For Women, Being a Jock May Signal Political Ambition, Study Says

Here's an interesting read from NPR...

For Women, Being a Jock May Also Signal Political Ambition, reports Alexandra Starr of NPR

I've included different exerpts from the article here, but I would encourage you to listen in to the audio component of the story as well - which can be found at the link above. Athletics and politics wasn't a tie that I had ever considered. I don't know that I'm convinced after this read - what do you all think?

For a study, Professor Jennifer Lawless at American University asked 2,100 college students if they would consider a career in politics.

"The effect was quite substantial," Lawless says. "Women who played sports and were competitive playing sports were about 25 percent more likely to express an interest in running for office later in life."

There's a boost for men, too, but it's not as big. Serious male athletes are about 15 percent more likely to think about getting into politics. Thing is, men across the board are already much more disposed than women to run. So Lawless sees encouraging girls to play sports as one way to start equalizing male and female political ambition.

Now, casually participating in sports isn't enough to have an impact on political ambition. It's the athletes who say they really care about winning who are more likely to consider running. Lawless says there are a couple of skills they pick up playing sports that transfer well to politics.

"The first is the ability to compete and the willingness to lose," Lawless says. "In most cases, if you like sports and you're competitive, although you probably prefer to win, you've gained some familiarity with losing, and you know it's not the end of the world."

Jessica Grounds, co-founder of the group Running Start, an organization that encourages women to run for office, points out that politicians like Gillibrand and Ayotte came of age after the passage of Title IX in 1972. That's the legislation that mandated girls and women have equal access to playing sports.

"We see strong correlations between women who played sports and are now successful CEOs of companies and are not only running for office but successful in their leadership positions," Grounds says.