The Childhood Hobby Shared by 69% of Women Leaders

Girls who play sports can benefit in many ways, including improving their physical and mental health and boosting their academic performance. A recent study by the Women’s Sports Foundation shows that sports prepare girls to be leaders, too. 

The study, “Play to Lead: The Generational Impact of Sport on Women's Leadership," surveyed women across generations—those in their 20s through those in their 70s—who played sports in their youth. Their responses revealed that they gained leadership skills and traits from sports that stuck with them well into adulthood. 

The study included 2,886 people who played sports on girls’ teams between the ages of 5 and 26. (As adults, the respondents include people who are gender diverse; 98.6% of them identify as women.) Some key points:

• 55% of the respondents said sports played either a very big or big role in their personal or social development
• 67% have carried skills and lessons from sports into adulthood
• 69% held at least one formal leadership role outside of the family

How Sports Help Girls Become Leaders

Sports can help women step into roles like CEO and president—but also into less formal leadership roles, the study found. These roles might include a manager at work, entrepreneur, teacher, member of a school board, and neighborhood organizer, for example. While women are leaders in their families as well, this study focused on leadership outside of the home.

Previous studies have shown that girls develop leadership skills from sports, but some have focused on collegiate sports and women who become C-suite leaders. Play to Lead went further, “looking at youth sport participation in particular, and how that shows up across all sectors in a whole variety of different leadership roles,” says Karen Issokson-Silver, MPH, the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Head of Research and Education. 

Danette Leighton, CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation, adds, “You don't necessarily have to be the top elite athlete or go be in the WNBA or be an Olympian to benefit from what sports allows girls to have throughout their lifetime.”

The greatest skills, capacities, and experiences the respondents gained from sports were:

• Teamwork (73.0%)
• Learning from mistakes (52.6%)
• Handling pressure (50.9%)

Knowing how to be a team player is important in all kinds of situations, as a leader or not. The study’s teamwork finding “may seem like a no-brainer, but it's reinforcing to parents: This is really critical as your daughter grows and matures into a woman, and it's a trait they're going to use for everything in their life, personal and professional,” Leighton says. 

The most common traits respondents said they developed in sports were:

• Confidence (57.3%)
• Strength (52.1%)
• Persistence (50.3%)
• Dedication (44.9%)
• Patience (40.0%)
• Resilience (39.6%)
• Adaptability (39.1%)
• Courage (38.9%)

The study also found that the longer girls played sports, the more likely they were to be leaders as adults. Those who played for 11 years or longer were significantly more likely to be leaders. 

Inequities and Barriers in Children’s Sports

Thanks to Title IX’s passage in 1972, girls today have many options to play sports that girls in previous decades did not. But there are still opportunity gaps. In U.S. elementary and secondary schools, girls have an estimated 1.3 million fewer opportunities than boys to play sports.

“Most schools are not compliant with Title IX,” Leighton says. For example, girls and parents might notice inequities like girls’ playing fields being inferior to boys’ fields, a lack of money for transportation for girls to play, and ill-fitting uniforms or equipment, explains Issokson-Silver.

Seven out of 10 respondents in the study reported barriers to full access to sports. The most common barriers were family finances, lack of parental engagement, and opportunities to participate. 

Play to Lead also underscores the importance of access to sports for underserved girls, including girls of color, who are LGBTQ+, and who have disabilities—groups that often face greater barriers to playing sports. But when these girls do participate, the study found that they are equally likely to develop these leadership skills. So youth sports may be able to help close the gaps in leadership, making leaders more representative of a diverse population.

Some trends in youth sports in recent years, such as early specialization in one sport and the “pay for play” model, may also be making it harder for girls of different socioeconomic backgrounds to play, Leighton says. 

“Think about your own children and think about the children in your own community. Not everybody will have the same type of resources, the same type of ability,” or the same opportunities to play, she says.

But, as Issokson-Silver adds, “There's tremendous potential for sports to mitigate inequities. It's really important that we invest more to ensure that all girls and women have the same opportunity to play as one another and to their male counterparts.” 

What Can Help Girls in Sports

Parental engagement is key. 

If opportunities are lacking, parents can step up and advocate for more sport opportunities in their communities and in their schools, Issokson-Silver says. And the Women's Sports Foundation offers resources on Title IX compliance. “When families speak up, we've seen how powerful that can be in schools, where changes are made,” she says.

And when their kids are playing, parents can also help by acknowledging the skills girls are learning from sports, beyond the physical ones, Issokson-Silver says. Those include teamwork, problem-solving, learning from mistakes, and confidence. 

“When coaches and parents call out these benefits as they're playing out on the field, girls start to make those connections and have those aha moments,” says Issokson-Silver.

Along these lines, the study recommends training for youth sports coaches that prioritizes personal development and teamwork. It also recommends advocating for more sports opportunities for girls, particularly in middle school, when many of them drop out of sports.

Of course, not every athletic experience is a positive one, and that’s why many girls quit sports.

Girls “want a sport environment that inspires confidence and well-being and connection and belonging,” Issokson-Silver says. “If a girl isn't finding that in a particular sport, parents can really help have those conversations to find out what their experiences are all about, what motivates them, what interests them, and help them find sport opportunities that really meet their needs and align with their interests.”

Looking at the Bigger Picture

Beyond the individual child, the leadership skills and traits that girls get from sports can help build stronger leaders and address inequities in communities and in society more broadly. 

That's why it’s important to make sure youth sports are “available to everybody, both girls and boys, in every community, because it will only uplift their entire community—as well as the society, as well as the economy, overall,” Leighton says.

Play to Lead points out that when women step into leadership roles in various settings, this indicates “access to shared decision-making, agenda control, resource allocation,” and other access and benefits that go beyond the individual.  

“Parents need to understand that sports is not a ‘nice to have’ for girls—it's a ‘must have,’” Leighton says.