spin / second sole multisport team

Last week, Five Seasons held an array of activities to promote and celebrate womens athletics on National Girls and Women in Sport Day. The women of Spin – Second Sole were there, helping with a panel discussion on women’s sports.

Today, an article in the New York Times cites two separate studies that shows many benefits to women are a direct result of participation in sports, including lower teenage pregnancy rates, higher grades, and better self-esteem. Later in life, sports has a strong effect on employment and education, too.

Here are a few excerpts from the article…

Using a complex analysis, Dr. Stevenson showed that increasing girls’ sports participation had a direct effect on women’s education and employment. She found that the changes set in motion by Title IX explained about 20 percent of the increase in women’s education and about 40 percent of the rise in employment for 25-to-34-year-old women.

“It’s not just that the people who are going to do well in life play sports, but that sports help people do better in life,”

Although both study authors noted there is not parity between boys and girls sports:

“While we have more girls than ever before, we still have far more boys playing sports than girls,” said Nicole M. LaVoi, associate director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “The research clearly states that when anybody, boys and girls, are physically active, they can reap developmental and health benefits. But we haven’t reached equality yet.”

Read the entire article at the New York Times

Filed under: 2010 | Tagged: national girls and women in sport day, PSA!, women in sports |