Pretty much every day someone pops up on my Twitter timeline to let me know about market forces. It’s not inequality that pushes women’s sport into the shadows, it’s economics. Don’t take it personally!

This month the conversation about sport’s gender pay gap spiked with the publication of Forbes’ list of the world’s highest-paid athletes. There were no sportswomen on the list. While it’s interesting to know just how many Ferraris Neymar’s PSG contract could buy, or that it covers the wages of the top 1,693 female footballers in the world, the data paints only a partial picture of the gaping chasm of inequality in sport.

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Sports science, I would argue, is a more revealing place to start. The feminist campaigner Caroline Criado Perez is unequivocal about the lack of provision for women: “It’s more or less non-existent, making it basically impossible to offer evidence-based advice to female athletes.” Wow. That’s worrying. In research for her forthcoming book, The Other Half, she came across the absurd – and universal - practice of using male bodies as default in scientific studies.

We’ve seen over and again how ineffective this is. In 2013 the US Food and Drug Administration had to halve the recommended dose for sleeping pills given to women because women’s bodies metabolise the active ingredients more slowly. Meanwhile in 2015 there was the alcohol test for the female Viagra pill, where only 8% of those tested were women. And we know that women’s bodies are routinely treated as second class citizens.

In the United States men wait an average of 49 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain; women wait 65 minutes for the same thing. And while symptoms for men suffering a heart attack are well known, 50% of women receive the wrong diagnosis for the same condition.

In sport we see a similar pattern. Serena Williams was told by a doctor to “get over it” when she complained of debilitating headaches during her period (she was later diagnosed with menstrual migraines). Jelena Jankovic was ridiculed in the media for talking about “women’s problems” affecting her performance at Wimbledon. Menstruation and its effects on sports performance is a relatively new area of research. It is also often cited as a reason why women are not used in sports science studies, because fluctuating hormone levels in the menstrual cycle make it a more challenging process. All the more reason, you would think, that we need to study it.

Right across the data we find examples of women’s bodies being excluded. An article in the British Medical Journal reveals that only 39% of participants in sport and exercise research studies over a two-year timespan were women. And while women were well represented in metabolism and weight loss (society loves a woman on a diet) Bethany Brookshire analysed 188 sports science studies to find women poorly represented in sports performance and injury. In one sample collection of 29 studies, Brookshire found that women made up only 3% of the participants.

One key area is anterior cruciate ligament and knee injuries, a problem disproportionately affecting women’s sports. In the US it has been dubbed an epidemic. Despite this, and the severity and high reoccurrence of the injury, only 42% of the participants in studies were women. The England footballer Claire Rafferty has come back from three ACL injuries in her career.

We don’t know all of the triggers (of course we don’t, we’re using men’s bodies for research on women) but there are some indications suggesting a link between footwear and ACL ruptures. This month saw the launch of a crowdfunding initiative to manufacture football boots for women. Women’s boots do exist but you are hard pushed to find them on the high street. They often cost more than men’s and make up a fraction of the types available. The top teams have boot sponsorship, and increasingly campaigns such as Adidas’s star-studded World Cup advert include female footballers such as freestyler Caitlyn Schrepfer dazzling Zinedine Zidane with her skills. But both the representation, and the provision, remain minimal, with manufacturers claiming there isn’t the demand for women’s boots. The women behind Ida Sports, which is developing the boots, disagree. They say that up to 75% of women playing football at grassroots level are wearing either men’s, or children’s, boots. They just need to be offered a viable alternative.

A quick ring-round reveals that although some of the elite Women’s Super League players wear women’s fit boots, many don’t. I scratch my head. How can there be footballers playing in the best league in England not wearing female-fit boots?

Does it matter – if the shoe fits? Well yeah, if it doesn’t truly fit. There are four main differences between men and women’s feet: a narrower heel cup (where the shoe grips the heel), a wider forefoot leading to women buying smaller shoes to fit the heel and then getting squashed in at the toe, higher arches and – further up the skeleton – wider hips leading women to pressure-load their feet differently. For a generation of players to be wearing boots that aren’t designed to take into account these differences is a nonsense. Particularly at a time when we are trying to grow women’s sport.

No one is lobbying to buy a suite of sports cars, or mansions, for female footballers. But, surely, everyone deserves the best knowledge and insight that science can offer a sporting career. And a proper pair of boots.

Anna Kessel is a sports writer and author of Eat Sweat Play: How Sport Can Change Our Lives

• This article was amended on 22 June 2018. The US Food and Drug Administration halved the recommended dose for sleeping pills given to women, because it was found that women metabolise the active ingredients more slowly than men, not more quickly as an earlier version said.

