It's well-established that girls play sports at lower rates than boys, despite major advances made in the era of Title IX. New findings from a national survey by the Aspen Institute add an important dimension to the conversation: Of those girls who do play, their parents are more invested financially.
In a surprising new finding, families spend more money on girls who play organized sports than boys. Our survey results show that, on average, families with a child in athletics spend $228 more annually per sport on girls than on boys. Parents of girls spend far more money on travel, lodging and lessons and slightly more on camps and athlete schools than parents of boys. Registration, equipment and uniform costs are roughly the same by gender.
This article shares new insights on the sports experience for youth by gender, based on a national survey by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative and Utah State University’s Families in Sport Lab. The analysis is the latest in a series of reports that began in 2019 and explores the data behind the high attrition rate in youth sports – the theme of #DontRETIREKid, a public awareness campaign inspired by Project Play 2020. Parents were surveyed in 2019, prior to the current youth sports shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
click to enlarge
According to our survey, 29% of families with a girl in sports dedicate more than 1% of the family’s gross annual income to sports, compared to 23% of families with a boy in sports. Even the largest amounts of spending tilt slightly toward girls. About 3% of parents of girls reported allocating more than 10% of their family’s income to sports vs. 2% of parents of boys spending that much.
Although most sports in which boys and girls participate at equal rates yielded the same level of family investment, our survey results showed that female-dominated sports (such as volleyball, tennis, gymnastics and softball) are more expensive than some male-dominated sports (such as baseball and tackle football). When breaking down the national sample of parents and athletes, three other sports had large enough participation rates to analyze cost differences by gender. Parents of swimmers on average report spending much more on girls ($1,033) than boys ($385). The differences were not statistically significant in basketball ($401 on girls, $442 on boys) or soccer ($552 on girls, $523 on boys).
click to enlarge
Prior research from the Women’s Sports Foundation shows that girls are more likely to have never played sports (43.1% girls vs. 34.5% boys) and less likely to be currently playing sports (36.4% girls vs. 45.6% boys). Almost one-third of the parents in the Women’s Sports Foundation research endorsed the belief that boys are better at sports than girls.
The results from the Aspen Institute/Utah State survey could speak to the chase for the college scholarship as more female college teams and pro leagues sprouted over the past two decades. Basketball, soccer, ice hockey and softball are examples of sports that now have female pro sports leagues, though with varying degrees of success.
“The widescale pursuit of college scholarships and professional playing opportunities for young women is a relatively new phenomenon,” said Dr. Travis Dorsch, founding director of Utah State’s Families in Sport Lab and lead investigator on the Aspen study. “And today, more than ever before, it seems parents are seeking and providing sport opportunities for their girls with the same vigor that they traditionally have for their boys.”
NCAA women’s teams have outnumbered men’s teams since 1996-97, when women inched ahead for the first time. In 2018-19, 10,660 women’s teams competed in NCAA championship sports, compared with 9,226 men’s teams. Men still accounted for 62,225 more athletic scholarships than women, largely due to the roster-size differences in football.
Participation rates for girls in our survey are highest in basketball and soccer. For boys, the most popular sports are basketball, baseball, soccer and tackle football. In basketball, there is a major gap in the percentage of boys (40%) compared to girls (27%). Interestingly, there are growing numbers of girls in baseball, tackle football and wrestling – sports that were traditionally male.
click to enlarge
According to our survey, parents of girls rate the pursuit of a college scholarship as 3% more important and a pro sports opportunity as 4% more important than parents of boys. Interestingly, moms of boys rate having a professional playing opportunity significantly lower than moms and dads of girls. Parents of boys rate having fun as 4% more important than parents of girls. Although relatively close, these numbers appear to have flipped in the past couple of decades.
Parents who took part in the study perceived that girls feel more stress in youth sports than boys, with the largest source for both genders coming from coaches. The fact that families spend more money on girls than boys could contribute to this difference in stress. A 2017 study conducted by the Utah State University Families in Sport Lab found preliminary evidence that children from families whose parents spend more money on their sports feel more parent pressure and subsequently enjoy sport less and are less likely to continue participating.
In our latest survey, parents say they place more pressure on girls than boys. Dads of boys and moms of girls say they provide significantly greater pressure than dads of girls and moms of boys, who rated their children’s enjoyment as higher.
“Based on previous literature, we know that moms and dads influence the sport experiences of their sons and daughters differently, and given that same-sex role models are important influences in the lives of youth, this confirms previous findings,” said Nicole LaVoi, co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. “We also know from the data that parents’ self-reported of psychosocial variables in youth sport is not always representative of reality. What parents ‘think’ they do, and what they actually do is not accurate.”
Methodology
Our nationally representative survey, distributed by Qualtrics International, collected insights from 1,032 adults in all 50 states whose children played sports. The median household income of respondents was $70,000, slightly higher than the U.S. average of $61,937.
Our survey was relatively representative of the broader U.S. population. The percentage of survey respondents who identified their oldest child as female (48.4%) aligns closely with the national figure for women (50.8%). One response in our survey identified a youth as non-binary.
Throughout this year, Project Play will share and explore more findings from our national parent survey. Read all of the survey analyses. Find free tools that can be used to get and keep kids involved in sports are our Parent Resources page. Sign up for our newsletter here.
Follow us on Twitter and Facebook as new analyses and resources are released. Do you have a question about youth sports? Send it to jon.solomon@aspeninstitute.org for consideration to publish in our monthly Project Play Parents Mailbag.