Work and Play: International Evidence of Gender Equality in Employment and Sports

Michael Klein

No 9081, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper addresses the question of whether societies that afford economic opportunity to women offer other opportunities as well. The analysis in this paper shows that the performance of a country's women in international athletic competition reflects the degree of their relative participation in that country's labor market. There is a significant positive relationship across countries between a high ratio of the labor force participation rate of women to the labor force participation rate of men and the number and type of medals won by a country's women in the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. Teams representing countries with high relative labor force participation rates also were both more likely to qualify for the 1999 Women's Soccer World Cup and to do well in that competition. This effect of relative labor force participation rates on athletic success is found while controlling for a nation's income per capita, population, men's performance in related sporting events, rate of participation of women in government, and fertility rate. These results suggest that the participation of women in a country's labor force is an important reflection of their opportunities in other areas as well.

JEL-codes: J16 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-spo
Note: LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Klein, Michael W. “Work and Play: International Evidence of Gender Equality in Employment and Sports." Journal of Sports Economics 5, 3 (August 2004): 227-242.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9081.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9081

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9081

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().