A woman’s athletic prowess is considered more important than her height, weight, and gender, according to a new study.
The new study shows that women’s athleticism is more important to them than men’s, but that it doesn’t seem to be a good predictor of success in sports.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern University looked at more than 20,000 girls and boys ages 7 to 14 from different countries and found that girls’ athletic abilities are about the same as their male counterparts.
But the researchers found that boys who scored higher on a number of physical measures — including strength and agility, speed, and balance — were more likely to succeed academically.
“We found that if girls had higher grades, had more athletic ability, and had more of the same attributes that boys do, they were more successful,” said study co-author Sarah H. Henshaw, a professor of psychology at Penn and an associate director of the school’s Center for Developmental Disabilities.
While the study doesn’t directly address the impact of sports on boys and girls, Hensaw said the findings are interesting and have important implications for the development of both sexes.
In the study, the researchers asked children about how they’d been exposed to sports, including their participation in school, and how often they’d played.
They found that the average number of sports experiences a girl and a boy had each day was around 20, compared with the average of 30 for girls and 50 for boys.
That’s not surprising, said study author Kathryn A. Ries, a graduate student at the University at Buffalo and the lead author of the study.
In fact, the average for girls is much lower than that for boys, Ries said.
As for what’s most important, girls were more interested in being active in sports than boys.
But girls were also more likely than boys to want to become more physically active.
“The most interesting thing that we saw is that when girls were asked to rate how physically active they were, they didn’t show much interest in the ability to perform that kind of activity, especially physical activity that is more time consuming,” Hensay said.
“What is important is that we see that these girls are interested in physical activity.
But there’s not a lot of physical activity for girls.”
Henshaw said the study also showed that girls were at a disadvantage in sports, but she said that could be because of their more stereotypical sports experiences.
A similar finding was made by Hensawa and Ries when they looked at the number of girls who’d played competitive sports.
But the difference was not as great.
Ries said girls’ experiences with competitive sports were much more similar to their experiences in school than boys’.
For example, girls’ average number a day played sports was slightly higher than boys’ but their average number playing competitive sports was still lower than their male peers.
“It’s not that they’re more interested.
They’re more focused,” Ries told ABC News.
Hensaws study also found that while girls tended to want more sports-related activities, they weren’t as interested in going to sports parties, or participating in sports-specific activities.
What’s more, the study found that women were more apt to want social interactions and more involved in sports and sports-based activities.
But Ries and Hensaws said that doesn’t necessarily mean that girls don’t enjoy sports.
“Girls are interested, but they’re also very interested in social interaction, social connection, and being involved in these sports, and it’s very much their experience,” Hinsaws said.