The U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey Team has existed for around twenty years, and over that time, it has earned eight medals cumulatively: three gold, four silver, and one bronze. In comparison, the U.S. Men’s Hockey team has existed for one hundred and six years and has earned twelve medals: three gold(actually the same number as the women’s team), eight silver medals, and one bronze. Both of these team were earned gold medals this year, which is the first time this has ever happened! In earning their third gold medal, this team has entered into sports history books. Not to mention the fact that there olympic performance was practically perfect, a 7-0 record and a 2-1 win against Canada, that’s the kind of thing athletes dream of (and fans). However, despite all of that, the only thing that people seem to have been talking about these past few days is a phone call.
And while yes, hearing a team full of gold medal-winning Olympians being laughed at and belittled is upsetting, I fear this is not an isolated incident. I would even go so far as to say that if we don’t enact large-scale social and political change, this will not be the last time highly qualified women receive such treatment. As someone who grew up playing competitive sports, I can confidently tell you that the way those men reacted in that locker room doesn’t come from nowhere. In fact, I’ve run into a lot of young boys and teenagers who acted concerningly similar to them; I think all women have. But for some reason, I made the assumption that there would be growth between Parks and Rec and the Olympics.
What’s worse is that this behavior is par for the course for the president of the United States, our commander in chief, not just a group of random guys. I mean, stepping back into a time machine and traveling all the way back to 2004, where in his book How To Get Rich, he wrote “It’s certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on ‘The Apprentice’ were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal.” So I guess that shows you what his personal beliefs are on women’s achievements. But taking a closer look at his policy somehow actually paints a worse picture. He takes credit for the overturning of Roe vs Wade, which endangered healthcare access to hundreds of thousands of women all across the fifty states. His One Big Beautiful Bill Act also made cuts to federal spending, which significantly harmed the research and treatment efforts related to many different diseases and women’s reproductive health.
What do we do when a person who’s meant to be a leader speaks negatively about 50% of their population? And what if it’s more than 50%? Donald Trump has spoken negatively about almost all people who aren’t straight, rich, white men. And events like what happened in that locker room showcase that reality for the whole world to see, again and again.
The only way I ever see there being progression in this conversation is by flipping the script. For this situation at least, that means talking about the important women who won gold. Now that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the wrongdoings of the men; it just means that we can stop centering them all the time. So instead lets talk about women like Kendall Coyne Schofield, the team’s forward and the first woman to skate in the NHL All-Star skills competition, and Laila Edwards, who is the first Black woman to play for the U.S. women’s hockey team! And lest we forget Aerin Frankel, who had a save percentage of .980 for the entirety of the 2026 Winter Olympics and also has an Instagram account where she rates ceaser salads @painbyromain.
When we have so many great individuals and accomplishments to talk about, it becomes tiring to constantly talk about the people who are putting them down. I think this fatigue is currently being felt by the team itself, with almost every appearance they’ve made from interviews to SNL being tied back to something that they had no control over, rather than their accomplishments. So let’s take what we’ve learned over the past few weeks and carry it with us when it comes time to take another look at how our country treats women.