{"id":484922,"date":"2026-06-10T01:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T01:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/484922\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T01:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T01:55:08","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\/il\/484922\/","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 No 15 world 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

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

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/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 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":484923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-484922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}