June 4, 2015
But in the United States—where the female soccer players are more elite than the men and their success has helped to foster huge increases in girls’ participation in athletics—there’s also a question of whether the new jerseys are an indicator of earnest moves toward gender parity or merely a symbolic gesture from a company looking to expand its bid for dominance among female consumers. As Marc Bain pointed out in Quartz, Nike isn’t really focused on “men who might buy the women’s team jersey.” Instead, Bain writes, “the gesture should buy Nike good will among female shoppers.”