A record number of out LGBTQ athletes will compete in this year’s Women’s World Cup, which starts later this month in Australia and New Zealand.
At least 87 out athletes will compete this year — more than double the 38 out players who competed in the last Women’s World Cup, in 2019, according to the LGBTQ sports website Outsports.
Outsports noted that the number of teams has grown by a third, from 24 to 32, but that the jump in the number of out competitors “reflects the growth of acceptance.”
The number of out players at the Women’s World Cup also continues to rise while there were no out LGBTQ players who competed in the men’s World Cup last November. Cyd Zeigler, the founder of Outsports and a longtime LGBTQ advocate, said that’s in part because there are simply more queer women playing elite-level soccer than there are queer men doing the same.
“This is true across basketball, ice hockey and most every other sport,” Zeigler said in a statement to NBC News. “The WNBA has over 25% out women. That higher presence of out athletes naturally creates an environment where more women feel comfortable being out. As we say at Outsports, Courage Is Contagious.”
Openly LGBTQ Women’s World Cup players also make up a much larger proportion of all players at this year’s World Cup compared to the athletes who competed in the most recent winter and summer Olympic Games. According to Outsports, at least 185 out athletes competed in 2021 at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, about 1.6% of the 11,656 athletes, and at least 36 out athletes competed in the Winter Games in 2022, about 1.3% of the total 2,871 athletes.
More than 1 in 10 of this year’s 736 Women’s World Cup players — a whopping 11.8% — openly identify as lesbian, bisexual, queer or nonbinary.
However, the rate of growth between each of the competitions has been similar: The 185 out LGBTQ athletes at the most recent Summer Olympics was more than triple the 56 who participated in the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, and the 36 out athletes in the most recent Winter Games was more than double the 15 who competed in 2018 Winter Games, according to Outsports.
The total number of LGBTQ athletes in each competition is likely higher, because some players might not feel comfortable coming out publicly.
Brazil currently holds the title for the most out queer players on the Women’s World Cup roster, with 9 out of 23 identifying as LGBTQ, according to Outsports. Australia and Ireland have the second most at eight each, and Sweden has seven. The United States has at least three out players: Kristie Mewis, Kelley O’Hara and Megan Rapinoe, who announced last week that she plans to retire at the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season.
