Will Women’s Sports Ever Get a Fair Shake?

Women's professional sports have seen a surge in popularity in recent years, with more awareness, more fans, and more ticket sales The U.S. women's soccer team's victory in the FIFA World Cup this past summer was an especially big reminder that women's athletics can have just as much cultural value and commercial viability as men's. But the playing field is far from Level. To this day, female athletes earn a fraction of what their male counterparts do. They receive far fewer corporate sponsorships and their teams have far fewer resources. Few women are coaches, executives or athletic directors. And just an estimated 4% of sports media coverage is of women's sports. For this episode of Crosscut Talks, we invited a panel of female athletes and executives from the Seattle area to discuss these persistent inequities, to chart how far we've come and how far we have yet to go. This conversion features former Seattle Storm player Jamie Redd, World Cup champion Amy Griffin, Reign FC co-owner Teresa Predmore and Storm co-owner Ginny Gilder. This episode was recorded on Sept. 26, 2019, at the Cascade Public Media studios as part of the Crosscut Talks Live event series.

To learn more about women’s professional sports in the Seattle area, read Equal Play, the latest in Crosscut’s Focus series.