Special Edition:

The first NGWSD was held in 1987 after U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation declaring the first Wednesday of every February as National Women in Sports Day. The day was originally established in remembrance of American Olympic volleyball player Flo Hyman, who passed away suddenly while competing in a volleyball tournament in 1986.

• Since then, NGWSD has evolved into a multifaceted day dedicated to acknowledging women’s history in sports, celebrating current achievements, and recommitting to the continued fight for equality. HYFR.

NGWSD is also about highlighting the countless positive impacts of girls’ sports participation. While youth involvement in sports is rebounding from its COVID-19–induced dip, there’s still a long way to go: Only 36% of kids played regularly in 2022.

• Girls’ participation is slowly increasing, but the gender gap persists — 34.5% of girls played regularly in 2022, compared to 40.2% of boys.

• Plus, by age 14, girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys due to barriers like lack of access, social stigma, costs, and more.

With those stats in mind, it’s even more important to spotlight how game-changing sports are for girls, pun intended. Along with learning essential life skills like teamwork and leadership, girls who play sports are more likely to have higher levels of self-esteem and lower levels of depression.

• And those impacts transfer to life beyond sport. A 2015 study found that 80% of female executives at Fortune 500 companies played competitive sports before suiting up for the boardroom.

Grab your party hat, because it’s time to celebrate the barrier-breaking progress made in women’s sports since last year’s NGWSD.

🏐 Volleyball: On August 30th, 2023, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln made women’s sports history by hosting a pair of college volleyball matches in their football stadium. A whopping 92,003 fans showed up, smashing the international women’s sports attendance record in the process.

• And the sport’s only grown from there. Two weeks ago, the Pro Volleyball Federation kicked off its inaugural season with seven teams, and the new LOVB’s six squads will start serving in November.

🏒 Ice hockey: Years of effort to create a sustainable cross-border pro hockey league culminated in the PWHL, a brand-new six-team association which held its inaugural game on New Year’s Day. Since then, the world’s best players have been taking hearts, eyeballs, and marketing budgets by storm. A dream, fulfilled.

• The PWHL’s historic collective bargaining agreement set a new precedent for player protection, ensuring these superstars are in it for the long haul. And good thing, too — fans, including Pittsburgh Penguins legend Sidney Crosby, are already calling for expansion.

⚽ Soccer: Amid huge growth in the NWSL and the Women’s Champions League, the FIFA Women’s World Cup took center stage in 2023. Soccer Girl Summer garnered unprecedented viewership and attendance, plus nonstop social media engagement, to generate a jaw-dropping $570M in revenue. Well worth those 5 a.m. ET alarms.

⚾ Baseball: From the field to the front office, women are proving that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Already the first woman named to an active Division I (DI) roster, Brown University freshman and friend of The GIST Olivia Pichardo became the first to actually play DI baseball on March 17, 2023.

• Then in September, former Miami Marlins general manager (GM) Kim Ng, added “first female GM to make the MLB postseason” to her already impressive resume. Home runs all around.

📈 Rising attendance and viewership: Women’s sports spectators have smashed countless records in the last few months, with softball, basketball, and gymnastics battles all drawing astonishing IRL crowds.

• The boom extended to TV, too: The WNBA enjoyed their best regular-season viewership in 21 years, and the women’s March Madness semis surged 66%. If you stream it…

All of this progress is certainly cause for celebration, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to truly achieve gender equity in sports. One major priority? Supporting trans rights.

• Twenty-two states have passed bans on gender-affirming care, and even more have restricted trans students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

• As groundbreaking trans athlete and friend of The GIST Schuyler Bailar said, opponents are “twisting the optics of feminism in order to promote transphobia and misogyny.”

An area of growth to keep an eye on? Media broadcast and rights deals. The NWSL just inked the biggest media deal in women’s sports history, and other leagues are hoping to follow their lead. The WNBA is pursuing a fresh nine-figure contract before their current deal expires in 2025, while women’s college hoops’ skyrocketing valuation has game-changing potential.

• And with those aforementioned record-setting viewership numbers, there’s no telling how deep the impact of actually putting women’s sports on TV will be. Spoiler alert: The limit does not exist.

On top of that, 2024 is shaping up to bring an embarrassment of riches when female athletes take center stage at the Paris Summer Olympics. From the pitch to the court to the mat and beyond, women’s sports will dominate news cycles and podiums left and right.