Investing in girls’ sports will help more women become leaders, Michigan task force says
June 2, 2022
“To have the opportunity to grow as a person to grow as a student, to take those life lessons from the soccer field and apply them to my interaction with people every single day, has made a difference.”
—Mia Hamm, two-time Olympic gold-medal winning soccer player + Task Force Member
The gist:
In 2019, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer created the Michigan Task Force on Women in Sports, which has spent “the last three years researching how sports participation translates to leadership in the workplace.
“Opportunities for women to play sports and have access to athletic opportunities often translates into more women leaders in every industry…We know also that women and girls build stronger, more successful teams and organizations and gain skills that benefit them and everyone when they move into those leadership roles in all of society.”
—Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, chair of the Task Force
The Task Force has made three recommendations to the State:
“modernize and expands federal Title IX laws with increased sports-specific protections, compliance and accountability,”
invests in “talent and leadership pathways that explicitly support the growth of women and girls in, and through, sports,” because “Women are underrepresented as staff and athletes of professional sports teams and in sports leadership at colleges and universities,” and
engage the public, “including business communities, to support solutions for equitable opportunities for girls and women at all levels of athletics. Benson said that could mean creating a professional women’s sports team in Michigan.”
American Olympic bobsledder and World Champion Elana Meyers Taylor, who serves on the task force, and is “also advocating for more investment specifically in marginalized communities,” said:
The task force found that socioeconomic status and geography impacts girls’ sports participation rates, and that girls in Metro Detroit and the Upper Peninsula are especially disadvantaged.
“That’s why the work of this task force is important. It’s mapping a strategy for the state to build equitable pathways for all women and girls that will bolster the state of Michigan in countless ways, in both the short and long term.”
Read the entire initial report here.
Connect with the Mlive post here.