The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is the principal organizing body of women's professional tennis. It governs the WTA Tour which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women and was founded to create a better future for women's tennis. The WTA's corporate headquarters is in St. Petersburg, Florida, with its European headquarters in London and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Canada. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and helps over 500,000 college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government. This is Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235, codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688.
The participation of women and girls in sports, physical fitness and exercise, has been recorded to have existed throughout history. However, participation rates and activities vary in accordance with nation, era, geography and stage of economic development. While initially occurring informally, the modern era of organized sports did not begin to emerge either for men or women until the late industrial age.
In professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, participants receive payment for their performance. Professionalism in sport has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass media and increased leisure have brought larger audiences, so that sports organizations or teams can command large incomes. As a result, more sportspeople can afford to make sport their primary career, devoting the training time necessary to increase skills, physical condition, and experience to modern levels of achievement. This proficiency has also helped boost the popularity of sports. In most sports played professionally there are many more amateur than professional players, though amateurs and professionals do not usually compete.
The United States women's national soccer team (USWNT) represents the United States of America in international women's soccer. The team is governed by United States Soccer Federation and competes in CONCACAF.
College athletics in the United States or college sports in the United States refers primarily to sports and athletic training and competition organized and funded by institutions of tertiary education.
Women's professional sports are a relatively new phenomenon, having largely emerged within the latter part of the 20th century. Unlike amateur women athletes, professional women athletes are able to acquire an income which allows them to earn a living without requiring another source of income. In international terms, most top female athletes are not paid and work full-time or part-time jobs in addition to their training, practice, and competition schedules. Professional organizations for women in sport are most common in developed countries where there are investors available to buy teams and businesses which can afford to sponsor them in exchange for publicity and the opportunity to promote a variety of their products. Very few governments support professional sports, male or female. Today there are a number of professional women's sport leagues in the United States and Canada.
Gary Barta was the athletic director at the University of Iowa. Barta retired from the university on July 31,2023.
Women's soccer, also known as women's football, is a popular sport in Australia. The sport has a high level of participation in the country both recreational and professional. Football Australia is the national governing body of the sport in Australia, organising the A-League Women, the Australian women's national team, and the nine state governing bodies of the game, among other duties. Women's participation of modern soccer has been recorded since the early 1920s. It has since become one of Australia's most popular women's team sports.
Women's sport in Australia started in the colonial era. Sport made its way into the school curriculum for girls by the 1890s. World War II had little impact on women's sport in the country. After the war, women's sport diversified as a result of new immigrants to the country. In the 1990s, the percentage of media coverage for women's sport on radio, television and in newspapers was not at parity with male sport. Basketball is nominally professional in Australia but players do not earn enough from the sport to compete full-time. Some Australians have gone overseas to play professional sport. Many television spectators for Australian sport are women. In person, netball has large percentage of female spectators. The Australian Federal and State governments have encouraged women to participate in all areas of sport.
The prominent women's sports leagues in the United States and Canada serve as the pinnacle of women's athletic competition in North America. The United States is home to the vast majority of professional women's leagues. In North America, the top women's leagues feature both team sports and individual athletes. While some leagues have paid professional women athletes, others do not and function at a semi-professional level.
Women's soccer in the United States has developed quite differently from men's soccer. Until the 1970s, organized women's soccer matches in the U.S. existed only on a limited basis. The U.S. is now regarded as one of the top countries in the world for women's soccer, and FIFA ranked its national team #1 in the world after its back-to-back Women's World Cup victory in 2015 and 2019.
The Iowa Hawkeyes field hockey team is the intercollegiate field hockey program representing the University of Iowa. The school competes in the Big Ten Conference in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The Iowa field hockey team plays its home games at Dr. Christine H.B. Grant Field on the university campus in Iowa City, Iowa. The Hawkeyes have won 16 conference championships, six Big Ten tournament titles, and the 1986 NCAA Championship, making it the first Midwestern university to win a national title. As of 2014, the team is coached by Lisa Cellucci.
Misogyny in sports refers to different discourses, actions, and ideologies present in various sporting environments that add, reinforce, or normalize the objectification, degrading, shaming, or absence of women in athletics.
The U.S. Women's National Team Players Association (USWNTPA) is a labor union representing the United States women's national soccer team (USWNT). The organization's primary mission is to protect the rights of the USWNT and to safeguard the economic and social welfare of all of the women's national team players.
Starting in 2016, players for the United States women's national soccer team (USWNT) have engaged in a series of legal actions against the United States Soccer Federation (USSF). These legal actions detail the unequal treatment and compensation of the USWNT, as compared to the U.S. men's national soccer team (USMNT). The process of achieving equal pay and treatment started with a federal complaint submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2016, with notable moments throughout 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2022. The fight for equal treatment and compensation has received widespread media attention, inspired legislative action in the U.S. Senate, and received fan support. The 2021 documentary film, LFG also details the story of the U.S. women's national soccer team and their fight for equal pay. A landmark equal pay agreement was reached in February 2022.
Gender pay gap in sports is the persistence of unequal pay in sports, particularly for female athletes who do not receive equal revenue compared to their counterparts, which differs depending on the sport. According to the research conducted by BBC, "a total of 83% of sports now reward men and women equally". However, it does not mean that the wage gap in sports has narrowed or disappeared. In 2018, Forbes released the list of the top 100 highest-paid athletes, all of them being male athletes. A similar situation also occurred in 2017, where there was only one female athlete – tennis player Serena Williams — who joined the list and ranked No.56. Billie Jean King brought awareness to the issue of unequal pay in the early 1970s, when she was awarded $2,900 less than her male counterpart at the Italian Open. The timeline of the gender pay gap in sports displays the significant events that have occurred since the 1970s.
Misogyny in ice hockey refers to the discourses, actions, and ideologies which are present in ice hockey, environments which contribute to the discrimination against women in the sport as well as their absence from it. This phenomenon includes issues related to sexism and male chauvinism. The subject has been extensively discussed in both media and academia, with many women in the sport increasingly speaking out about the extent of misogyny in hockey and its negative impact on the sport.
The 2015 Australia women's national soccer team strike was a two-month long strike by the players of the Australia women's national soccer team. Supported by the Professional Footballers Australia unions, the players successfully won improvements in pay and working conditions. It was the first time in history that an Australian national sporting team had gone on strike.
