Olympic Level Change for Women in Sports: Announcing Sports Bra’s Jenny Nguyen at Power UP Conference
Issue 267 — July 29, 2024
Women make up 50% of the athletes at the Paris Olympics, an inflection point for women in sports. There’s change in the air for women’s leadership parity on many fronts, with sports on the leading edge of progress. Check out these numbers.
Girls who play competitive sports disproportionately become top leaders later in life.
According to studies cited by Korn Ferry,
“Fortune estimates that 95 percent of its Fortune 500 CEOs played sports. While only 6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, the proportion of women CEOs who were athletes is similar — 90 percent of them played sports at some point, and 54 percent played sports at the university level. According to our own leadership-assessment tests Korn Ferry gives top executives, the highest-performing women CEOs distinguish themselves from average CEOs in three ways:”
Nerves of steel and courage
Bold anticipation and ability to read the room
Drive to win
Now, I’ve never been much of a sports fan. During my youth, girls were given little or no encouragement to engage in sports, especially team sports. The boys were the players; the girls were the cheering section.
I did take tennis lessons when I was in elementary school and enjoyed the sport. My family moved to a small town in West Texas when I was in junior high. Soon I met some girls my age and suggested we play tennis.
The only public tennis court was at the high school. It bordered on the road. Like flies to honey, within a few minutes after we started playing, a swarm of boys drove up, parked in front of the tennis court, and started cat-calling.
We packed up our tennis equipment and went home. I was so rattled by the crude objectification that I never played tennis again.
Thank goodness for Title IX, the 1972 civil rights legislation that has greatly increased girls’ access to educational and sports opportunities.
Much progress has occurred even since our “Play Hockey Like a Girl” event nine years ago, when a panel of women shared their struggles in getting opportunities to participate, whether as athletes, sportscasters, or in sports business.
But they also shared the impact of sports on giving them and other women the confidence, physical mastery, and leadership skills they need to succeed in any field.
Plenty of disparities between men’s and women’s sports remain to be sure. But recent years have seen the fruition of Title IX’s intent. Last year at Take The Lead’s Power Up Concert and Conference, we honored Angel City Football Club for advancing women’s sports business and demonstrating the profitability of women’s sports.
When girls and women — and boys and men for that matter — today get to cheer on basketball stars Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese, Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky, gymnast Simone Biles, or their college’s female athletes in any sport, they can see themselves in the story of sports.
And what is better than enjoying competitive sports together at a sports bar?
That’s why I’m so excited that Jenny Nguyen, founder of The Sports Bra, the first sports bar showing only women’s sports, will join us at Take The Lead’s Power Up Concert and Conference on August 26, Women’s Equality Day, in Washington DC. She opened The Bra in Portland, OR two years ago.
It was an instant success, generating almost $1,000,000 in revenue within its first eight months.
Jenny loved playing basketball as a girl and then in college until she tore her ACL and discovered she loved cooking as well. She honed her passion for cooking at the Western Culinary Institute and cooking in fine dining restaurants. What could be a more perfect melding of skills and interests to make The Sports Bra successful?
She got the idea for The Bra (yes, that’s what she calls it for short, and she loves that people have to say the word in public spaces) when she and some friends wanted to watch a women’s sports match in a bar and had to first persuade the owner to let them watch on one small TV without sound.
And what could be more paradigm shifting than a sports bar that plays only woman’s sports?
The Sports Bra, in Portland, OR. Photo credit: CanvasRebel.com
After all, how many sports bars have you been in where nothing but men’s sports are on all the TVs? If women are equal participants in the Olympics, isn’t it past time for women’s sports to get a bar, or a bra, of their own?
Come join the movement. Embrace your power. Celebrate Jenny, The Bra, and Women’s Equality Day at the Power Up Concert and Conference on August 25/26 in Washington DC. Register now to get the best ticket price and be in the room where it’s happening. Or join virtually.
GLORIA FELDT is the Cofounder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.