If you have ever played a sport, whether you realize it or not, you acquired a special understanding of yourself and how the world works beyond playing the game. When you caught that ball and fired it to first base, you learned the value of teamwork. If you nailed your dismount, you felt a surge of accomplishment from long hours of practice, and probably many stumbles along the way. In fact, the greatest lesson we receive from playing sports is learning how to lose, not how to win. Danette Leighton, CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF), calls it the greatest gift she received in her education. “When you know how to lose, you know how to win,” she told Dr. Nancy in her podcast interview. She summed up the competitive edge that athletes have by pointing out that losing teaches you how to negotiate, leverage your strengths, and correct mistakes.
Leighton said that when WSF found that 94% of women CEOs had participated in sports, they decided to launch a new study. In 2024, “Play to Lead: The Generational Impact of Sport on Women’s Leadership,” asked women ages 20-80 to help WSF and policymakers, schools, communities, and fundraisers that support girls and women’s sports acquire a long-range perspective on the impact of sports on careers, leadership, and relationships throughout various stages of life.
“Play to Lead” clearly showed that equitable access to sports creates equitable access to the C-suite and leadership throughout life for women. The study’s executive summary states, “By studying the leadership skills that emerge from sports participation at a young age and how they translate in adulthood, this report shines a unique light on the potential of sports to be an engine for full gender equality in leadership that spans across all sectors throughout the nation and globe.”
Leighton saw it in her own experience. “A self-described middle school dropout, Leighton stopped playing sports in high school. But she realizes now the skills she had already acquired from them – teamwork, handling pressure, pushing physical boundaries, and, yes, losing – were crucial elements of her future success,” Stephen Borelli reported in USA Today. He also noted her leadership positions before heading up WSF: “Stanford’s executive director for the NCAA women’s basketball Final Four, to WNBA and NBA vice president, to Pac-12 chief marketing officer.”
Leighton stressed that the work of WSF is research-based and focused on intentionally populating the pipeline. Less than one percent of girls who play sports go on to reach and compete at elite levels, but participation at any level instills skills that both genders benefit from: resilience, collaboration, strategic problem solving, the capacity to motivate and inspire others, self-confidence, and more. It’s about having opportunities to learn and grow in unfamiliar situations beyond a game. She also emphasized the need for more women coaches. The “Play to Lead” study lists comprehensive actions necessary to “elevate youth coach sport training” from requiring mandatory training, “based on the most up-to-date best practices for recreational, community-based, private leagues, school-based opportunities” to eliminating financial and organizational barriers to women seeking a career in coaching.
The study also addresses the limited compliance with Title IX, which was supposed to provide more access for girls in sports. However, Leighton said in her podcast that the 2025 levels of girls’ participation in sports have only reached that of boys in 1972. “Play to Win” advocates for additional laws to be passed by Congress that would help enforce compliance with Title IX: “the Fair Play for Women Act, to promote fairness and equity in participation opportunities and institutional support for girls’ and women’s sports programs…the Patsy T. Mink and Louise M. Slaughter Gender Equity in Education Act, to create a new Office for Gender Equity within the Department of Education (ED) to coordinate Title IX activities in ED and throughout other federal agencies,” and various grants that would financially support equity in opportunities at all levels of sport in the educational system.
With all the news about women’s sports achieving new popularity in media viewership and recent growth, UN Women reported, “For the first time in Olympic history, women athletes will have as many places in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games as male athletes.” And they did. The Olympic Board, however, still lags behind in women’s representation, as does equal pay for equal play. “No women feature among the Forbes 2024 list of 100 highest-paid athletes in the world, and prize money for women’s sport continues to lag behind men’s. For example, in 2023, the Women’s World Cup awarded USD 150 million in prize money, a 300 percent increase over 2019, but still only about a third of the USD 440 million the men got in Qatar 2022.”
The notable exception in pay equity is tennis, thanks to the efforts of Billie Jean King (who also founded the Women’s Sports Foundation 51 years ago). The US Open was the first to offer equal prize money, and today all four major tournaments provide equal pay, along with a handful of other professional sports. Yet the advocates, including the Women’s Sports Foundation, are more concerned about the lack of opportunities for girls to simply participate in sports. Girls and boys experience the same benefits and gain skills that support them throughout their lives: development of leadership skills, teamwork, communication, decision-making, ability to take criticism, and much more. However, UN Women points to further gains for girls, “Girls who play sport tend to stay in school, delay pregnancy, and get better jobs…Despite the positive data, girls drop out of sports by age 14 at twice the rate of boys due to social expectations, lack of investment in quality programmes, and other factors.”
A massive cultural perspective change needs to take place before girls and women can achieve equal opportunities in sports, leadership, and life itself. That starts with supporting women and girls at all levels. Social profit 501c3 organizations that benefit women and girls receive only 1.8% of charitable donations. Leighton told Dr. Nancy that as CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation, she runs it like a business. It’s efficient, accountable, research-driven, and transparent. Check out the “Play to Lead” study to learn more. The future depends on all of us to step up and help girls get the opportunities they need for growth to put them on track to become the leaders of tomorrow.