Period anxiety and white shorts linked to drop in performance, says study author

Women's soccer teams have been ditching white shorts as part of a growing trend aimed at tackling period anxiety in sport, and new research shows that women's teams who play in white perform worse.

Alex Krumer, a sports economist and professor at Molde University College in Norway, studied the results of World Cups and European Championships between 2002 and 2023, and found women's teams wearing white shorts averaged 1.27 points per game compared to 1.57 points by teams in dark colours. Men's teams in white shorts showed no drop in performance.

"This is one of the easiest conclusions for policy advice that I can give - nothing to do with budgets, nothing to do with money. Don't play in white shorts, full stop," Krumer said in an interview with Reuters. "So easy to implement. And then women will feel good about it. And you will increase your probability of winning. It's win-win. So easy."

Krumer, whose peer-reviewed paper "On the cost of wearing white shorts in women's sport" was published recently in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, was curious about whether women's anxieties about leakage affected their performance. He found no difference in performance in men's teams wearing white.

"There is zero effect for men ... they just don't care because they don't have this menstrual anxiety or leakage anxiety," he said.

The issue made headlines ahead of last year's Women's World Cup when several countries including England and New Zealand ditched white.

"Anything that relieves the mental stress of the players is a good thing. If it's one less thing to worry about, then why not?" England defender Lucy Parker said when the change was announced, while team mate and forward Lauren Hemp called it a "massive step in