A GENDER ANALYSIS OF ITALIAN FOOTBALL: A MANAGERIAL, ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL APPROACH

The paper analyses gender differences in Italian Football with a three level approach including managerial, economics and social aspects. This enables a more realistic comparison between male and female football and eventually permits to develop a purpose built model to enhance female football. We adopt a new methodology of accounting for human capital in sport considering the overall economic impact of a player on the success of her team. Reconsidering, also on the basis of social and inclusiveness criteria (i.e, considering cooperative behaviors, capability of inclusion, and so on), the items included in traditional accountancy practices, we partly fill the gap between the economic performances of female and male societies. This should allow to reconcile the evaluation of female and male teams. Furthermore, we want to understand if different evaluations of success for male and female teams stem from stereotypes or from actual performances. We use both surveys and experiments to measure how the level of appreciation of different gender performances depends on technical characteristics, expectations or preconcepts. In the experiments equivalent performances of different gender are submitted through video clips to gender constellations of supporters, players, coaches and managers. Survey elicit motivations and perceptions in male and female teams. Also the degree of involvement in decision making and strategies implementation by gender is considered with its potential effect on profits and popularity. The stemming indicators are applied to balance sheets items to produce a fairer comparison between the value added produced by different genders in football.