This list of notable awards honoring sportswomen gives the country of the sponsoring organization, but some awards are open to sportswomen around the world. The list includes sub-lists for general awards to female athletes, for awards to association football (soccer) players, to basketball players and to women players in other sports.
All of these sublists include awards for coaches and administrators in women's sports. Awards for these roles are usually not restricted by the recipient's sex or gender.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and one in 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 landmark 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 women or men until the late industrial age.
The UBC Thunderbirds are the athletic teams that represent the University of British Columbia. In Canadian intercollegiate competition, the Thunderbirds are the most successful athletic program both regionally in the Canada West Universities Athletic Association, and nationally in U Sports, winning 116 national titles. UBC has won an additional 20 national titles competing in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics against collegiate competition from the United States and 40 national titles in sports that compete in independent competitions.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) established in 1940, is a college athletics association for colleges and universities in North America. Most colleges and universities in the NAIA offer athletic scholarships to their student athletes. $1.3 billion in athletic scholarship financial aid is awarded to student athletes annually. For the 2023–24 season, it had 241 member institutions, of which two are in British Columbia, one in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the rest in the continental United States, with over 83,000 student-athletes participating. The NAIA, whose headquarters is in Kansas City, Missouri, sponsors 28 national championships. CBS Sports Network, formerly called CSTV, serves as the national media outlet for the NAIA. In 2014, ESPNU began carrying the NAIA Football National Championship.
The NACDA Directors' Cup, known for sponsorship reasons as the NACDA Learfield Directors' Cup or simply as the Directors' Cup, is an award given annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to the colleges and universities in the United States with the most success in collegiate athletics. Points for the NACDA Directors' Cup are based on order of finish in various championships sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) or, in the case of Division I Football, media-based polls. A first-place finish in a sport earns 100 points, second place 90 points, third place 85 points, fourth place 80 points, and lesser values for lower finishes. The award originated in 1993 and was presented to NCAA Division I schools only. In 1995 it was extended to Division II, Division III, and NAIA schools as well, then extended further to junior colleges in 2011 based on standings from the NATYCAA Cup. Each division receives its own award.
The All-America designation is an annual honor bestowed upon an outstanding athlete from the United States who is considered to be one of the best athletes in their sport. Individuals receiving this distinction are typically added to an All-America team for their sport. Some sports will have multiple All-America teams and will list the honorees as members of a first team, second team, or third team. As such, All-America teams are composed of outstanding US amateur players. Individuals falling short of qualifying for the honor may receive All-America honorable mention. The designation is typically used at the collegiate level, although, beginning in 1957, high school athletes in football began being honored with All-American status, which then carried over to other sports like basketball and cross-country running. The selection criteria vary by sport. Athletes at the high school and college level placed on All-America teams are referred to as All-Americans.
NCAA Division III (D-III) is a division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States. D-III consists of athletic programs at colleges and universities that choose not to offer athletic scholarships to their student-athletes.
Ann Meyers Drysdale is an American retired pro basketball player and a sportscaster. She was a standout player in high school, college, the Olympic Games, international tournaments, and at professional levels.
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 in a two-tiered system.
Women's professional sports are a relatively new phenomenon, having largely emerged within the latter part of the 20th century. Unlike amateur female athletes, professional female 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.
The Atlantic Coast Conference Athlete of the Year award is given to the male and female athlete who show extraordinary talent throughout the entire season. The award is decided by members of the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association.
Christine Grant was an American athlete, coach, administrator, and advocate for women's college athletics. Dr. Grant served as the athletic director at the University of Iowa from 1973 until 2000. She was inducted into the University of Iowa Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006. Grant was also inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017.
The Honda Sports Award is an annual award in the United States, given to the best collegiate female athlete in each of twelve sports. There are four nominees for each sport, and the twelve winners of the Honda Sports Award are automatically in the running for the Honda-Broderick Cup award, as the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year. Three other athletes are honored as the Division II Athlete of the Year, Division III Athlete of the Year, and Inspiration Award winner.
The Women's Basketball Coaches Association is an association of coaches of women's basketball teams at all levels.
The Northern Michigan Wildcats are the athletic teams that represent Northern Michigan University, located in Marquette, Michigan, in NCAA intercollegiate sporting competitions. All teams that play under NCAA governance compete at the Division II level, with three exceptions. The most significant one is the men's ice hockey program, which plays at the Division I level. Two other sports, Nordic skiing and women's wrestling, are de facto Division I sports; the NCAA holds a single skiing championship open to members of all three divisions, and does not currently include women's wrestling in its divisional structure. While NMU's skiing program includes both disciplines contested in the NCAA championships, only the Nordic program competes within the NCAA structure.
Misogyny in sports includes 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 participation of transgender people in competitive sports, a traditionally sex-segregated institution, is a controversial issue, particularly the inclusion of transgender women and girls in women's sports.
Mixed-sex sports are individual and team sports whose participants are not of a single sex. In organised sports settings, rules usually dictate an equal number of people of each sex in a team. Usually, the main purpose of these rules are to account for physiological sex differences. Mixed-sex sports in informal settings are typically groups of neighbours, friends or family playing without regard to the sex of the participants. Mixed-sex play is also common in youth sports as before puberty and adolescence, sport-relevant sex differences affect performance far less.
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