13 Times Women in Sports Fought for Equality

It’s been a momentous couple of years for women in sports. Between the USWNT’s and WNBA’s high-profile fights for better pay and working conditions, to pro runners challenging the industry status quo on maternity compensation, we’ve entered an era when female athletes across sports are standing up, speaking out, and demanding their fair share.

But today’s impassioned athletes aren’t the first women to fight for a better future in sports—and they won’t be the last. Here, we round up 13 times women have taken a stand for equality in sports. From the first woman to publicly run the Boston Marathon to the champions behind collegiate athletic scholarships for women and more, these stop-at-nothing game changers have blazed a smoother, brighter path forward for us all.

USWNT Sues for Equal Pay

On March 8 (International Women’s Day), 2019, all 28 members of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team sued the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination, alleging unequal pay and working conditions. “Right now the structure is set up so that our counterparts on the men’s national team have the opportunity to make so much more money,” USWNT forward Christen Press told Glamour last year. How much more? Well, according to the lawsuit, some women players make just 38% of what their male counterparts make. And that’s despite the fact that the women have consistently outperformed the men. Case in point: During the year after the women’s 2015 World Cup win, they garnered bigger TV audiences and generated more money for U.S. Soccer, according to the lawsuit. The U.S. men’s team, on the other hand, failed to even qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

Soon after the lawsuit was announced, other women leaders in sports voiced their support of the trailblazing squad. “Sports are a microcosm of society. What is happening with the USWNT is happening in the workplace,” Billie Jean King tweeted the day the lawsuit was announced. “The time has come to give these athletes what they deserve: equality.” Serena Williams chimed in, too. “The pay discrepancy is ludicrous,” the tennis icon said during a press briefing last March. “It’s a battle; it’s a fight.”

In July the USWNT added further fuel to their argument by absolutely crushing the 2019 Women’s World Cup, becoming back-to-back champions—and helping to draw a global audience of 1.12 billion viewers. After court documents revealed U.S. Soccer argued that biological differences justify the pay discrepancy between the men and the women, federation president Carlos Cordeiro resigned.

Kathrine Switzer Breaks Gender Barrier in the Boston Marathon

The Boston Marathon is arguably the most prestigious road marathon race in the world. But for more than seven decades after its inception in 1897, the field was open only to men. Not only were women not allowed to run, people believed strenuous activity was bad for childbearing. (Cue collective seething.)

In 1967, Kathrine Switzer challenged those assumptions by running—and finishing—the iconic race, which at that time was still a mens-only competition (another woman, Roberta Gibb, ran the race the year before but didn’t have a bib). Less than two miles into the race, which Switzer had registered for under the gender ambiguous name K.V. Switzer, an official tried to tear off her bib, but Switzer’s boyfriend body-blocked the aggressor. The moment was captured in iconic photos and shared in the media, and change soon followed. Four years later the Amateur Athletic Union officially allowed the Boston Marathon (and its other sanctioned races) to permit women entrants. In 1972, the first year women were officially allowed to participate, eight women (including Switzer) entered the race—and all eight finished. In 2019 a total of 11,982 women finished the race. Now that’s what we call #progress.

WNBA Players Fight for Equity

In November 2018, Nneka Ogwumike, WNBA star for the Los Angeles Sparks and president of the league’s players’ association, wrote an op-ed for Players’ Tribune announcing the women of the WNBA were opting out of their current contract agreement. Their desire? Better resources, more investment in the league, and bigger paychecks.

After more than a year of fighting for change, the women recently won big: In January the league announced a new eight-year collective bargaining agreement that gives the players higher salaries (top athletes can now earn over $500,000—triple the previous deal); better travel experiences (i.e., individual hotel rooms for each player and upgraded plane seats), and new health benefits including maternity and childcare policies (think full salaries during maternity leave, an annual childcare stipend, and more). “These changes still don’t amount to equality,” as Glamour previously wrote. “But they’re a huge and important step—one that could be a model for female athletes across sports.”

Collegiate Rowers Strip Down to Protest Unequal Treatment

By the spring of 1976, members of the Yale women’s varsity crew team were fed up. Despite being varsity collegiate athletes in a post-Title IX world, the women did not enjoy the same level of equipment and facilities as the men’s crew team. Their biggest point of contention? Showers. The men had access to warm showers after every workout, and the women had none at all. Which meant while their male peers bathed and changed after practice, the women had to wait—cold, wet, and tired—for the bus that brought everyone back to campus, per ESPN. After voicing their concerns, 19 team members wrote “TITLE IX” on their bare backs and sternums, marched into the office of the director of women’s athletics, and stripped naked.

The incident made headlines and became a Title IX rallying cry that resonated with women across the country, per ESPN. “What I’m most proud of is that we showed people the backbone of Title IX,” rower Mary O’Connor told ESPN. “We told Yale that this treatment of women was not acceptable to us…or to the women who would follow us.”

Tatyana McFadden Sues for Rights of Student Athletes With Disabilities

When Tatyana McFadden, 17-time Paralympic medalist in wheelchair racing, was in high school, she was told she couldn’t compete alongside her able-bodied peers. But instead of accepting defeat, the teen athlete took “no” as a chance to advocate for change. “I knew that if I wanted to put an end to this discrimination and make sure that others had the right for the opportunity, that I needed to fight this battle,” she told SELF in 2019. So McFadden and her mother took the issue to court. In 2005 they sued the local public school system in Maryland and won.

After winning the right to compete with her classmates, McFadden lobbied the state—which eventually passed the Fitness and Athletics Equity for Students with Disabilities Act in 2008, requiring schools in Maryland to provide equal opportunities for students with disabilities to participate in physical education programs and be on athletic teams. In 2013 those standards became a national mandate, creating a more equal future for all student athletes across the country.

Peachy Kellmeyer and Elaine Gavigan Win College Scholarships for Women Athletes

In 1973, two women leveraged the power of recently passed Title IX legislation to score a big victory for female athletes across the country. Elaine Gavigan, women’s tennis coach and physical education instructor at Broward Community College in Florida, and Peachy Kellmeyer, director of physical education at Marymount College in Florida, challenged a ruling by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) that barred women scholarship recipients from participating in AIAW-sponsored competition, Welch recounts in her book History of American Physical Education and Sport.

With a class-action lawsuit that alleged the rule was discriminatory under newly passed Title IX, the women were able to pressure AIAW into changing its rule, ultimately earning women the right to receive college athletic scholarships. The lawsuit “pretty much jolted sportswomen throughout the United States,” says Welch.

Nearly half a century later, the effects are still reverberating. “Even today, there are so many young women who are first-generation college graduates because they have had the opportunity for scholarships that many in the past did not,” Welch wrote.

Billie Jean King Demands Equality in Tennis

Before today’s equal-pay warriors on the USWNT and WNBA teams were even born, tennis legend Billie Jean King was waging a very similar war in her sport. In 1973, the same year that King defeated self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig” Bobby Riggs in the groundbreaking Battle of the Sexes match, she also organized a meeting that led to the creation of the Women’s Tennis Association and threatened to boycott the 1973 U.S. Open if men and women winners were not paid the same. The ultimatum led to serious change: Later that year the U.S. Open became the first major tennis tournament to offer equal prize money. Both singles winners—John Newcombe and Margaret Court—earned $25,000, according to ESPN.

Today, King remains an outspoken advocate for equal pay (among other issues, including LGBTQ+ rights). “I’m big on equal pay for equal work,” King told the Washington Post Magazine in 2019. “Money matters. Money talks. Money gives you opportunity. A quarter of single parents are men, and three-quarters are women. And when women make less money, they take less money home for their family. And it is baloney. It has to change.”

U.S. Women’s Hockey Team Fights for Equal Rights

In March 2017 the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team announced plans to boycott the International Ice Hockey Federation world championship that month. The reason? Negotiations for better pay and support from USA Hockey had slowed, per the New York Times. “We are asking for a living wage and for USA Hockey to fully support its programs for women and girls and stop treating us like an afterthought,” team captain Meghan Duggan said in a statement, according to the Times. “We have represented our country with dignity and deserve to be treated with fairness and respect.”

Shortly before the tournament, the athletes and USA Hockey reached a four-year agreement that brought big wins for the women. Among them: a pay boost that bumped annual compensation to about $70,000 per player and substantial performance bonuses if athletes won World Championship or Olympic titles. Other positive changes: USA Hockey agreed to look into improvements for its marketing, scheduling, public relations, and promotion of the women’s game, as well as fundraising and other efforts for girls’ developmental teams, per ESPN.

After the agreement was announced, the women wasted no time in collecting those performance bonuses: At the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, the team defeated Canada to clinch their first Olympic win in 20 years.

Adidas Aims to Increase Media Coverage of Women Athletes

Women make up about 40% of all sports participants, but women athletes comprise just 4% of sports media coverage. As Glamour previously reported, that lack of airtime is more than just unfair: It can cost women athletes sponsors, fans, and money, and limit the number of role models for young girls in sports.

Adidas is on a mission to close the gap. In December 2018 a women-led team at the sports-apparel behemoth announced a global initiative that aims to amplify women in athletics. Called She Breaks Barriers, the initiative is focused on taking action through events like town halls, partnerships with organizations like Girls on the Run and Starlings Volleyball, and a live-streamed series of girls’ sports on Twitter. “We believe that through sports, we have the power to change lives,” Nicole Vollebregt, the woman behind She Breaks Barriers and senior vice president of global purpose at Adidas, previously told Glamour. “For us, it’s about providing better access, removing gender stereotypes, and creating visibility.”

Women Ski Jumpers Demand a Place at the Olympics

Ski jumping has been an Olympic sport since the very first Winter Games in 1924. But for 90 years, only men were allowed to compete. That changed when a coalition of international women ski jumpers filed a 2008 lawsuit against the Vancouver Organizing Committee, fighting their exclusion from the 2010 Winter Games in Canada on the grounds that it “violates every woman’s right to equal benefit under the law.” Though the women didn’t win the right compete in Vancouver, they did gain access to the 2014 Sochi Games, representing a giant leap (or should we say jump) forward for the sport.

Even so, glaring equality gaps persist: At the 2014 and 2018 Winter Games, men had three separate ski jump events, while women only had one. “It’s like, ‘Here, we’ll give you a little piece,’ and then, ‘Go away, leave us alone,’” Lindsey Van, a now retired American ski jumper who helped lead the discrimination lawsuit, told the Chicago Tribune in 2018. “I still think that it’s an old boys’ club.” According to the 2022 Beijing Games website, there will be a new mixed-team event in ski jumping; there is no mention of any new women’s competitions.

Olympic Runners Speak Out About Poor Industry Maternity Policies

Last spring several Olympians-slash-mothers—including Alysia Montaño, Allyson Felix, and Kara Goucher—spoke out about the sporting industry’s lack of support for women athletes both during and after pregnancy. “The sports industry allows for men to have a full career,” Montaño said in an op-ed video for the Times last May. “When a woman decides to have a baby, it pushes women out at their prime.” The women specifically called out Nike, Asics, the United States Olympic Committee, and USA Track & Field. “I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn’t be punished if I didn’t perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth,” Felix wrote in an op-ed for the Times published in May. “I wanted to set a new standard.”

Three months after the allegations, Nike (who Felix said had previously denied her asks) announced a new maternity policy for all sponsored athletes that guarantees pay and bonuses for 18 months surrounding pregnancy. Three other athletic apparel companies adopted maternity protections for sponsored athletes as well, according to the New York Times.

Mary Cain Calls for More Women in Power

Last November former teen phenom runner Mary Cain waged allegations of emotional and physical abuse against Nike’s Oregon Project. In a powerful op-ed video for the New York Times, titled “I Was the Fastest Girl in America—Until I Joined Nike,” Cain described how the all-male staff of the elite training team, helmed by coach Alberto Salazar, constantly pressured her to lose weight. While running with the team, Cain said she didn’t get her period for three years, broke five bones, started to cut herself, and had suicidal thoughts. And when the young athlete shared her self-harming habits with Salazar and the team’s sport psychologist? The men “pretty much told me they just wanted to go to bed,” Cain said.

Cain called on more women to assume leadership roles in the sporting world. “We need more women in power,” Cain said in the video. “Part of me wonders if I’d worked with more female psychologists, nutritionists, and even coaches, where I’d be today. I got caught in a system designed by and for men which destroys the bodies of young girls. Rather than force young girls to fend for themselves, we have to protect them.”

After the video went viral, eight other athletes with Nike’s Oregon Project quickly backed up Cain’s claims, with some sharing their own stories of mistreatment. Salazar denied the claims, and Nike announced it would investigate the allegations. Meanwhile, the video’s ripple effect continued: In December hundreds of Nike employees protested the company’s support of Salazar and its treatment of its female employees and sponsored athletes. And in January the U.S. Center for SafeSport placed Salazar on its “temporarily banned list,” which could result in a lifetime ban.

Serena Williams Takes Aim at Gender Inequality in Sports

Legend Serena Williams is not afraid to speak her mind and challenge the status quo. From calling the pay gap for female athletes “ludicrous” to candidly sharing the struggles of motherhood to accusing an umpire of sexism during the 2018 U.S. Open, Williams has shown that she’s willing to speak up loud and clear on issues that matter to her.

Earlier this year, Williams announced a partnership with Secret that addresses inequality in sports. “Just because I am a woman doesn’t mean I deserve less—I work just as hard,” Williams told Glamour. Through the partnership, Williams and the brand are launching a study on gender inequality in sports to pinpoint three to four areas of need. From there, they’ll distribute $1 million to hopefully create true change. “I’ve given up so much in my life and I’ve sacrificed so much. Why do I have to get paid less?” Williams said. “I feel like women in sports are fighting with that right now.” And with Williams’s influence and Secret’s backing, perhaps that fight can go one step further.

*Special thanks to [Paula D. Welch](https://vivo.ufl.edu/display/n14886) and [Bonnie J. Morris](http://www.bonniejmorris.com/) for providing invaluable insight on the history of women in sports.*

Originally Appeared on Glamour