Study Finds Women Watch Sports for Partners - as part of the news series by GeoBeats.

A recent study focused on women’s interest level in watching sports, and what sports, if any, they were interested in. One of the lead authors of the study Erin Whiteside, of the University of Tennessee who worked alongside Professor Marie Hardin of Penn State University, said: “What we found was that sports fandom for these women was not associated with leisure as much as it was with the maintenance of relationships, notably with the key men in their lives.” Watching, reading about, or following sports was not a part of the women’s lives, but they did express a limited interest in sports like gymnastics, figure skating, or tennis.

Interestingly though, the women unanimously agreed that they like to watch the Olympics because of the short duration of the competition and the readily available information about the players during the broadcast. More women might not be watching sports, but more women are participating in competitive sports, at least in the Olympics, where the 2012 games in London are the first games ever where all of the participating countries are sending a women athlete to compete.