Temple study explores how sports help young women develop leadership skills
How did your country report this? Share your view in the comments.
Diverging Reports Breakdown
Youth sports help girls develop leadership skills, Temple study shows
Researchers at Temple University have been studying the impact sports participation has on young women. The study, titled “Exploring Perceptions of Prototypical Leadership and Gender Encoding Bias among Aspiring Female Athletes,” was recently published in the Leisure Sciences scholarly journal. Their research included a focus group of 90 female athletes between the ages of 14 and 18.
Researchers at Temple University have been studying the impact sports participation has on young women, the development of their leadership traits and the need for high-quality coaching at the youth level.
The study, titled “Exploring Perceptions of Prototypical Leadership and Gender Encoding Bias among Aspiring Female Athletes,” was recently published in the Leisure Sciences scholarly journal. Elizabeth Taylor and Gareth Jones, both professors from Temple’s School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management, said they were drawn to the topic because leadership traits have been stereotypically deemed as masculine.
“There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that sport is really great for a lot of developmental aspects outside of just on-court performance,” Taylor said. “But we were really interested in what sort of characteristics girls — high school girls specifically — kind of perceive themselves developing, and even a little bit more specifically what they understood those traits to suggest.”
Their research included a focus group of 90 female athletes between the ages of 14 and 18. It found that athletic experience leads to young women being more comfortable showcasing their leadership traits, but the environment they’re in plays a big role.
Taylor said the athletes identified traits like assertiveness and independence, but felt like they could only express them “on the court.”
“They felt like they could be aggressive,” Taylor said. “They could be independent, but when we asked about how do you show leadership in the classroom, or how do you show leadership on the job … They talked about how they felt the need to kind of work harder, while also softening those agentic traits.”
Youth sport participation develops leaders, but for young women, there is a caveat
A new study from Temple University’s School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management seeks to find that answer. The study, which was recently published in the scholarly journal Leisure Sciences, “Exploring Perceptions of Prototypical Leadership and Gender Encoding Bias among Aspiring Female Athletes,” utilizes a qualitative approach. One of the overall takeaways from the research is that young women are comfortable in engaging in leadership traits because of their athletic experience, but the settings for when they feel comfortable displaying those traits is key. The authors note that one thing that cannot be determined is how many young women abandoned their sport before their teenage years because of these pressures. Also, both Taylor and Jones emphasize that it really illustrates the need for high-quality athletic coaches, especially at the youth level. They note how this study illustrates how women athletes face an uphill battle, even in youth sports.
“We really wanted to take a close look at how young women athletes perceive leadership. We wanted to see what types of traits they saw as prototypical of a leader, and something that was really interesting is the female athletes who we spoke with identified more agentic or masculine traits, such as assertiveness or independence, as being indicative of leadership,” said Elizabeth Taylor, an associate professor at STHM and a co-author of the study.
The study, which was recently published in the scholarly journal Leisure Sciences, “Exploring Perceptions of Prototypical Leadership and Gender Encoding Bias among Aspiring Female Athletes,” utilizes a qualitative approach to look at young women’s perceptions of leadership based on their experiences as athletes.
In addition to Taylor, the piece was co-authored by Gareth Jones, who is also an associate professor at STHM. Other co-authors for the piece include Katherine Sveinson of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Christine Wegner, STH ’16, of the University of Florida and Caroline Heffernan, STH ’14, of Northwestern University.
As part of the study, Taylor, Jones and their colleagues hosted focus groups with 90 teenage woman athletes, all between the ages of 14 to 18. One of the overall takeaways from the research is that young women are comfortable in engaging in leadership traits because of their athletic experience, but the settings for when they feel comfortable displaying those traits is key.
“The participants shared how many of the traits that you might suspect from a leader—assertiveness, charisma and things like that—are acceptable in sports, but even then, there are limits,” Jones said. “So, for instance, participants shared how men’s games are called differently than women’s games; referees will let men be a bit more physical. But when women athletes do the same, they will get whistled, which shows there is this unconscious bias in play for young women when they express those traits.”
“For young girls playing sports, it really becomes this balancing act for when they can engage in these traits, and when they have to mask those leadership characteristics that have brought them success on the court,” Taylor added.
Additionally, while both Taylor and Jones acknowledge that women sports have grown significantly in recent years, with the tremendous growth of the WNBA serving as the latest example, they note how this study illustrates how women athletes face an uphill battle, even in youth sports. Additionally, the authors note that one thing that cannot be determined is how many young women abandoned their sport before their teenage years because of these pressures.
“What is so telling is that the study showed how young women athletes recognize that a trait like assertiveness is important to being a leader. But, even as a teenager, they are already taking steps to soften their assertiveness, depending on the context so that they don’t potentially come across the wrong way. It is unfortunate that they must deal with that,” Jones said.
As far as real-world implications for the study, both Taylor and Jones emphasize that it really illustrates the need for high-quality athletic coaches, especially at the youth level.
“I think that this study really has strong implications in thinking about what we know about gender and coaching,” Taylor said. “The majority of sport coaches are men, and so how does that impact the way that that our young female athletes are being spoken to? Coach education is another area that we commonly talk about, but I don’t know that we do a great job of educating our coaches on a lot of things. This study shows that we need to do better there.”
Source: https://whyy.org/articles/temple-university-study-sports-women-leadership-skills/