Why women love Formula 1
Spoiler: It’s because women like sports
In the summer of 2023, my wife and I took a trip to London. On the advice of a local friend, we went to the Humble Crumble in Spitalfields Market, near our hotel. Although the line was long, our friend assured us that it was well worth the wait. So, we waited.
In line ahead of us was a group of young women (probably in their 20s). My wife and I people watch like it’s our job, so, we both listened in as several women in the group explained Formula 1 to their uninitiated friend, in preparation for the British Grand Prix that would take place a few days later. We were both delighted by this conversation, not least because I was in the early stages of developing a queer F1 romance and I was witnessing my potential audience out in the wild.
We weren’t able to go to Silverstone, but a few days later we watched the British Grand Prix on a jumbotron at a London park. We noticed an astonishing gender parity in the crowd of fans, and an even more astonishing trend that I’ve seen replicated several times: women explaining the sport to men.
Anecdotally, I’ve continued to notice relative gender parity among crowds of F1 fans. Among my own students, the most rabid and knowledgeable fans have been girls.
As a quick note before we proceed: I am not a journalist. I have not done any research. Everything I’m saying here is 100% anecdotal and me talking out my ass, but, some very smart people who have done the research are here to back me up. There’s a LOT of female F1 fans.
I have a theory about this, at least for women in the United States.
Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding. As a result, American female athletics programs have been pretty well-funded since the 1970s, (at least, compared to most of the rest of the world). This gives American female athletes an advantage on the global stage – which is one reason why the U.S. women’s soccer team is great and the men’s team is meh. But within the U.S. itself (as in much of the rest of the world) women’s sports are second tier, while men’s sports get top billing. Consider: the top athletic events in the U.S. are football games, a sport with no requisite professional female league.
Spectating and commentary are also male-dominated, and it can be challenging for female fans of any sport to just enjoy the sport without having it mansplained, being responsible for doing labor to enhance a man’s viewing experience (such as providing snacks) or receiving the backhanded “cool girl” compliment for being a woman who likes sport. (Like, seriously, can I just live?)
Enter: Formula 1.
In the US, F1 is still a pretty niche sport. As Drive to Survive started to get more Americans of all genders interested in F1, female fans entered a landscape where there wasn’t an already entrenched male fan base ready to gatekeep and mansplain. (We saw it first, lads!) This isn’t to say that there aren’t mansplainers out there, but being a woman Formula 1 fan in the US doesn’t come with nearly the same baggage as being a woman who enjoys football.
So, the answer to the question “why do so many women watch Formula 1” is really quite simple. It’s because women like sports! Lots of women watch lots of sports. It’s just that women might be finding it a little easier to carve out a less sexist space for themselves to enjoy this sport. Of course, there’s still plenty of sexism inherent in the system, which is why a sport that should ostensibly be gender neutral hasn’t had a woman drive on a Grand Prix weekend since 2015. (It was Susie Wolff, who, when she drove a practice run for Williams in 2014, was the first woman to participate in a GP weekend in more than 20 years!)
Love this!
To (hopefully) help add a little insight, we've found in our data that the split depends on the platform.
Our website traffic is 80% male, 20% female, and Facebook following is roughly the same.
But then on X, we see that change to 55% male and 45% male.
Drilling deeper, comments on our posts on Facebook are about 95% male - and it's pretty much always middle aged men arguing - however on X the overwhelming majority of comments come from women.
Finally a fun fact, on X there is a massive number of Swifties who are F1 fans, we've never dived into 'why' but it's undeniable (though it probably goes back to your point of 'women like sports'!)