Der Economist hat im Sommer in einer sportwissenschaftlichen Kolumne ($) die Frage gestellt:
Should women’s football have different rules from men’s?
Women are not just smaller men
Ein paar Auszüge aus der Kolumne:
A paper published last month in Sport Management Review, a journal, had participants watch videos of men and women playing football. Viewers rated the men’s videos more favourably than women’s—but the difference vanished when the players were blurred to hide their sex.
Yet another study, published in 2019 by Arve Vorland Pedersen, a neuroscientist and sports scientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and his colleagues, concludes that the women are indeed playing a game that is subtly different—and considerably harder—than the one being played by the men.
The researchers start from the observation that women are physically different from men in many ways. Women are shorter than men (168cm v 182cm in a Norwegian sample). Female footballers are lighter (65kg v 76kg). Women are slower (4.84 seconds to run 30 metres, v 4.25), and cannot jump as high (36cm v 57cm). Those differences persist even among the most athletic members of each sex.
Aus Basis der körperlichen/physischen Metriken haben sie verschiedene Maße des Männerfußballs auf die Metriken von Frauen angewandt. Siehe Grafik. Das Spielfeld beim Fußball der Frauen würde statt 105 x 68 Meter, 93 x 61 Meter betragen.
Put another way, say the researchers, expecting women to play with a men’s ball is a bit like asking men to kick a 623-gram basketball-sized sphere around.
Notwendiger Disclaimer:
And the researchers are quick to say they are not arguing that the rules should actually be changed (such discussions, they say, are for the game’s administrators). But although football expects men and women to play by the same rules, many other sports try to account for sex differences. In athletics, women put lighter shots, throw lighter discuses and leap over lower hurdles than men do. The WNBA, a women’s professional basketball league in America, uses a lighter ball. Volleyball uses a lower net. Indeed, women’s football used lighter balls until the 1990s.
But changing the rules of a sport is as much about culture as it is about science. World Rugby, the international governing body for rugby union, is planning tests of a ball sized for women’s smaller hands. The response from the players themselves is said to have been mixed. Some are keen on the idea. Others worry that, after fighting for so long to be taken seriously, making the women’s game even slightly easier might damage its reputation.
Bei der Sportbekleidung ist man auch im Fußball weiter: frauen-spezifische Fußballschuhe kommen vermehrt auf den Markt („ A firm called Ida Sports sells a boot that is wider around the toes, narrower at the heel and gives more support round the arch, with shorter and more plentiful studs.“)
