Nike Doesn’t Sell U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team Jerseys to Men

When a national soccer team wins a FIFA World Cup, it marks the accomplishment by embroidering a small star onto its uniforms—the sporting equivalent of Dr. Seuss’s Sneetches on Beaches. After Germany’s men’s team won in Brazil this summer, its fourth World Cup victory, Adidas couldn’t keep up with demand for the team’s new four-star jerseys. In the U.S., the men’s national team has zero stars; the women’s team has two. Nike sells replica jerseys for both, and their design, other than the stars, is the same. Nike doesn’t, however, sell the two-starred jerseys in men’s sizes.

The small symbols have large significance. And their absence in men’s sizes has frustrated at least one customer wanting to display his allegiance to the women’s team at the 2015 World Cup in Canada next June. On this week’s Men in Blazers podcast, a weekly chat on all things soccer by two British expats, hosts Michael Davies and Roger Bennett discussed an e-mail from a reader complaining that he was “stuck either wearing a jersey without the stars or trying to squeeze into a youth jersey.” Bennett addressed the apparel brand directly: “Nike, it’s a plea from us to you: Don’t be sexist. Let us support our women without losing our dignity.”