Michele Roberts – The executive director for the National Basketball Players Association. She is a key person in the NBA rebecoming what it was pre-COVID, along with being a supporter and activist for the BLM movement. During COVId she started by working on creating a safe environment for players in the NBA to travel to in order to play basketball and continue with their job. The process of creating this started with deciding on a location that ended up being Orlando, Florida, USA. Shortly after coming up with her idea she had to communicate with basketball players in the league to get her idea up and running. Being endorsed by players was not hard because they wanted the same as her, to be able to play basketball again, and to have the ability to show fans that they were still who they used to be. After the safe space was up and running many players and her started asking for “Black Lives Matter” on every court. This was a hard task as she had to again reach out to players for endorsement but they were very compliant and encouraging. Now that all NBA courts had “Black Lives Matter” printed on them teams started coming out in support of the movement, especially the Milwaukee Bucks. The Bucks refused to play after the shooting of Jacob Black who was an unarmed Black man, by the police in Kenosha Wisconson. Roberts was in full support of their decision but the league could not move forward without the team so she had to negotiate with the NBA in order for them to play. The final decision was that she would set up a fund to help raise money to expand the economic growth of black communities. Additionally, she made an eager suggestion to turn the NBA courts into voting areas for the then-upcoming elections. She was and still is so influential because of the determination she showed in order to firstly, return the NBA back to normal sessions and then to raise more awareness on the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
2.
Alysia Montaño – Also known as the “pregnant runner,” Alysia Montaño decided to run 800 meters at the USATF Outdoor Championships at 34 weeks pregnant in order to continue getting paid. Before Montaño was in a contract with Nike, she quickly realized that Nike doesn’t offer maternity leave for female athletes. After this, she had to wait until the end of her contract to switch sponsors. Once her contract ran out she switched her contract to Asics where she had a female ally. She was thinking of starting a family and her ally told her not to worry and that she would still get paid. Paid maternity leave was a struggle for athletes because they felt had to return to sport as quickly as possible postpartum to provide for their families. As she became pregnant her ally was switched to a different company. Her pay was soon docked marginally and she started to speak out about the issue, catching the attention of many in the sports industry. Eventually, Nike started getting major backlash and now has a policy in place that athletes must receive “pay and bonuses for 18 months around the time of their pregnancies.” To further add to her feats of activism she also started the social media campaign called #DreamMaternity in 2019. The social media campaign was/is for raising more awareness on the issue and trying to change it for the long term, and for all sporting companies, not just Nike. Additionally, she is a co-founder of the organization &Mother which sheds light on the issues. She is an amazing athlete and one of the most influential women in sport because even though she was putting her career, and livelihood on the line she knew that it was worth fighting for.
3.
Megan Rapinoe – A woman who will stand up for what is right and say what is on her mind but will never have regret, that is what makes her one of the most influential female activists in sport. First off, Megan Rapinoe was once attacked by Donald Trump on Twitter because she said she didn’t want to visit the white house if the US women’s soccer team won the world cup. She additionally said that she was proud to be a woman that he had attacked because that meant that she was putting her opinion out there and wasn’t afraid to be heard. She also co-owns a completely gender-neutral clothing brand called re-inc. The brand is run with three of her fellow USA women’s soccer team athletes, Tobin Heath, Meghan Klingenberg, and Christen Press. What’s even more remarkable about their brand is that they use eco-aware fashion products and they donate the majority of their profits to the following charities:
- Alternate Roots
- Inner-City Arts
- #GetUsPPE
- The Movement for Black Lives
- When We All Vote
- Reunion
- Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Organization
- Sista Ayfa
- Children of Promise NYC
- A Blade of Grass
- Isuroon
- Black Trans Femmes in the Arts Collective
- Holistic Life Foundation
Finally, to top off all of these amazing accomplishments of hers she is also an advocate for equal pay for women. She brought it to the world’s attention that the women’s soccer team are winning twice as many games as the men’s team but getting paid the same amount. This is crucial and devastating because depending on how much they win determines their pay. Now, thanks to her efforts women and men in the USA soccer team have equal pay.
4.
Billie Jean King – The most influential woman on this list is Billie Jean King. She has defined women fighting for equal rights, even in the ’60s and ’70s as a 20-year-old tennis player from California. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, women were expected to wear tennis skirts to play, and once when Billie Jean did not she was told she was not allowed to compete. Although not too long after that she became the first woman to win 100,000$ at a competition specifically this was at the US Open, still it was 15,000$ less than the male competition. Soon she started realizing that the better she became the more she would be listened to, she decided that in order to make a change she must be no.1. At this point in time in the late ‘60s early’70s, she had joined with 8 other female tennis players they all signed 1$ contracts with Virginia Slims Circuit to protest against the inequity in prize money. The “original 9” set off on a tour to raise awareness as Billie Jean worked tirelessly to promote the tour. “In 1973, she lobbied for equal prize money for men and women at the U.S. Open, and as a result of her efforts, a sponsor was found to level the playing field”(billiejeanking.com). Thanks to her efforts the U.S. open started to have equal prize money. Bobby Riggs former tennis Number 1 claimed that women were inferior to men, and challenged Billie Jean to a Tennis match. He was 55, she was 29, he was 26 years older, still, she accepted the challenge and beat him 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 to Billie Jean King. There was more to this than just a normal match though. It was called Battle of the Sexes and she felt obligated to win after the Title IX bill passed which prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding.” Since then she has now become an activist on equal pay in the sporting industry and she has now received the Presidential Medal of Freedom which is chosen and presented by the President of the United States of America and is the highest civilian honour one can receive.
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