Research on the Growth of International Women’s Football Performance:From the Perspective of Technology Diffusion

This paper studies the growth of international women's football performance based on the perspective of football technology diffusion. A convergence analysis is carried out by using a country-level data from 2003 to 2020 combined with OLS method, instrumental variable method and Heckman sample selection method. The empirical study results show that there is a conditional convergence between the performance of women's football and that of men's within a country. However, there is no evidence of international σ convergence, worldwide unconditional convergence or club convergence within a continental confederation. Furthermore, in one country, the better the performance of the men's football is, the higher gender equality the country has, the better the performance of women's football is. Therefore, the technology progress of women's football mainly depends on a mechanism of cross gender diffusion in which women's football technology transfers from domestic men's football,rather than a mechanism of international diffusion in which women's football technology comes from abroad. Technology progress space and absorptive capacity are important factors that significantly affect women's football performance. The conclusions of this paper provide enlightenment for explaining the current pattern of international women's football competition and the future development of China's women's football.