Gender equality probably does not affect performance at the Olympic games: A comment on Berdahl, Uhlmann, and Bai (2015)

In a recent article, Berdahl, Uhlmann, and Bai (2015) reported that countries with higher gender equality won more medals at the 2012 and 2014 Olympic games. This relation held for both female and male athletes. The authors, however, did not control for GDP per capita, or take into account the clustering of countries in regions. Here we show that controlling for these two factors reduces or even reverses the positive relation between gender equality and the number of Olympic medals. Gender equality was associated with fewer medals for male athletes. We argue for more careful analyses and interpretation of nation-level data.