Athletics is still a male-dominated sport: the underrepresentation of women as athletes, coaches, and referees in Brazil

Gender inequality remains a pervasive issue in sports, attracting increasing attention in contemporary research. Despite this, scant scholarly focus has been directed towards the participation of women in athletics. This study sought to investigate the involvement of women as athletes, coaches, and referees across various age categories and events within the Brazilian Athletics Championship 2019. We assessed publicly available data from the championship, specifically the number of women in these roles. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics, Chi-Square test for association estimation, and one sample t-tests for mean frequency comparisons. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. Our findings revealed no significant association between event type and age category, indicating a similar frequency of female athlete participation across different events and age groups. Notably, the average participation of women as athletes (42%) and coaches (19%) was statistically below the 50% threshold (t=4.595, p<0.001; t=25.00, p<0.001, respectively). Women represented 41% of the referees and did not show a significant difference to 50% (t=2.973, p=0.058). There was a significant association between gender and sport position with a higher participation of women as athletes and referees compared to coaches. In this study we show that, although there is a movement towards quantitative equality, women are still underrepresented as athletes, coaches, and referees in athletics, emphasizing the imperative for investment in sports policies, sports programs development geared towards fostering gender equality in athletics practices, and a qualitative comprehension of the challenges and barriers these professionals face. Keywords: Gender; social justice; sport psychology; sport management; leadership