Blowing the Whistle on Gender at the World Cup: Why Six Women Referees Matter More Than the Score

I love the Olympics, and I love the World Cup, both the men’s and the women’s. At present, the men’s World Cup is underway in North America. There are three country hosts: Canada (2), the United States (11), and Mexico (3). There are 48 teams playing matches in four different time zones. On top of all that, there are also 25 other sites across North America serving as training base camps.

The logistics of using three host countries instead of one is fascinating, but do you want to know what my favourite statistic is? The number of women referees.

Six women are refereeing the games: two centre referees (Tori Penso and Katia Itzel García), three assistant referees (Brooke Mayo, Kathryn Nesbitt, and Sandra Ramírez), and one video assistant referee (Tatiana Guzmán). I watched Tori Penso referee the women’s World Cup final in August 2023 and she was fantastic. It was great news to read that two other officials from that game — Kathryn Nesbitt and Brooke Mayo — were joining Penso in WC 2026.

I haven’t seen a game yet where Penso is refereeing, but I have read a lot about her and her colleagues. There’s a great English-language article in El Pais (Spanish newspaper) where you can get snapshot biographies of the six women. I learned two things from the article: women are less than 4% of the appointed officials, and most of them began refereeing as teens.

Six may not seem a lot, but representation matters. I can’t tell you how many reels I have seen since the beginning of competition highlighting their presence. I took a look at some other stats to see how the number of women referees stacks up.

First, there’s not a lot of data, so we have to do better on that front.

Second, it looks like between 22 and 24% of the referee pool in North America is female, with Canada trending higher than the US. According to Canada Soccer, “out of the 19 elite Canadian match officials selected for the FIFA 2026 International List, 10 are women (roughly 53%).”

It occurs to me that we have a great opportunity to promote women in sports not just as athletes but also as leaders, mentors, coaches, and yes, officials. Supporting young women athletes as leaders in the refereeing sphere may become easier with the increased visibility Penso and Garcia, along with their colleagues, are getting on and off the pitch.

As we head into knockout play over the next week before we hit quarter-finals, semi-finals, and finals the week after, I’m looking forward to catching sight of these six women living their best referee lives managing World Cup matches—I hope girls and young women everywhere are watching, too.

MarthaFitat55 lives and works out on the far east coast of Canada. She’s cheering for Canada and Spain.