Report Finds a Decline in Athletic Opportunites for Girls in High School Sports

A new report by the Sport, Health, and Activity Research and Policy Center for Women and Girls finds that opportunities for girls in high schools sports expanded in the 1990s but since then progress has halted and in some cases reversed. The center is a collaborative effort of the University of Michigan and the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Among the findings of the report are:

• In the 2009-10 there were 53 athletic opportunities offered for every 100 boys compared to 41 opportunities for every 100 girls.

• In 2000, 8.2 percent of all high schools did not offer sports programs. By 2010, the percentage nearly doubled to 15 percent. Schools with high percentages of female enrollments were more likely than other schools to drop sports programs.

“In the wake of the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, the state of women’s sports in the U.S. has generated great praise, and many believe that girls and women have finally achieved athletic equality,” said Women’s Sports Foundation CEO Kathryn Olson. “However, these findings suggest that we simply aren’t there yet. In fact, we are moving farther and farther away from equality with the cutting of interscholastic sports.”