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Thanks partly to good old-fashioned misogyny, women athletes are sometimes undervalued\u2014and underpaid<\/a>\u2014in sports. So once I watched a now-viral soccer ad end in a surprising way that challenged those deeply entrenched misconceptions, I used to be all for it.<\/p>\n The 2-minute ad, created by the French division of the telecommunications company Orange and the marketing agency Marcel, launched within the lead as much as the 2023 FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup<\/a> and uses the facility of video editing to dispute those thoughts. It starts off with a highlight reel of what appears to be the French men\u2019s soccer team pulling off seriously impressive feats: dazzling displays of footwork, amazing aerial finishes, and lightning fast sprints down the pitch. Dramatic music plays within the background, commentators excitedly narrate the scenes, and throngs of fans erupt in cheers. About halfway through, the screen goes black and text appears: \u201cOnly Les Bleus [the men\u2019s national team in France] may give us these emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, the plot twist. On-screen text reveals the players weren\u2019t<\/em> the lads\u2019s team\u2014the video rewinds to indicate all that footage was actually from women\u2019s games. With advanced editing techniques, the ladies\u2019s faces and names on their jerseys were swapped for the lads\u2019s; side-by-side comparisons show the authentic footage against the fake clips. All those amazing plays you only watched? They were performed by female athletes.<\/p>\n The ad concludes with the text: \u201cAt Orange, we support Les Bleus.\u201d Then, an editing tool comes into frame to make a small but essential change: It adds in an \u201ce\u201d to the last word to spell \u201cBleue<\/strong>s\u201d\u2014to suggest the French women’s national team. (You possibly can take a look at an English version of the video on YouTube here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Across social media, viewers expressed their awe over the ad. \u201cThey did an incredible job revealing biases that exist around men & women athletes,\u201d Twitter user brilewerke<\/a> wrote. \u201cI got just a little misty-eyed while watching that,\u201d said Reddit user koreawut<\/a>.<\/p>\n By highlighting the undeniable fact that women\u2019s soccer may be just as exciting as men\u2019s\u2014and that the athletes are only as talented, athletic, and able to drawing an emotional response from fans\u2014the ad undermines the notion that girls\u2019s sports aren\u2019t as entertaining or fun to look at, which is commonly used as a justification<\/a> for why women athletes often aren\u2019t paid as much as their male counterparts.<\/p>\n Recently, though, there was progress in the precise direction, especially in pro soccer. After a six-year battle, the US women\u2019s national soccer team (USWNT)<\/a> won a $24 million settlement in 2022 from the US Soccer Federation\u2014plus a pledge that the organization pays the lads\u2019s and girls\u2019s national teams equally in competitions. Also encouraging: More individuals are showing interest in women\u2019s sports than ever before. The 2019 Women\u2019s World Cup, for instance, attracted a record 1.12 billion viewers, in keeping with FIFA<\/a>. And the upcoming 2023 Women\u2019s World Cup is on target to be essentially the most attended standalone women\u2019s sporting event in history, with greater than one million tickets sold as of last month, per FIFA<\/a>.<\/p>\n Still, there\u2019s more work to be done to dismantle the gender bias in sports. Researchers from a recent study<\/a> published in Sports Management Review<\/em> found that individuals rated videos of elite men\u2019s soccer players higher than women\u2019s, as Time<\/em><\/a> reported. Nevertheless, when the players\u2019 genders were obscured, they rated the 2 groups similarly.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether one looks at revenue, investment, or coverage, men\u2019s sports do higher than women\u2019s. Many assume that absolute differences in quality of athletic performance are the driving force,\u201d the authors wrote within the study. \u201cNevertheless, the existence of stereotypes should alert us to a different possibility: gender information might influence perceived quality.\u201d<\/p>\n The ad\u2019s release couldn\u2019t have come at a greater time: With the Women\u2019s World Cup kicking off this week in Australia and Recent Zealand, there will probably be loads of opportunity to see just how incorrect these gender biases are\u2014and the way truly exciting women\u2019s sports may be.<\/p>\n Related:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n