Athletic Participation and Girls' Development

Competency-Enhancing Characteristics of Adolescent Sports Activities

Sports participation plays a central role in the lives of many adolescents. National data suggest that more young people participate in sports than in any other form of structured out-of-school activity (National Center for Youth Statistics, 1996). Young people may be encouraged to engage in sports because these activities often have a number of positive, competencypromoting characteristics. They are likely to be highly organized and adult supervised. Sports activities can also promote increased involvement with prosocial peers, foster a sense of belonging among youth, provide youth with opportunities for achievement and mastery, enable the development of autonomous decisionmaking skills, and encourage teamwork.

Gender Differences in Sports Participation Rates and Sports Competence Beliefs

Rates of sports participation vary by gender. Not surprisingly, girls participate at lower rates than boys. Much of the gender gap in sports participation may be explained by the historical tendency for girls to be offered fewer opportunities to engage in athletics. Legislation designed to “level the playing field” for girls (e.g., Title IX), however, has resulted in a greater variety of athletic options for girls and young women. A few professional and advanced amateur women's sports leagues and tournaments, such as the Women's National Basketball Association and Women's World Cup soccer, have achieved national recognition and enhanced popularity in recent years.

Still, girls' rates of participation in athletics remain lower than boys'. By the last year of high school, [Page 126]fewer than 20% of girls participate in team sports, compared with more than 40% of boys (National Center for Youth Statistics, 1996). Furthermore, while both boys and girls tend to be less physically active as they progress through adolescence, girls' rates of physical activity decline dramatically during this developmental period (Kimm et al., 2002). Some groups of young women are at particular risk for low levels of physical activity. For example, African American girls are less likely to be physically active in late adolescence than European American girls. By age 17, more that half of African American girls, compared with one third of European American girls, report no leisure time physical activity.

Inner-city girls are also at heightened risk for low levels of involvement in sports activities, especially those sponsored by neighborhood or community sports leagues. While Title IX protects girls' sports opportunities in the schools, community-based organizations (CBOs) with limited funding may find it difficult to expand their sports programs to be more inclusive of girls. In particular, CBOs with well-established boys' sports programs may be hesitant to cut some of these popular activities in order to provide girls, who are perceived as less interested in sports, with a similar number of athletic opportunities (Hirsch et al., 2000).

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