About WISEMS

“Visibility and perception of female professors in sports economics, sports management, and sports sociology”

Background

As sport sociology, sport management, and sports economics are quite young scientific disciplines that have been established in the 1990s and where most professorships have been filled in the last 10 to 20 years, historical reasons can only be cited to a limited extent as a cause for the underrepresentation of women in professorships. A look at English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia reveals a small number of female professors in sports economics. Meanwhile, the representation of women professors in sport management and sport sociology is substantially higher than in Germany. Thus, discipline-specific characteristics alone cannot be relevant for the low representation of women professors in Germany. Consequently, other aspects such as visibility and perception of female scientists are likely to play a role in the widening of the gender gap after university graduation.