While women’s professional sports are reaching record milestones, a new report from the Women’s Sports Foundation finds access to sports lacking for girls and concerns about the pipeline through collegiate sports.
The inaugural WSF Sport Report assesses the landscape for girls’ and women’s sports and tracks how that changes over time. Its findings are based on a national survey of more 6,100 Americans, focusing on more than 3,000 children ages 8-18 and their parents, as well as a survey of 60 senior leaders in women’s sports.
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The findings show girls’ desire to play sports on par with boys but barriers that exist starting for young girls. The report shows:
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More than half (54%) of girls ages 8-18 who have never played organized sports say they want to
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Costs remain a barrier, with the report finding it costs 25% more for girls in sport. While 58% of higher-income girls play sports, just 31% of lower-income girls do
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Knowledge of Title IX and the rights it protects is lacking, with 79% of girls and 55% of their parents saying they had never heard of the 1972 law that guarantees opportunities in sports
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A gender gap remains, with 52% of boys ages 8-18 playing organized sports compared to 45% of girls. That gap exists at younger ages, with an 8% gap for children ages 8-10, suggesting the social pressures during puberty — which is often cited as a reason girls drop out of sports — are not the only reasons for the differences
The report contrasts the lack of access for girls with the rapid growth at the other end of the women’s sports pipeline. Its findings show that 93% of experts said professional women’s sports improved in the last year and 57% said the same for Olympic and elite sports.
That success rests on an increasingly unstable foundation, with more respondents (37% to 35%) saying conditions at the college level had declined than said they improved. Nearly half (47%) cited Title IX rollbacks and weakened enforcement as the biggest risk to progress in the next year.
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