A significant amount of data on sex differences exists. Over several decades of research on human psychology and physiology, thousands of studies have been conducted regarding men’s and women’s unique and overlapping preferences, behaviors, and abilities. Moreover, in recent years, government agencies and academic journals have advised that data, when acquired in studies that include both male and female participants, be segregated by sex. Fair enough.
Given this long history of sex differences research, and the continued and proper emphasis on segregating future scientific data by sex, I have remained perplexed at the difficulty in tracking down sex-segregated results on one topic in particular: viewership of women’s sports.
I say “perplexed” because the world consists of thousands of researchers and data scientists, thousands of academic journals, a vast array of online survey platforms, and millions of people willing to participate in survey research. Yet, with all the focus on women’s sports in recent years, and with university researchers and professors writing about every piece of academic minutia imaginable, one is hard pressed to find a simple survey study, published in an academic journal, that presents data on the proportion of men and women who watch women’s sports.
Normally, studies of this type, fall into one’s lap during daily browsing on social media. If such incidental discoveries do not occur, then relevant keyword searches in Google Scholar will almost certainly discover the data that one is looking for. Yet, data on sex differences in viewership of women’s sports has historically escaped me both in terms of casual browsing on social media and in active searching within scholarly databases.
However, earlier this week, this changed. I was motivated to have another look for such data after listening to a segment on The Bryan Madigan Show that focused on sports journalist Roz Kelly’s comments about female athletes not being paid enough money. I encourage you to watch Madigan’s segment.
Unlike my previous attempts at tracking down sex-segregated data on women’s sports viewership, this time I expanded my search to include any survey online, including those published by data analytics companies or by think tanks or other non-profit organizations.
Here is what I found:
YouGov Poll
In 2023, YouGov published results of a nationally representative online survey in the United States about sports viewership. One of the questions asked to the survey takers was: “In the last month, have you watched any professional women’s sports, either broadcast or in person?” Over 10,000 men and women who were 18 years of age or older responded to that question.
The percent of men who responded that they had watched professional women’s sports in the past month was 31%. The percent of women who responded that they had watched professional women’s sports in the past month was 22%. Thus, women were found to be less likely than men to watch women’s sports.
Parity Poll
A second survey, published in 2024 by an organization called Parity, also found that women are less likely than men to watch women’s sports. Survey respondents included 14,000 persons living in Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In each of the seven countries, more men than women reported watching women’s sports “at least a few times a year.”
In the United States, 73% of men and 70% of women reporting watching women’s sports a few times a year. In Australia, 82% of men and 78% of women reporting watching women’s sports a few times a year. In France, the country with the largest sex difference in women’s sports viewership, 80% of men and 69% of women reported watching women’s sports a few times a year.
The Parity poll also included a second question that asked about daily and weekly consumption of women’s sports. Here, the sex difference in women’s sports viewership widens. Across all countries, 23% of men and 15% of women said that they watch women’s sports daily or weekly. The country with the largest sex difference in daily and weekly viewership was Australia, where 28% of men and 15% of women say they watch women’s sports daily or weekly.
A Potential Feminist Reframe
If the data from the YouGov and Parity surveys would have shown that fewer men than women watch women’s sports, I have little doubt that feminists would endorse a shaming campaign against men for their lack of appreciation of women’s athletic skills. This shaming campaign would then probably coincide with school programs designed to encourage young boys to like girls’ and women’s sports more.
Unfortunately for feminists, and thankfully for the rest of us, the data have simply reflected objective reality: women, not men, are the ones least interested in watching women’s sports.
This result puts feminists in an intellectual quagmire. Because they largely believe that women are social constructions of their environments, lacking agency or free will, they must then misconstrue the results in some way to ensure that women are not held accountable for choosing to pass on watching women’s sports.
The first way that this might be accomplished is by simply refraining from conducting such research in the future. This strategy would prevent results like those from the YouGov and Parity polls from ever entering the public consciousness, allowing doubt to be cast toward anyone who suggests that there might be a sex difference in viewership of women’s sports.
A second strategy might involve aggregating male and female responses to mask sex differences in viewership. This data processing practice would run contrary to recent calls for more sex-segregated data made by the Office of Research on Women’s Health and many other researchers. However, feminism operates from a standpoint of “By whatever means necessary,” and thus does not mind throwing out its own previous recommendations if doing so helps to advance the moment’s female cause and relieve women of responsibility for their actions.
That so little data are available on women’s sports viewership, and that even fewer data are available in a sex-segregated format, suggests that these first two strategies of hiding the realities of women’s disinterest in watching women’s sports are already being practiced to some degree.
A third way that feminists might attempt to distract from female viewer accountability is to present results in a sex-segregated manner but thenreframethe results to look unfavourably uponmaleviewers. For example, in the YouGov survey, respondents were also asked about their viewership ofmen’ssports. The results showed that 58% of men said that they had watched professional men’s sports in the past month, whereas 31% of men responded this way for viewership of women’s sports. This represents a 46.5% drop in male viewership from men’s to women’s sports. The drop for female viewers from men’s to women’s sports was not as big. For the female survey takers, 33% said that they had watched professional men’s sports in the past month, whereas 22% responded this way for viewership of women’s sports. This represents a 33% drop in viewership from men’s to women’s sports for female viewers. Thus, because the drop in viewership from men’s to women’s sports was greater for male than female viewers, feminists could attempt to hide women’s disinterest in watching women’s sports by presenting sex-segregated data in relative change terms rather than absolute terms.
Conclusion
In 2019, a male journalist, Skye Merida, published a piece at CNN titled, “Men who don’t watch women’s sports don’t know what they’re missing.” At the end of the piece, after reflecting on his own endeavour into watching women’s sports, Merida concluded: “So, if you’re one of those guys who hasn’t been interested in women’s athletics, it’s time to reconsider.”
What we have learned from the YouGov and Parity polls is that if Mr. Merida is going to call out only one sex for not watching women’s sports, he should call out women.
The YouGov and Parity polls show that approximately 10% fewer women than men watch women’s sports on a monthly, weekly, or daily basis. These results are due to men’s greater overall passion for sports, irrespective of the sex of the athlete playing. This great male passion for sports is well known and was confirmed in Merida’s own reflections: “I think the main reason I'm a fan of women's athletics is simple: I love sports so much that I don't really care who's playing -- as long as they're playing well.”
For me, the surprise in the surveys was not that women are less likely than men to watch women’s sports. The surprise has always been the odd absence of such research from the academic literature, given the large academic push behind women’s sports and the ease and low costs associated with conducting population surveys. That such research has not been carried out more regularly, with results presented in a sex-segregated way, suggests that some researchers know that the data are likely to show low female viewership of women’s sports, so the researchers conduct qualitative rather than quantitative research.
Nevertheless, the data from the YouGov and Parity polls do exist, and they are a godsend for men who have grown tired of implicit assumptions that they are somehow to blame for women’s sports not being more popular or lucrative. The data are a shield against men’s unearned guilt.
If women want women’s sports to be a knockout success, the solution is simple. More women should start watching women’s sports.
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