National Girls & Women in Sports Day falls on February 5, 2025. Hosted by the Women’s Sports Foundation, this celebration inspires girls and women to play and be active, as well as to realize their full power. National Girls & Women in Sports Day was established in 1987 when President Ronald Reagan signed Proclamation 5606, and the first National Girls & Women in Sports Day was observed on February 4, 1987. To celebrate National Girls & Women in Sports Day, let’s look at the history of women’s sports and some of the progress made and challenges women and girls face in the athletic world today.
National Girls & Women in Sports Day originally served as a remembrance day for Flo Hyman. Born in Los Angeles in 1954, Hyman was on the U.S. Olympic Volleyball Team in 1980 and captained the 1984 silver medal-winning team. She is widely considered one of the greatest volleyball players of all time and was inducted into the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in 1988. Flo Hyman tragically passed away at the young age of 31 due to a complication of undiagnosed Marfan syndrome. Her legacy still lives on today and she continues to be an inspiration for female athletes and volleyball players around the world.
Athletes like Simone Biles, Serena Williams, Alex Morgan, Caitlin Clark, and Katie Ledecky are just a handful of the many well-known and exceptionally talented female athletes playing sports today. Additionally, women like Sarah Thomas, the first female referee in the National Football League, and Dawn Staley, Head Coach of the 3-time National Champions University of South Carolina Women’s Basketball team, are breaking barriers as women in male-dominated occupations, and they are excelling in their respective fields.
But the road to get here was not easy. Women and girls have always participated in athletics in various capacities throughout history, but have certainly not always received equal representation or equal pay in them. For example, in the 1900 Olympics held in Paris, only 22 of the 997 athletes were women. Of the 10,500 athletes that competed at the 2024 Olympics also held in Paris, 5,250 of them were women–exactly half 124 years later. It wasn’t until the enactment of Title IX in 1972 that it became illegal for any person in the United States to be excluded from participation or subjected to discrimination in any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance, including sports teams and other athletics. In 2022, the US Women’s National Team settled their equal-pay class action lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation for 24 million dollars. These are a few examples of progress being made towards true equality in men and women’s sports.
On National Women & Girls in Sports Day, we celebrate all of the amazing women on and off the field that are dominating in their positions & simultaneously inspiring girls all around the world. Check out some books from the library collection on amazing athletes below:
Money, Power, Respect: How Women in Sports Are Shaping the Future of Feminism by Macaela MacKenzie
Drawing on exclusive interviews with prominent athletes—including Allyson Felix, Megan Rapinoe, and Billie Jean King—journalist Macaela Mackenzie shows how women are using sports as a platform for change. As women athletes push for the same things all women want in their careers—money, power, and respect—their wins are showing the rest of us what’s possible in the fight for equality.
Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water by Vicki Valosik
In this revelatory history, Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville to the Olympic arena, and brings to life the colorful cast of characters whose “pretty swimming” not only laid the groundwork for an altogether new sport but forever changed women’s relationships with water. Williams, who became a Hollywood sensation for her splashy “aquamusicals,” was just one in a long, bedazzled line of swimmers who began their careers as athletes but found greater opportunity, and often social acceptance, in the world of show business.
Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates by Katie Barnes
For decades women have been playing competitive sports, thanks in large part to the protective cover of Title IX. Since the passage of that law, the number of women participating in sports and the level of competition in high school and college and professionally, has risen dramatically. In Fair Play, award-winning journalist Katie Barnes traces the evolution of women’s sports as a pastime and a political arena where equality and fairness have been fought over for generations.
When Women Stood: The Untold History of Females Who Changed Sports and the World by Alexandra Allred
When Women Stood is an eye-opening chronicle of the amazing women who refused to accept the status quo and fought for something better for themselves and for those who would follow. Featuring exclusive insight from athletes such as Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Kathrine Switzer, Nancy Lieberman, Briana Scurry, and Nancy Hogshead-Maker, this book includes the stories of female football players, Olympic athletes, powerlifters, and soccer stars, of historians, archeologists, crusaders, and scientists.
Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win by Rachel Ignotofsky
Women for the win! The fifty illustrated profiles in Women in Sports feature trailblazers, Olympians, and record-breaking female athletes in more than forty sports, including well-known figures like tennis player Billie Jean King and gymnast Simone Biles, as well as lesser-known champions like Toni Stone, the first woman to play baseball in a professional men’s league, and skateboarding pioneer Patti McGee.
She Persisted in Sports: American Olympians Who Changed the Game by Chelsea Clinton
She Persisted in Sports is a book for everyone who has ever aimed for a goal and been told it wasn't theirs to hit, for everyone who has ever raced for a finish line that seemed all too far away, and for everyone who has ever felt small or unimportant while out on the field. Alexandra Boiger's vibrant artwork accompanies this inspiring text that shows readers of all ages that, no matter what obstacles come their way, they have the power to persist and succeed.
Girls with Guts!: The Road to Breaking Barriers and Bashing Records by Debbie Gonzales
No chasing! No stretching or straining! And never, ever sweat. These were the rules girls were forced to play by until Title IX passed in 1972. From Melpomene in 1896 to Althea Gibson in 1956 and beyond, readers will meet the women athletes who refused to take no for an answer. Learn how they paved the way for the women who pushed for a law to protect their right to play, compete, and be athletes.
Descriptions adapted from the publisher.