admin Women’s sports have come a long way since 1940s till date. Along with this transformation, many changes have occurred within the sports industry catering to the needs of women. One of the areas where change has occurred is the dress code. The FIFA Women’s World Cup is currently underway in Australia and New Zealand, and the athletes have switched their white shorts from their kits to be more mindful about periods. This change makes a difference for the athletes.
In April 2023, England’s national women’s football team notably decided to swap out their white shorts for a more practical navy pair. Around the same time, the New Zealand national team chose to forgo white shorts in their World Cup kits in Favor of teal blue. In 2019, the US Women’s National Team won the World Cup final in all-white kits, but this year, both their home and away uniforms have dark blue shorts. This movement isn’t exclusive to World Cup-bound teams, either; the Orlando Pride, part of the US’s National Women’s Soccer League, also announced their switch to black shorts in February in an effort to “make players more comfortable and confident when playing during their menstrual cycle.”
During discussions with the Football Association, the English players voiced their concern of wearing white on the pitch during that time of the month. The FA agreed to switch from white to navy which adheres to the colour scheme of the national kit.
The team famously rallied as part of an unofficial campaign to get the uniform changed. Striker Beth Mead contacted Nike, England’s official kit manufacturer — which recently unveiled its first menstruation base layers (i.e., period shorts) for the 2023 World Cup — to discuss the change. “It’s very nice to have an all-white kit, but sometimes it’s not practical when it’s that time of the month,” the 28-year-old Arsenal striker said, according to The Guardian. “We deal with it [menstruation] as best as we can but we discussed the shorts issue together as a team and fed our views through to Nike. “In addition to nixing white shorts from the lineup, Nike also provided its new period shorts as a uniform base layer for all 13 federations it’s outfitting at the World Cup.
Although this may be a subtle change but for women athletes this is a historical change, as it first started at the Wimbledon 2022. The all-white dress code of the Wimbledon tennis championships had been around since the Victorian era, yet it disproportionally affected women athletes during their menstrual cycle. The organizers changed this rule last summer to allow female competitors to wear mid- to dark-coloured undershorts, provided they’re no longer than the player’s shorts or skirt.
When Nike was developing their new period short, they came to a similar conclusion: In their “Teen Girl Insights Project” Nike researchers found that, “by age 14, girls are dropping out of sport at twice the rate of boys. And by age 17, an age at which most have gone through puberty, 51 percent will have quit,” Lisa Gibson, senior apparel innovation project manager for the Nike Advanced Innovation Collective, told POPSUGAR. “We know periods aren’t the only reason she drops out of sport, but it is a critical component . . . that fear of bleed-through is very real; it doesn’t just last when you’re a teenager, it really lasts your entire adventure with menstruation.”
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