{"id":3655,"date":"2025-07-17T20:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T20:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3655\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T20:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T20:14:10","slug":"white-shorts-continue-to-affect-female-soccer-players-performance-studies-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3655\/","title":{"rendered":"White shorts continue to affect female soccer players\u2019 performance, studies find"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada’s Olivia Smith, left, and Spain’s Aicha Camara compete for the ball during a U-20 Women’s World Cup round of 16 soccer match in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.Dolores Ochoa\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Professional women\u2019s soccer<\/a> teams have increasingly moved away from white shorts to address concerns over period anxiety, but studies have found the issue continues to impact on performance and on discouraging young girls from participating in sport.<\/p>\n

Alex Krumer, a professor in sports economics at Molde University College in Norway, presented his 2024 peer-reviewed study on the performance effects of wearing white shorts to an audience at the University of St. Gallen last week, coinciding with the Women\u2019s European Championships in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Krumer\u2019s research, based on data from World Cups and European Championships between 2002 and 2023, found that women\u2019s teams wearing white shorts averaged 1.27 points per game compared with 1.57 points for teams in dark colours. Men\u2019s teams showed no performance drop when wearing white.<\/p>\n

Krumer said there was not enough conversation on the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cSports should be a vehicle for gender empowerment,\u201d he told Reuters. \u201cIt\u2019s about inclusiveness, because this is an exclusive part in women\u2019s soccer, not necessarily for professionals but for the young girls this is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

With \u00a31-million Arsenal signing, Canada\u2019s Olivia Smith becomes most expensive player in women\u2019s soccer<\/a><\/p>\n

Denmark, Norway and Finland are among teams at Euro 2025 wearing white shorts.<\/p>\n

England\u2019s Lionesses swapped their white shorts for blue ahead of the 2023 World Cup after player complaints. Captain Leah Williamson said talking about periods in sport should be normalized.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf of the population has one, you are not alone,\u201d the defender said in an interview with the Football Association earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe empower each other in so many other ways that then this is just one of the small cogs in the wheel of empowering each other. There\u2019s just no shame, which is, I think, the main thing that allows us to be free.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Women\u2019s Soccer League in the U.S. ditched white shorts in 2024, after the league and Nike phased them out over period concerns. The Wimbledon tennis Grand Slam relaxed its all-white clothing rule for women in 2023, allowing players to wear dark-coloured undershorts.<\/p>\n

Williamson and England midfielder Beth Mead featured in an Arsenal campaign in February aimed at erasing the stigma around periods in sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to be embarrassed and, especially being at school with boys and banter, you\u2019re brought up to think that it\u2019s like a really shameful thing. There\u2019s so much rubbish built up around it,\u201d Williamson told the FA. \u201cI play sport to be free. I can\u2019t be free if I\u2019m worrying about the most natural thing in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Female athletes to be in majority at 2028 Olympics after big win for women\u2019s soccer<\/a><\/p>\n

Menstruation was a topic at UEFA\u2019s Medical Symposium this year in Lugano.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe menstrual cycle isn\u2019t only a topic that remains taboo in sport but also a significant barrier to participation,\u201d Europe\u2019s soccer governing body said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to research from UEFA partner Adidas, 65% of those who menstruate say that period leaking is their number one concern when playing sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

A separate 2024 study by UK charity Youth Sport Trust revealed six out of 10 girls fear playing sport due to period leaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be saying to girls \u2019Look, we\u2019re dropping [white shorts] because we care about you, so come and play football,\u2019\u201d Krumer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the uniform is an obstacle to [girls] participating, you are reducing their social network, whereas boys don\u2019t have this obstacle of uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krumer expressed frustration over the lack of historical data on women\u2019s soccer compared with men\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven European Championships or World Cups, going back to 2003, that was really challenging to find data on women\u2019s football, like pictures or videos,\u201d he said. \u201cFor men, it\u2019s so easy. But for women, the data is just not available.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Canada’s Olivia Smith, left, and Spain’s Aicha Camara compete for the ball during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,82,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-3655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}