year\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":725567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-725566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/725567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}