Björn Bünger

Who's Afraid of Women's Football? Gender Inequality and Football Success

In this paper, we study the applicability of success in women’s football as an indicator for female empowerment. Since football was for a long time a male-dominated sport, women’s success in this sport may be a suitable empowerment measure. As a proxy variable for success, we employ the world ranking of women football teams. Applying Dijkstra’s requirements for indices (parsimony, data availability, ease of calculation and interpretation, intertemporal and international comparability), we conclude that the women’s football teams world rankings may meet these requirements better than the established composite gender equality indices. Moreover, the latter indices are highly and significantly correlated with the sport success measure used here.

The Political Pursuit of Happiness: A Popperian Perspective on Layard’s Happiness Policy

For Richard Layard, happiness should constitute the guiding principle of public policy. However, it remains unclear whether there is a convincing justification for such kinds of happiness policies. To shed some light on this issue, Layard’s battle against status competition for enhancing happiness is evaluated by applying a Popperian perspective. That is, we apply Popper’s evaluation scheme by determining whether Layard’s position meets four criteria derived from Karl Popper’s philosophy. At the normative level, status competition cannot be considered only a social vice, but also a social virtue. At the epistemological level, Layard’s policy advice seems problematic, as it is based on the assumption that the government is able to differentiate between positive and negative incentives arising from status competition. Regarding the political level, Layard argues that counteracting the effects of the status race is a major objective of public policy. Layard is optimistic that the issue of consensus among citizens can be solved, but it remains unclear whether this optimism is justified. He is also confident that the problems of implementation can be overcome. However, there may be a general incompatibility between the level of coercion and status competition, since the latter is deeply rooted in human nature. To sum up, there is neither a convincing argument for stricter measures to combat status competition, nor does political enforcement seem feasible with voters who presumably suffer from ‘false’ preferences. Moreover, there is no clear-cut normative argument to combat status competition from a Popperian perspective. As a more general result, a reorientation of public policy towards happiness, as recommended by Layard, does not seem advisable.