{"id":57884,"date":"2014-01-16T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T14:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=57884"},"modified":"2014-02-09T00:16:29","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T05:16:29","slug":"athletics-and-the-political-ambitions-of-young-adults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/01\/16\/athletics-and-the-political-ambitions-of-young-adults\/","title":{"rendered":"Athletics and the Political Ambitions of Young Adults"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a comprehensive analysis<\/a> of young men’s and women’s aspirations to public office, Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox discover that part of the reason we see so few female politicians is because women just aren’t interested in running. \u00a0There are lots of reasons for this. \u00a0A absence of role models, a lack of encouragement from their parents, and the intimidating role that sexist attacks play in media coverage of campaigns.<\/p>\n

But Lawless and Fox discovered another interesting correlation, one between political aspiration and sports. \u00a0More men than women —\u00a074% compared to 41% — played on a college or intramural team and, for both, playing sports was correlated with political aspirations. \u00a0The figure shows that running for office had “crossed the minds: of 44% of women who played sports and 35% who hadn’t. \u00a0The numbers for men were 63% and 55% respectively.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot_6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The authors suggest that the mediating factor is “an opportunity to develop…\u00a0a competitive spirit.” \u00a0Sports, they argue, may build or reinforce the tendency to find pleasure in competition, which may make politics more appealing.<\/p>\n

While sports increased both men’s and women’s interest in politics, it had a greater effect for women, shrinking the gender gap in political ambition by half.<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a comprehensive analysis of young men’s and women’s aspirations to public office, Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox discover that part of the reason we see so few female politicians is because women just aren’t interested in running. \u00a0There are lots of reasons for this. \u00a0A absence of role models, a lack of encouragement from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":57903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2094,8092,85,37,108],"class_list":["post-57884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-politics","tag-gender-sports","tag-politics","tag-social-psychology","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/10\/Screenshot_92.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57884"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61402,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57884\/revisions\/61402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}