Video Assistant Referee (VAR), gender and football refereeing: a scoping review

ABSTRACT The increasing use of VAR globally affects the refereeing role and may have unintended gendered consequences for referees. This scoping review 1) summarizes and maps the research on refereeing, gender, and VAR in football, 2) identifies and analyzes knowledge gaps in the field, and 3) suggests recommendations for practice, and future research. The review indicates that the combination of gender and technology, and how they impact the refereeing role, is not featured in research. Instead, VAR studies mainly focus on the outcome of decisions, while research on gender and refereeing concerns individual experiences of female referees. The review further shows the implementation of certain technologies in football, and their consequences for male and female referees, has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. Future studies should utilize organizational, intersectional, and medial perspectives to understand how VAR and other novel refereeing technologies can be used to achieve gender equity in refereeing.


Introduction
Although the implementation of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in football has led to debate and controversy, it has also been applauded as a technological innovation for greater transparency and fairness in refereeing.Hence, VAR has been met with both support and resistance by players, fans, and referees. 1In the 2018/2019 season FIFA included VAR in the "Laws of the Game" for footballing leagues. 2 The intention is to apply it to a growing number of leagues internationally, as the training and affordability of VAR develops.Elite referees are greatly affected by VAR, however few studies have investigated the impact of VAR on male and female football referees.The use of VAR in football refereeing is a growing research field. 3At the same time, more scholarly attention is given to gender issues in refereeing.This research shows that there is a lack of gender equity in football refereeing, especially in men's football. 4VAR has currently been implemented almost exclusively in the men's game, where few women act as referees, 5 impacting female elite referees' career opportunities.
Feminist studies shows how digital technologies affect gender relations and contribute to the discrimination of women in society. 6In other words, technology is not gender-neutral, and VAR is no exception.Technology is developed by someone and for someone to use.There are many male technology creators, which often results in technologies designed by and for men. 7The intertwining of technology, men and masculinity helps to explain why technologies are developed in certain ways and lead to a gender polarization where men design technology and women use it, 8 thus making technologies gendered by association and design. 9Technologies used in sport are costly and often require expertise. 10For example, VAR requires technological resources (e.g. up to 12 cameras operating per game), human resources (e.g. a minimum of three people in the VAR operating room) and media resources (TV companies willing to fund VAR by providing cameras and video clips for analysis by referees).As a consequence, novel technologies are mainly used in men's elite sports.VAR is a prime example of this.
From this starting point, the purpose of this scoping review is to map the current research on gender, refereeing, and VAR in football.Specifically, the aim is to: (1) summarize and map the existing research literature on refereeing, gender, and VAR in football, (2) identify and analyse any knowledge gaps in the research field, and (3) make suggestions for practice and future research.
The next section elaborates on the search strategy and procedures of the scoping review, and describes the characteristics of the included literature.The results of the scoping review are then presented.This is followed by a section analysing the current state, emerging trends, and suggestions for future studies, of the research fields of VAR, football refereeing, and gendered issues.Lastly, a concluding section summarizes the main findings.

Methods
This article is based on a scoping review, which is a type of research synthesis aiming to set the course for future research focus.This is done by mapping literature in certain fields on particular topics, and identifying research gaps. 11This part of the article presents the search strategy and review procedures.

Search strategy
This review is limited to peer-reviewed articles searchable in scientific databases in order to ensure the quality of the reviewed literature.I chose Scopus, ISI Web of Science and SportsDiscus because the international scholarly community acknowledges them as being of high quality. 12These databases also include research on both sports science and social science more broadly.I saw this as important given that football, technology, and gender intersect multiple disciplines.However, defining a search string to identify articles concerning VAR, refereeing, and gender proved challenging.The novelty of both VAR in football and gender perspectives in sports technology led to a combination of three different search strings to cover what are effectively two research fields, since the search string (football) OR (soccer) AND (referee) OR (umpire) AND (technology) AND (gender) OR (women) OR (female) provided zero results across all three databases.To identify articles dealing with the use of VAR in football refereeing I used the search string (football) OR (soccer) AND (referee) OR (umpire) AND (video assistant referee) OR (VAR).As modern football applies technologies (e.g.goal-line technology, GPS-tracking and other wearables) that are beyond the scope of this article, I chose "video assistant referee" instead of "technology" to specify the search.
Studies focusing on gender and the football refereeing role were identified using the search string (football) OR (soccer) AND (referee) OR (umpire) AND (gender) OR (women) OR (female).Many of the articles mentioned both "gender" and "referee" in their abstracts, without actually discussing gender in relation to the refereeing role.In many cases, gender simply referred to a gender-mixed sample of research participants included in the study.I conducted the initial literature search in January 2022.Every search, across the different search strings, was in titles, keywords and abstracts.In total I retrieved 110 articles for further consideration (see Table 1).

Review procedures
After removing any duplicates and excluding one article due to not being able to access the full text, 13 I considered the abstracts of the remaining 75 articles using a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria.These are presented in Table 2.
The exclusion criterion "technology behind VAR" refers to studies of the technicalities (e.g.frames per second, image resolution, etc.) of VAR.These studies do not fit the scope of this review.Additionally, studies exploring fans' perceptions of VAR 14 are excluded, as they do not indicate how VAR impacts the refereeing role or gender equity in refereeing.My own language abilities also limits the literature review to articles written in English, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.Furthermore, studies of football and other kinds of technological aids or machine learning techniques 15 are excluded from the review.The flow chart (Figure 1) shows an overview of the review process.
After I screened the abstracts, I excluded 49 articles using five main reasons (Figure 1).The first refers to studies with a focus on technology in general but not specifically on VAR.The second reason refers to studies with fans', players' or managers' perspectives, while reason three represents football studies not focusing on gender and/or referees (e.g.female fans).Reason four relates to studies focusing on the health and nutrition of referees, and reason five refers to studies conducted on sports other than football.
I read the 26 remaining articles (SportDiscus n = 8, Scopus, n = 14, ISI Web of Knowledge, n = 4) in-depth and chose to exclude three additional articles: Nordstrom et al. 16 for being about American football, rather than football (soccer), Samuel et al. 17 for being a conceptual paper on decision making (DM), but not VAR or gender, and Sánchez et al. 18 because theirs is a strictly methodological paper with no results considering referees or sexual harassment.Furthermore, I examined the reference lists of the included articles to identify additional works that could be included in the review.This process led to the inclusion of two additional articles. 19Lastly, the review process led to the inclusion two additional articles 20 that were published during the peer-review process of this scoping review.

Analysis
I used thematic analysis to analyse the identified literature. 21This analysis method gives an overview of patterns in the material, 22 which connects to the first purpose mentioned in the introduction.The thematic analysis in this review can be linked to what Bratberg 23 describes as "content analysis", where for instance, different parts of the texts was analysed with a focus on meanings and the use of certain terms or words (e.g."he" when talking about referees). 24 scoping should not only give an overview of research findings, but also compare and find patterns in the reviewed literature.In my thematic analysis the material contains information from many different texts creating a need for a systematic way of comparing. 25To this end, I created a table of results (Table 3) providing an overview of the included articles and (short) descriptive information about the focus and findings of all the included studies, also called "descriptive matrices". 26Based on my analysis, I identified some main themes.The first is that research on gender issues and refereeing applies an individual perspective.This means that they utilize a bottom-up approach of personal experiences of (female) referees.Furthermore, these studies either emphasize female referees and their experiences of being in a male dominated profession, or the barriers and challenges of being and becoming referees (both male and female referees).The most prominent theme in VAR research is the overweight of quantitative mapping studies focusing on decision outcomes, rather than referees.

Limitations
This review, like any other methodological approach, has some limitations.The study only considers articles in English, 27 something that may impact the final sample.In future research, the criteria could be extended to include literature in several languages in order to broaden the findings.However, this would require resources to employ a multi-lingual team of researchers.Furthermore, the analysis was done by only one author, which may be a weakness considering that reviews are often undertaken collaboratively to ensure quality of interpretations and categorizations. 28The quality of the review is therefore dependent on the sole author's abilities to analyse the identified articles, which could have benefitted from asking additional researchers to analyse and discuss the material together.

Results
The total number of included articles in the review is 27 (Figure 1).No articles were identified that linked VAR, gender, and refereeing.Hence, the included studies represent two research fields: 1)    studies dealing with gender issues and football refereeing (n = 14) and 2) VAR and football refereeing (n = 13).The results of the scoping review are summarized in Table 3.
Gender and refereeing research mainly consists of studies from the USA, Canada and the UK.However, this also appear to be a rapidly developing field, considering five studies were published between 2019-2022, 29 while only one study was dated before 2014. 30Studies mostly focus on individual perspectives, 31 barriers for career development, and experiences of being a female football referee. 32.The experiences concerns female referees constantly having to prove they are good enough, while men are naturally perceived as good referees.This is often due to "good referee" being defined by stereotypes depicting female referees as incompetent, weak, unfit and unskilled. 33arriers for career development relates to studies showing (see Table 4) female referees being more exposed to violence and discrimination. 34, and experiencing a broader set of gendered barriers than their male counterparts. 35These studies often have similar findings researching gendered experiences and how they work to exclude female referees.However, similarity is also due to women being treated as an homogenous group when researching referees, meaning that nuancing in how women experience refereeing differently is overlooked.Regarding footballing environments, Hacicaferoglu and Gündogdu 36 argues that organizations consciously working to prevent mobbing behaviour see less of this type of practice.
VAR-studies in football is also a novel field.All of the 13 included studies were published in 2019 37 or later. 38The VAR studies consist of data from 19 different countries, mostly central Europe (England, Germany, Italy), Israel, Turkey, and the USA.VAR studies mentions referees' decision making as one of the most complex aspects of the refereeing role. 39Therefore, Samuel et al. 40 emphasizes the importance of providing support for referees undergoing technical change, through setting clear goals, being tolerant of mistakes, and protecting referees from media scrutiny.However, I argue that these studies examines the outcome of decision-making processes rather than referees' experiences using VAR.The outcome of decisions, 41 are studied through quantitative mapping studies of how VAR impacts the total number of decisions. 42Table 5 shows an overview of which situations the included studies focus on: The focus of these studies is how (potential) changes in outcome of decisions represents evidence of how VAR impacts the game of football.For instance, Errekagorri et al. 43 studies how VAR increases total playing time and physical performance.They argue that changes are relatively small, 44 which e.g.Lago-Peñas et al. 45 supports, and concludes that VAR does not modify the game of football. 46owever, when evaluating VAR's impact on the game of football, it is important which decisions are evaluated (see Table 4).For instance, Spitz et al. 47 leaves all "grey zone" situations out of their analysis, which contributes to an image of the efficiency of VAR.Excluding all "grey zone" situations makes VAR appear more accurate than it really is, creating a falsified image of VAR's efficiency.Consequently, experiences of referees working with a tool which appears to be perceived as infallible, while they tend to be blamed for mistakes, is overlooked in current research.

Discussion: setting a research agenda
As the results indicate, there are two topics which will be important in future research agenda: 1) VAR research ignoring the referee, and 2) VAR in football being a gender blind research field.The results shows that research has yet to examine how the implementation of VAR may impact the gendering of football refereeing.This is already present when considering experiences by female referees.These often relate to how they are perceived by players and coaches 48 and gender based assumptions about abilities as referees. 49VAR research seems to ignore the referees, and therefore ignores technology and gender issues, in refereeing.In this section, I discuss the findings from the 27 identified articles jointly from a meta-perspective.Based on this discussion a research agenda is proposed.

VAR research: ignoring the referee?
Lago-Peñas et al. 50state that the purpose of technology in refereeing is threefold: to support referees' decisions, to replace decisions, and to help in the enforcement of the rules.VAR is placed in the first category as a supporting technology for referees. 51The 13 identified VAR-studies indicates that VAR research mostly focuses on the outcome of decisions the referee makes, rather than the refereeing role. 52Referees are treated as passive agents, rather than stakeholders making decisions that affects the outcome of situations, with or without VAR.
The outcome of decisions refers to differences in a number of variables (see Table 4), but not VAR's role in changing referees' decision-making processes.For instance, VAR is credited for making the outcome of decisions fairer, but when mistakes are made the referee tends to get the blame.A common narrative for the legitimization of VAR in current research is how it improves accuracy and issues of bias in refereeing. 53There appear to be expectations of eliminating bias and having flawless refereeing decisions when VAR is implemented.This may cause a shift in who has authority when making such decisions, e.g. when on-field referees do not adhere to the VAR recommendations. 54Samuel et al. 55 argue that: "there is zero room for errors in the VAR, while onfield errors get more tolerated".The intended impartialness of referees, influenced mostly by external factors (e.g.crowd noise), causes a well-documented home team advantage (bias), often in the form of penalties given, stoppage time decisions, and disciplinary sanctions. 56older et al. 57 suggests home team bias persists with VAR due to the advantages of playing in one's local surroundings.VAR does not eliminate bias yet, although Han et al. 58 suggest that when VAR technology improves, decisions made with VAR will become faster and more accurate.Hence, when there was home team bias before VAR it was the referee's fault, but when the same bias persists after VAR's implementation it is due to the advantages of playing at home (known surroundings, friendly atmosphere, etc.).Therefore, VAR research implicitly (or in the case of Han et al. 59 , explicitly) argues that referees have to adapt their refereeing style to fit VAR, not vice versa.This could mean referees supporting the technology rather than the technology supporting referees, which Lago-Peñas et al. argues is the purpose. 60 main finding from this analysis is that current VAR studies tend to overlook the infallibility of football refereeing.Zglinski 61 argues that one of the problems with VAR is that it is presented as a neutral tool that "always" makes the right call.This is problematic considering that there is not always a clear right or wrong answer.Many decisions are "grey zone" decisions, that can go either way.This may result in situations where referees are overturned by VAR, or "hold back", because they know VAR will (can/should) intervene. Hoder et al. 62 argues that the number of penalties awarded by referees directly after VAR's implementation has decreased, which could be an example of referees withdrawing from making penalty decisions for fear of "losing face".63 Not withdrawing from decision-making may be extra challenging for inexperienced referees, who tend to be more insecure when making decisions.64 Holder et al. 65 conclude that as VAR does not often intervene, the fear of "losing face" is minimal amongst football referees in Germany and Italy.However, the number of penalties given with VAR match the number of penalties before VAR, because VAR detects many of these situations and corrects the referees' decisions.This is interpreted as evidence of the effectiveness of VAR, which overlooks that by having VAR, the fear of "losing face" exists, and the tendency to withdraw from making decisions is amplified.66 Reviewed literature demonstrates that research currently ignores how referees' experiences VAR, and how VAR may force referees into a more passive refereeing role, since the fear of being corrected may increase.If referees are more inclined to withdraw from decision-making 67 VAR may move into the second purpose of technology in sports refereeing: replacing decisions.68 Withdrawing from decision-making has serious impact on both the refereeing role, and the game itself, and should be given greater attention in VAR research.For example using qualitative approaches to explore how referees experience VAR as a tool intervening the decision-making processes.Samuel et al. 69 argues studies have yet to investigate how referees modify their officiating style with VAR, underlining a main finding from the reviewed literature: VAR research seems to overlook the referee.
Studies should investigate how the power balance between VAR and the head referee affects the refereeing role and the use of VAR, especially with mix-gender refereeing teams.For one, quantitative studies could examine the gender representation across refereeing teams, and VAR-teams.VAR is not "just" a technological tool, but is worked by humans who make decisions about what to review and where to recommend changes to the on-field referee.Therefore, qualitative studies could explore how this is experienced by men and women working with VAR.Of the reviewed VAR studies, only Lucić et al. 70 and Samuel et al. 71 refer to referees' experiences of the implementation of VAR.Lucić et al. 72 does this through a quantitative approach (see Table 3), focusing on expectations and factors for the implementation of VAR to be successful.However, the authors do not explore why some of these factors are important.For instance, arguing that VAR "works better than expected", 73 without discussing what referees expected from VAR in the first place.Samuel et al. 74 examines how referees experience VAR as a new tool in their careers as elite referees, and is the only identified study of how referees experience VAR.
Additionally, the effect of longer games, which studies show to be a consequence after implementing VAR, 75 largely due to VAR checks taking additional time, is something future studies should investigate.Prolonged games, involving more start-stops (the game is stopped during VAR checks) might increase the risk of injuries for players and referees.A hypothesis to examine in future studies could be that the physical requirements of elite refereeing will increase following the implementation of VAR.Further hypothesis to investigate could be how the increased physical requirements impacts training load and motivation among referees.
Regarding training, Spitz et al. 76 argues referees should have more decision-making training to secure consistency in decisions.Lucić et al. 77 argues VAR-training should happen throughout referees' careers while Samuel et al. 78 argues referees' needing enough time to learn and work with VAR before implementation to make it successful.In other words, quantitative studies examining the contents and structure of VAR-training would be valuable, as is qualitative studies exploring how referees experience this training, and any needs for additional training.A hypothesis is that the increased need for training and the importance of training all aspects of VAR will lead to an increase in full time referees.Current VAR studies fail to discuss these issues, and as Han et al. 79 suggests, more research needs to examine how VAR impacts the refereeing role through analyses of referees' perspectives of VAR.
There is also lack of studies with an organizational perspective on implementation of VAR.This is needed to understand how football organizations adopt and work with novel technologies, as well as issues of sexism, discrimination and the lack of gender equity in refereeing.Especially since an inherent gender bias, a strong valuation of masculinity, and heterosexuality 80 causes football organizations to overlook issues of sexism in refereeing.Specifically, there is lack of studies of how organizations can use technologies to improve gender equity in elite refereeing.A hypothesis is that there could be new possibilities to act as VAR-referee in the men's game, which is independent of physique often highlighted as difference between male and female referees. 81Also, professionalizing the women's game, and making the step towards female referees being full-time referees.Studies needs to explore how technologies might impact the retention of female elite football referees and the recruitment and promotion of women in elite football refereeing.This could be done through both quantitative and qualitative approaches.Qualitatively exploring how the abovementioned possibilities are perceived by the governing bodies in football, as well as the (female) referees themselves is needed.Quantitative approaches could investigate the hypothesis that female referees given VAR-education and practice will continue as referees longer than those excluded from VAR.Another option is survey studies examining the possibilities and challenges organizations experience regarding the impact of novel technologies on gender equity.As men are assumed to be "closer" to the notion of a "football referee" identity 82 football organizations needs to invest in well-being and security of referees to avoid losing organizational knowledge and suffer reputational damage if referees quit. 83As of now, becoming a "good referee" seems to be each individual woman's task, rather than part of a collective, organizational concern. 84

VAR in football: a gender-blind research field
None of the identified studies examined how the implementation of VAR impacts the gendering of football refereeing.At present, VAR research consists of studies of men's football, as all but one 85 of the VAR studies included (n = 13) in this review have been conducted on men's football.This can be seen as a consequence of VAR almost exclusively being implemented in men's football leagues globally.The fact that sports technologies are expensive 86 combined with women's football being commercially limited compared to men's football (e.g.fewer cameras in TV production, and unfavourable broadcasting times) limits the growth of women's football. 87Men's football is financially strong and enjoys more attention from TV companies which makes VAR a digital sports technology affecting gender relations.Therefore, VAR (unintentionally) contributes to the prolonged discrimination of women in football 88 by being a type of technological development increasing the commercialization differences between men's and women's elite football.This is shown in research as well, where Han et al. 89 states the tournaments internationally using VAR without mentioning the women's World Cup.Likewise, Kubayi et al. 90 explore the impact of VAR in the men's World Cup of 2014 and 2018 (before and after VAR), but fail to mention why they not examine the women's World Cup of 2015 and 2019 (before and after VAR).Thus, current research seems to overlook examples of the implementation of VAR in women's football, underlining the intertwining of technology and gender.Gender relations might come in to play when a woman uses VAR to "correct" a male referee, or vice versa, given that the refereeing role is traditionally associated with men and masculinity. 91This contributes to technologies affecting gender relations. 92he lack of gender perspectives in VAR research could be due to VAR mostly being implemented in men's football.The fact that few women are employed as coaches and referees in men's elite football, 93 might increase gendering of football referees currently overlooked by current research.Still, gender perspectives should also be applied with data from only men's football to problematize Fox et al's 94 claim that technology is developed by, and for, men.The use of masculinity perspectives could be utilized as men too are gendered in regards to expectations towards them in refereeing.
Gendered stereotypes of the refereeing role 95 might increase with VAR, especially with the extensive implementation in men's football.Most VAR studies shows how gender is taken for granted through the language used, for example using "he" when talking about referees, as Errekagorri et al. 96 do.Also, Gürler and Polat 97 refer to the referee as "he" or "his", as do Holder et al. 98 This makes VAR gendered by association, which Wajcman et al. 99 argues happens when technology is developed and used in gender-blind ways.Studies using poststructuralist perspectives analysing power and language could give insights regarding gendered consequences of skewed power balance represented through the way "referee" is understood.This also occurs in studies on gender issues in refereeing where it is implicit who is a referee, e.g. when discussing education levels: "to move up from Regional to Federation level he has to pass an examination". 100The same thing occurs in Karabulut et al. 101 , Ignatov et al. 102 , and Hacicaferoglu and Gündogdu 103 when discussing referees' education levels.Implicitly, a referee is a man, and a woman referee is something unusual.Therefore, expectations of masculinity in refereeing with VAR could be examined.Since studies of gender issues in refereeing shows that when examining gender in refereeing it is women in refereeing, studies should be examining the homosocial experiences with a gendered lens.Additionally, qualitative studies with male referees examining how expectations around masculinity are furthered in VAR would be valuable.
A main finding in this review is that both identified research fields are shaped by an apparent sex-data gap, creating the paradox of women being the focus of gender in refereeing, while at the same time being overlooked in studies.The field of gender issues in refereeing, where all 13 included studies to some degree focus on gender and the refereeing role, had a total sample of 1901 referees (elite or amateur) as informants.Only 228 of them were female referees (1673 male), across both qualitative and quantitative studies.That means that only 12% of the informants in the identified articles in the field of gender and refereeing are female referees.The academic literature on football remains dominated by work on the men's game. 104One of the studies 105 considers women to have more barriers becoming football referees, based on a survey of 148 football referees of whom only 9 are women.Hence, women are seldom present in referee studies, also where gender is an explicit purpose of study.The exception is qualitative studies exclusively focusing on experiences and barriers (see Table 5) of being a female referee. 106Kavasoğlu 107 includes 7 referees, of whom 2 are women, the reason being that few women referee football in Turkey.Those who were included only contributed through informal conversations in fear of being recognized. 108.There is also a need to nuance the category of women used in these studies and include intersectional perspectives.The experiences of e.g.being a women of colour from outside of Europe being a referee in the age of VAR might be different from white women in Europe.
Against this backdrop, studies would do well to explore which referees are given (access to) VAR-training.There is a need to deepen the understanding of how technologies like VAR, when developed and used for mainly men's football, contribute to the discrimination of women. 109specially since technology increases differences in commercialization between men's and women's football. 110A hypothesis in such studies might be that male referees will have greater access to VAR.Another hypothesis is that since VAR requires more referees per game, young (male) referees might be promoted earlier.On the other hand, experienced referees might stay in refereeing longer after VAR, especially since the impact of ageing has shown to be overstated in refereeing. 111A hypothesis could be that the limited physical requirements of being a VAR-referee prolongs referees career in elite football, reducing the chance of promoting (female) referees, since new positions does not become available.
Access to VAR-training is also related to geographical location.Most of the analysed VAR studies are situated in Europe. 112Only three of the identified empirical VAR studies are from other parts of the world: China, 113 Israel 114 and Brazil/Russia. 115This is a somewhat skewed representation, given that VAR is used globally.For instance, the USA has used VAR in the men's league (MLS) since 2017, and it has also been implemented in the Argentinian league, the Uruguayan league, and the CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers in South and North America.Furthermore, VAR is also used in South Korea and Japan in Asia, and Morocco and Tunisia in Africa.However, studies in other languages may have investigated some of these contexts, which would naturally add to the current knowledge of VAR globally.Still, quantitative studies examining the differences, globally and between men and women's football, in VAR-use is valuable.One hypothesis might be that the extensive implementation of VAR in European men's football gives male referees in this region an advantage.
VAR-studies representing other contexts than Europe is needed especially considering the reviewed literature shows issues of gender discrimination experienced by female referees seem to be global, with similar findings in different countries and continents, spanning from Canada, 116 the UK, 117 Bulgaria, 118 Turkey, 119 South-Korea 120 and France. 121It is also evident that most of the studies are from North America or Europe.Elsewhere in the world there is a lack of studies in the fields of gender and refereeing, and refereeing and VAR, which is noteworthy considering the global span of football as a sport.
Since the implementation in 2018/19, 122 VAR has gotten a lot of media attention.This makes for interesting data for researchers to investigate.I suggest two ways of doing such research: 1) using media texts to formulate research questions and hypothesis' based on current discourses in football.One concrete example would be to investigate consequences for referees making mistakes with VAR, especially when being past the age limit of on-field referees. 1232) utilizing media texts as data for quantitative or qualitative content analysis to study how VAR is gendered in various ways.The discussions regarding VAR in women's football is relevant to expand the field of VAR, gender and refereeing. 124This could also be done comparatively across different countries.Furthermore, intersectionality perspectives (with VAR) is also something for further studies to investigate, through e.g.experiences of being a referee of colour 125 or minorities such as Sikh. 126

What's at stake? Concluding thoughts on the need for gender perspectives in VAR research
This review shows that VAR is a gender blind research field.This gender blindness is both methodological and through categorizations of referee as "he".There is a need for research examining gendered consequences of VAR, given that technology impacts gender relations and have been shown to contribute to the discrimination of women, in other social contexts. 127dditionally, with exceptions of a few studies, 128 there is a need to explore both VAR and gendered aspects of refereeing in Asia and Africa.VAR is implemented in many countries and leagues globally, including Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Morocco and Tunisia.Therefore, this type of research is just as important in Asia and Africa as it is in the global north, since VAR contributes to shaping women's conditions and career possibilities as referees.However, VAR-studies mostly focus on the outcome of decision-making processes, rather than VAR's impact on the refereeing role.
None of the analysed studies examines: 1) the understanding of how VAR impacts the refereeing role, authority, and decision making from the referees' perspective, 2) how the implementation of VAR may intentionally or unintentionally hinder or promote women in elite refereeing, or 3) structural analyses of how VAR can be used as a tool for the promotion of gender equity in elite football refereeing by football organizations.Future studies could employ masculinity, intersectionality, poststructuralist and mediatization perspectives to these concerns, given the current lack of gender equity amongst referees and the organizations working with referees as instructors, mentors, and administrators.
The gendered inequalities of VAR highlighted in this review is pivotal given the skewed gender representation in elite refereeing.Recruitment and retention of referees is already a major challenge, 129 but becomes even harder if women is excluded from recruitment.VAR reinforces gendered inequalities, while at the same time requiring more referees per game. 130This might cause female referees to be even more marginalized, instead of VAR providing new possibilities for a career in refereeing.Therefore, the future of elite refereeing might be in jeopardy Notes

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Flow chart of the review process.

Table 1 .
Number of articles identified in each search string.

Table 2 .
Inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Table 3 .
Articles included in the review.

Table 4 .
Barriers and challenges for female referees.Barriers and challenges for female referees Lack of organizational support(Kim and Hong, 2016)Being depicted as a female referee (Reid and Dallaire, 2019) Negotiating towards 'masculine identity' as referee (Reid and Dallaire, 2020; Forbes, Edwards, and Fleming, 2015) More exposed to mobbing than male referees, and mobbing with gendered aspect (Hacicaferoglu and Gündogdu, 2014) Lack of peer-group support (Kim and Hong, 2016) More responsible for domestic chores (Perreau-Niel and Erard, 2015) and increased work-family conflict(Kim and Hong, 2016)

Table 5 .
Quantitative statistical variables in VAR studies.