Sophia Bush Invests in Women’s Sports Because ‘Women Are Being Gatekept and Held Out’ of Profits (Exclusive)

Actress, activist and investor Sophia Bush is using her platform to support women’s sports.

Bush, 42, has “always been really passionate” about sports, but as a “deep asthmatic” growing up, the actor and investor never pursued becoming an athlete herself.

“I, like so many other kids who grew up in LA, grew up playing soccer. But theater wound up becoming better for me than the sports that required me to run,” Bush tells PEOPLE at Athleta’s Power of She luncheon in Beverly Hills, Calif.

An investor in Angel City FC, Bush, who rose to fame as an actress on One Tree Hill in 2003, says she’s always been inspired by the merger of sports and entertainment.

“For me, it’s always been artists and athletes who shape and push culture,” says Bush, who hosted the event in honor of Athleta’s Power of She Collective alongside ESPN multimedia journalist and WSF trustee Ari Chambers and featuring gold medal para snowboarder, Brenna Huckaby.

“Whether you think about what Jackie Robinson did in baseball, or what our ’99-ers did in the World Cup, when you look at what the WNBA did the year that Breonna Taylor was murdered; athletes push culture, and artists have had to do the same,” she adds.

“And now you see the athletes in the WNBA talking about it’s not just about their salaries, it’s about the way they don’t get to participate in profit. They don’t get percentages of jersey sales, they don’t get percentages of TV deals. The men do. Women are being gatekept and held out,” she explains.

“As the adage goes, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did backwards and in heels,” Bush continues, before pointing to the success of Reese Witherspoon‘s production company, Hello Sunshine. “You have seen women who are artists create their own studios. You see boundary-pushing. You see conversations about pay equity.”

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Bush says as a “sports fan and an artist,” she’s encouraged by the way “our industries can tell stories and build coalitions.”

“Not only am I a crazy fan who flies all over the world to watch games and wakes up in the middle of the night during the World Cup to go to the Snake Pit with my friends at 4:00 AM to watch, I believe not only in the beauty and the fun of it, but in the power of what happens when we come together in these ways,” she shares.

Bush says it was a “no-brainer” when she had “the opportunity to start investing in sports” and it’s been “refreshing” to see support from brands like Athleta, who has committed to “using corporate profits to fund women in sports.”

“It’s very refreshing to see, whether it’s banking institutions committing to getting women’s sports on primetime or brands like Athleta saying, ‘We can do that. We can write checks.’ I’m like, ‘Thank God.’ Because we all know that whether it’s my industry or theirs, all these women are not getting paid what the men are getting paid, and the only way we’re going to fix it is to start, again, mobilizing across industries.”