When I was younger, I loved playing sports, specifically soccer. Being able to look up to professional female players pushed me to try harder and love sports even more. I enjoyed playing on co-ed teams, but I truly loved it when I was on an all-girls team because it felt so empowering.Â
Today, there is a lot of controversy about women in sports and how they are perceived, especially with Sydney Sweeney’s newest ad. Women who play sports are just as strong and capable as the men who play sports, and this is sometimes ignored in recent media. Here are a few influential women who have played or currently play sports. Â
I have to start out with my childhood favorite, Alex Morgan. Alex Morgan was a striker for the US Women’s National Team (USWNT) and was one of the most recognized players for the women’s soccer team. She recently retired in 2024 after over 15 years of playing professionally. Morgan was able to start her own family while maintaining her soccer career, which always stood out to me. Very often, we see women leave their careers to have a baby, but Alex Morgan showed us that it is possible to live all of your dreams at once. In 2016, a group of soccer players including Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Hope Solo filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to charge the U.S. Soccer Federation with wage discrimination. Throughout her career, Morgan has fought for equal pay for the women’s team. Even though she no longer plays professionally, she is still out there fighting for equal pay and better working conditions for women soccer players.
Billie Jean King is another great female athlete who changed how sports and fans viewed women. She was a professional U.S. tennis player for about 20 years and won 39 Grand Slam titles. After winning a tournament and earning significantly less money than the men who won, she began to fight for gender equality in tennis and other sports. She was the first president of the “Original 9,” a group of 9 tennis players that joined the Virginia Slims Circuit to fight for equality. Because of her persistence and fight for equality, the U.S. Open became the first major tournament that offered equal prize money to both women and men. Billie Jean King retired from tennis in 1983, and she is still advocating for gender equality and inclusion among all sports in her retirement.Â
Kathleen (Katie) Ledecky is recognized as the most decorated female swimmer of all time, as well as the most decorated American woman in Olympic history. She has won 14 Olympic medals, nine of those being gold, in just four Olympic years. Her first year of competing in the Olympic games was in 2012 when she was just 15 years old. In her first Olympics, she won the 800m freestyle gold and has since made a name for herself in women’s sports as a whole. In 2024, she set the record for the most Olympic gold medals won by a woman in swimming. She also tied Larisa Latynina, a former gymnast, for the most golds by a woman in any sport. Ledecky began showing the world that women are strong when she was a teenager, and she hasn’t stopped yet. As her career continues to develop, we can expect her to win many more gold medals, showing more women that we can do it.Â
Lastly, we have Chantal Petitclerc who is a Canadian wheelchair racer and Senator from Quebec. She has won 21 medals, 14 being gold, in the Paralympic Games. She has broken a total of 26 world records over the entirety of her career. Chantal hasn’t just been fighting for women’s rights in sports but also for accessibility for those with disabilities. Athletes with disabilities, especially visible ones, are a rarity in the world of sports, so being able to share Chantal’s story is important for all. In 2008, she received the North Star Award and was named the best annual athlete in Canada. This was the second time in history that this award was given to a Paralympian, the first one being given to Rick Hansen in 1982. She participated in her first wheelchair race at 18-years old and retired in 2008. Chantal is considered the most decorated female track athlete and has been honored in both the Canadian Walk of Fame and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. In March 2016, Chantal was appointed to the Senate of Canada and continues to fight and advocate for both women’s equality and accessibility in all sports.Â
Female athletes are incredibly strong individuals who have had to fight to get where they are today. All four of these athletes are remarkably influential, but there are so many more female athletes out there that have impacted how people view women in sports, especially how they are paid in comparison to men. Having these women to look up to as a young girl made me want to keep playing sports, and I know many other young athletes have been similarly inspired. These women aren’t always mentioned in headlines; however, they should be recognized because they have all impacted sports and the women who compete in them. Their impacts have made sports more accessible to everyone. Women deserve to be celebrated and supported just as much as any other athlete and sharing their names and stories is one way to do that. As we grow as a society, I hope to see more female athletes brought to the spotlight because of their accomplishments and hard work.Â