Girls Sports Participation Tied to Nearly 50% Higher Odds of Leadership Roles, Study Finds

Key Takeaways

• Women who played a sport for at least three years before finishing high school are nearly 50 percent more likely to hold leadership roles, per a 9,056-woman e.l.f. Beauty and Parity survey.
• Nearly nine in ten of those women who have been promoted credit a skill from sports, and they are nearly 30 percent more likely to have been promoted multiple times.
• Asked who should expand access for girls, 60 percent of working women named schools and 54 percent named pro teams and leagues.
• Gen Z women played through high school at a 70 percent rate versus 62 percent for Baby Boomers, yet girls still trail boys in all four countries studied.

What the e.l.f. Beauty and Parity Report Measured

e.l.f. Beauty and Parity, a women’s sports consultancy, released “Girls Who Play Change the Game,” a study of more than 9,500 respondents across the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. The core sample was an online survey of 9,056 women aged 18 to 65 who currently work full time or have in the past five years, fielded June 6 to 23, 2026, according to the report’s methodology. Parity also surveyed 328 professional and national team athletes and 114 board members, and interviewed 21 women for profiles.

The study defines “Everyday Athletes” as women who played sports for at least three years before the end of high school or secondary school. That is the rec league and varsity population, not the recruited tier, which makes girls sports participation at the ordinary level the variable being tested. By the report’s count, 5,221 respondents met that bar and 3,835 played one or two years or not at all.

Against that comparison group, Everyday Athletes were nearly 50 percent more likely to hold leadership roles at work, per the report. The authors note the comparisons are correlational, not causal.

How Does Girls Sports Participation Show Up in Career Outcomes?

The report tracks several measures beyond leadership status. Nearly 90 percent of Everyday Athletes who have been promoted say a skill they learned in sports helped them move up. They are nearly 30 percent more likely than non-athletes to have been promoted multiple times and nearly 25 percent more likely to have ever negotiated their salary, per the report.

Ambition tracks the same direction. Among Everyday Athletes not yet in senior leadership, 47 percent aspire to get there, making them 37 percent more likely than peers who played less or no sports, according to the study. Among the 328 pro athletes surveyed, that figure reached 70 percent.

Skills transfer is nearly universal in the sample: 95 percent of Everyday Athletes say they learned at least one professional skill through sports, with teamwork, performing under pressure and communication cited most often. The report says those match the qualities board members say they value in executive team members.

Country Data Shows Four Different Lifts

The report breaks out one standout finding per market. German Everyday Athletes are 45 percent more likely to have been promoted multiple times, the largest promotion lift across the four countries. UK Everyday Athletes are 36 percent more likely to have negotiated their salary, the largest negotiation lift. In Canada, 53 percent of Everyday Athletes not yet in senior leadership aspire to a leadership or board role, a 46 percent lift over non-athletes. In the US, 76 percent say sports taught them to advocate for themselves, the highest self-advocacy rate of the four countries, per the report.

Participation itself is rising. Seventy percent of Gen Z women played through high school compared with 62 percent of Baby Boomers, according to the study, but girls in all four countries still participate at lower rates than boys. The report also found 49 percent of women who played sports experienced gender discrimination in it.

Sixty Percent of Working Women Say Schools Should Move First on Access

The report closes by asking working women who is responsible for increasing access for girls. Schools led at 60 percent, followed by pro sports teams and leagues at 54 percent, government agencies at 47 percent and national governing bodies at 41 percent.

Women who quit before the end of high school named four things that would have kept them playing: greater comfort in their bodies, fewer competing demands on their time, more encouragement, and more exposure to women’s sports, role models and brand support.

Parity CEO Leela Srinivasan, in remarks published by Inc., said the outcome does not depend on elite performance: “The benefits are linked to participation itself.”

For operators, that is the number worth holding onto. The leadership premium the study identifies starts at three seasons of ordinary play, which is exactly the window where girls drop out at higher rates than boys.

Source: Inc., Bruce Crumley, September 9, 2026, https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/how-playing-high-school-sports-secretly-predicts-career-success-in-women/91402086