Examining How Sustainability Addresses Gender Inequality Using FIFA Women’s World Cup Soccer Outcomes

Deborah de Lange () and Walter Leal Filho
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Deborah de Lange: Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON M5G 2C5, Canada
Walter Leal Filho: Research and Transfer Centre “Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management”, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, D-21033 Hamburg, Germany

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 18, 1-22

Abstract: Increasing gender equality, United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Five (UN SDG 5), is one of many wicked problems that are difficult to solve in sport. Innovative policies may create a backdrop for improving women’s career outcomes in sport and beyond. This research aims to theorize and empirically demonstrate some of these contextual relationships. Using FIFA Women’s World Cup standings as outcomes, international analyses show that sustainability has real consequences for women and their countries’ success. Guided by wicked problems Literature explicitly recognizing complexities, this research considers the interconnectedness of the UN SDGs with a focus on sports. International empirical analyses demonstrate that leading countries’ more holistic sustainability policies help to address UN SDG 5. This study also compares sustainable development indicators in regression analyses to clarify how these composite measures relate to improved outcomes for women. Overall, future research should incorporate gender differences and thereby consider a broad set of sustainability factors.

Keywords: gender equality; sustainability; innovation; international; World Cup soccer; wicked problems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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