July 12, 2013 2:01 pm
FT
By Gillian Tett
Being an athlete is
one of the few socially accepted ways for teenage girls to compete
Earlier this year, I
listened to Susan Rice, White House National Security Adviser, address the
Women in the World conference in New York. Unsurprisingly, there was discussion
aplenty about North Korea and the Middle East. But there was also abashed laughter
about basketball. For before Rice embarked on a political career, she was a
keen basketball player, playing point guard; indeed she was so obsessed with
the game that she was apparently nicknamed “Spo”, short for “Sportin”. “I loved
it!” she declared.
Just a coincidence?
Perhaps not. In recent months Ernst & Young, the American consultancy, has
been analysing sporting activity among senior female executives and leaders.
And it has discovered that the higher the executive level, the more likely it
is that a woman played sport at high school or college. Most notably, some 19
out of 20 women who sit in the “C-suite” – holding the title “chief something”
– were sporty as a teenager; indeed, seven out of 10 still play sport as a
working adult, while six out of 10 played sport at university. One in eight
C-suite executives played sport professionally. However, among the middle
levels of working women, athletic skill was lower: just a third of mid-level
women, for example, played sport at university.
Now, this survey is –
admittedly – based on a small sample size (there are simply not that many
C-suite women around, compared with C-suite men). And there is no comparable
data for stay-at-home mums, say. Nevertheless, the statistics echo a pattern
that I have noticed in my own conversations with powerful women.
Sportiness seems so
widespread among women such as Rice that it is actually hard to think of any
executive who admits to having been a couch potato as a child. Think, for
example, of IMF head Christine
Lagarde (a former member of France’s synchronised swimming
team), Condoleezza Rice (a keen figure skater in her youth) and Hillary
Clinton (school baseball). Or Dilma Rousseff (the Brazilian
president, who played volleyball to a high level), Indra Nooyi (the CEO of
PepsiCo was a keen cricket player), Ellen Kullman (CEO at Dupont, who played
basketball to a high level at college). EvenSheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, was formerly
an aerobics instructor. And those are just examples that spring to mind.
Why? A cynic might
suggest that this reflects the pressure on today’s elite – of either sex – to
stay slim and healthy. You need stamina to climb that corporate ladder. Having
a sense of teamwork and discipline also instils skills that are useful in the
workplace, for women as much as men. Or as Beth Brooke, vice-chair of Ernst
& Young says: “Not only do the majority of senior women executives have
sports in their background, they recognise that the behaviours and techniques
learned through sports are critical to motivating teams and improving
performance in a corporate environment.”
I suspect, however,
that there is something else more important – and subtle – going on too. Girls
who play sport at school learn at a young age that it is acceptable to compete
aggressively. They also discover that success does not depend on looking good
and that it can be acceptable to take pleasure in winning. That might seem an
obvious point, at least to an adult man. But it is not so self-evident to young
girls who are exposed to modern Hollywood teen – or tweenie – culture. Indeed,
when I look at the cultural messages that kids receive now from films and television,
compared with my own childhood, I suspect that girls need sports today more
than ever. Being an athlete is one of the few socially accepted ways for
teenage girls to compete, without peer criticism.
This has at least two
implications. First, it may suggest that if we want to find more future female
business and civic leaders, we should look more closely at athletes.
Historically, professional women athletes tend to be steered to coaching or
commentators’ jobs when their sporting careers dim. However, Brooke of E&Y
is now trying to create a network to turn more of them into entrepreneurs, and
it will be interesting to see if this produces any results.
But second – and most
obviously – we need to keep young girls playing sport. In my case, I was lucky
enough to grow up competing extensively (lacrosse and netball were my passion).
I am now trying to ensure that my own daughters do so too. However, this is a
luxury of sorts. As public educational budgets get squeezed – and cyber
distractions grow – it is becoming harder, not easier, for many girls to do
team sports. That is a tragedy. If we want to get more strong female leaders,
we must celebrate competition at a young age. Or, at least, teach them the
links between struggle and success; even – or especially – in an age of instant
gratification where kids prefer to say “don’t sweat it”.
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