Negotiating Their Worth, These Female Athletes are Demanding Change
Written by Katie Johnson, WIN Staff
As the Olympics came to a close this Sunday, I began to think of how far women athletes have come in the last 100 years. The adoption of Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination at schools or other education programs, took place only 49 years ago. A follow-up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an Act that was passed to end employment discrimination, Title IX gave young girls equal access to sports programs.
Women have been clearing hurdle after hurdle of discriminatory barriers, striking a balance between what the world expects them to look and sound like while competing on a world stage, and serving win after win, challenging the status quo. After one of the hardest years for working women, families, and the economy, it came to my attention that 2021 has felt different for women in sports. We’ve seen a number of women begin to negotiate for themselves and for others. They have taken time for their mental health, spoken out against injustices, fought for their right to equal pay, and demanded more accessibility as mothers.
Not only are women going through great lengths to revamp what it means to be a modern athlete, but they're doing it on their own terms. And they’re winning. American women were the ones to put the United States over the top in the overall medal count. The U.S. women’s soccer team was on a 44-match winning streak, the second-longest unbeaten streak in team history. For the first time since the founding of the modern Olympics 125 years ago, almost 49 percent were women, nearly reaching gender parity.
Yet, even with broad policy changes, equality is still far off. Men are offered more funding and more coverage than female athletes. Considerable changes still need to happen to create a more equal playing field for women. Below you’ll find the women who are negotiating for more equal opportunities and fighting for change.
Mandy Bujold
Effectively disqualified by the International Olympic Committee for having a baby, Canadian boxer Mandy Bujold wouldn’t take no for an answer. She had timed the birth of her child around the Olympic cycle but the Games were delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. She was on maternity leave during the rescheduled boxing qualifier and when she asked the I.O.C. to consider her pre-baby ranking, eighth in the world in her weight class, they told her no. Mandy refused to take no for an answer, saying “I have a child. That’s a blessing, it’s not a hindrance.”
Appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, she recalls the judgments, “She's done. She had her child. She should just retire.” Despite the criticism, she won her appeal, setting a precedent for women athletes’ rights. The court ruled the I.O.C. Boxing Task Force had to accommodate women who were pregnant or on maternity leave during the qualifiers.
“I don’t think your life is over because you have a child. That doesn’t mean everything that you love and you want to do needs to be pushed aside. And I think that was something I felt like I had to almost defend at the very beginning”, she stated. Mandy became the first female boxer from Canada to compete in two consecutive Olympics. Although she lost her match to Nina Radovanoic of Serbia, her much bigger victory versus the I.O.C. will have ripple effects for many young women to come.
Simone Biles
Simone Biles received a mix of criticism and support when she stepped out of the Tokyo Olympics to care for her mental health. While many of the most storied moments in Olympics history are examples of athletes pushing past pain or injury to compete, we’ve seen a rise of athletes taking a step back to protect their health over sacrificing it. When Biles declined to compete, due to a bad case of “the twisties”, it brought mental health to the forefront of conversations.
Behind the scenes, I’m sure there were a number of negotiations happening. Biles negotiating with herself, with her teammates, with her coach. As a top athlete, her participation in the women’s gymnastics team final was crucial for securing a medal. But a lot goes on behind the scenes that spectators don’t consider. Every performance is a culmination of years of training, sacrifice, and emotional and physical struggle. An athlete’s individual success is held as a symbol of a nation’s hopes and expectations. This pressure takes its toll, and Biles decided to put her mental and physical well-being first.
Biles is the most decorated active gymnast in the world. Starting gymnastics at age 6, she’s the only woman to land a Yurchenko double pike, and has been dubbed the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time). She is also a survivor of sexual abuse by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar and has found a way to turned her pain into power by using her voice.
She changed the conversation about mental health for athletes. Biles moved the discussion from raising awareness to positive action. “We also have to focus on ourselves, because at the end of the day, we’re human, too,” Biles said. “So, we have to protect our mind and our body, rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”
Megan Rapinoe
At the forefront of women’s soccer is Megan Rapinoe. Not only is she a top athlete, but she’s best known for her fight for equal pay for women. In May 2020, a federal judge dismissed the U.S. national soccer team’s lawsuit for equal pay against U.S. Soccer. The team filed for an appeal earlier this year ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. Rapinoe has become a model for how women can embrace salary transparency. She’s been an avid activist against systemic bias.
Megan Rapinoe was one of the first athletes to use the Olympic platform for a display of activism. In 2016, the U.S. women’s soccer team began displaying solidarity with Colin Kaepernick by taking a knee during the pre-game National Anthem to show support for those affected by discrimination and equality. And during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Rapinoe and her teammates took a knee before the game, just before kickoff, in an act of protest that works within the latest I.O.C. guidelines.
Ushering in a new era of political activism, throughout the women’s soccer tournament at the Olympics, teams from around the world knelt before kickoff to protest racism and discrimination and showcase their solidarity. Despite the mounting backlash for these efforts, Rapinoe encouraged others to use their voices and platforms. Taking a political stance requires negotiating on a much larger scale, and oftentimes comes at a cost.
“It’s not easy to constantly have to demand your worth. Or tell people how good you are. Or tell people you deserve to be a full human,” says Rapinoe.
Allyson Felix
One of the most highly decorated Olympic medalists in American track and field history, Allyson Felix has taken the spotlight in 2021 not for her wins or for her record-breaking, but for breaking her silence against Nike’s discrimination. After she became a mother in 2018, Nike tried to cut her pay significantly. She had a tumultuous birthing experience that nearly claimed her life and her daughter’s. While she was still recovering, she tried to negotiate protections with Nike to ensure she wouldn’t be penalized if she did not excel during her first meet back but Nike refused and offered her a 70 percent pay cut instead.
Then she announced ahead of the Tokyo Olympics that she built a footwear company of her own, Saysh. This new brand of athletic footwear for women, by women, was sported by Felix during the Olympics. Nike told Felix to “know her place” and after she severed ties with the company, was turned away from sponsorship after sponsorship. Instead of allowing this painful situation to dictate her financial future, she took matters into her own hands.
A tireless campaigner for athlete mothers, her fight changed the way sponsorship contracts look for athletes. With Saysh, Felix is able to take full agency over her legacy. In a brand ad Felix states, “Like so many of us, I was told to know my place. But here I am, ready to run for a brand that I founded, designed for, and designed by women. All of my experience of becoming a mom, of raising a daughter, helped show me my true competitor: inequality... Here I am, using my voice to create change for us as women, and for us as mothers, and for all the women who want to be mothers. So here I am. I know my place.”
Alex Morgan
National Women’s Soccer League and U.S. Women’s National Team star Alex Morgan was tired of the discrimination that women face when it comes to sports coverage. Despite the fact women account for 40 percent of all sports participants, they receive just 4 percent of sports media coverage. This lack of coverage impacts female athletes' opportunities for endorsements and sponsorships. Beyond this, women face discrimination and disrespect down to even the language that is used to cover female athletes. On top of all of this, very few women work in sports media.
But Morgan, along with three other Olympic athletes: WNBA star Sue Bird, professional swimmer Simone Manuel, and professional snowboarder Chloe Kim, set out to “shatter the often narrow depictions of women in the media” by launching a new media and commerce company, TOGETHXR. Inspired by other male athletes launching their own media companies, Morgan thought, why not us?
“I saw how much of a blank space there was, a space that needed to be filled for something like that on the women’s side that really celebrates girls and women and that shares incredible stories and that really creates an inclusive community,” she explained.
There is still a lot of work to be done for women in sports, but women are not going to sit around and let society’s expectations or male-dominated organizations dictate that change. They are going out and bringing the heat. They are standing up and saying that motherhood should not be a hurdle to your success. Taking care of their mental health. Building companies that make room for women’s needs. They are going above negotiating change, they are leading it. There’s a new motto for women and girls in athletics and I think Brittney Grinner, women’s basketball superstar, and gold medalist, puts it perfectly: “Women power.”
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