1. Play to Lead: The Generational Impact of Sports on Women's Leadership
- Author
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Women's Sports Foundation, Elizabeth Sharrow, Ellen Staurowsky, and Bridgette Davis
- Abstract
This report explores how has sports participation on teams for girls and women in the United States impacted participants' leadership outcomes in adulthood. It uses a unique, original, multi-cohort, and nationally representative survey of American women and gender-diverse adults (N=2,886) who played sports on teams for girls and women when they were 5-26, and who were between the ages of 20 and 80 in 2024. It connects together of what is known about leadership development through sports in an intersectionally gendered lens to better understand why sports are important in the lives of girls, women, and gender-diverse people, and how policy and practice can best promote a gender-equitable future in sports and beyond. This work extends the first 50 years of research from the Women's Sports Foundation, which consistently recognizes how participation in sports shapes the lives of girls and women for a lifetime. It explores how, across the American workforce and in communities around the country, the skills, traits, and experiences accrued in sports help girls become leaders later in their adult lives. With an eye toward leadership emergence as a developmental phenomenon, we attend to the changing circumstances of access to sports for girls and women over time, as it was dramatically impacted by the passage and implementation of Title IX. [This report was funded by Earlystone.]
- Published
- 2024