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Several women on bicycles.

The Surprising History of Women and Bicycling

It's not about the bike or the bloomers.
by Maya Rodale via Hidden Herstories on March 31, 2025
A line of women athletes linking arms and wearing shirts with a passage from Title Nine on the back.

Women's Sports Happened By Accident, And Could Be Taken Apart On Purpose

The long battle against Title IX.
by Diana Moskovitz via Defector on March 6, 2025
A colorful collage of Chicago Hustle basketball players during games.

When Chicago Hustled

In the late ’70s, a pro women’s hoops team briefly captivated the city by living up to its name. Then it all unraveled.
by Jarrett Van Meter via Chicago Magazine on September 18, 2024
Skateboarder doing trick on ramp.

How a Generation of Women and Queer Skateboarders Fought for Visibility and Recognition

On defying gender norms and expectations in extreme sports.
by Deborah Stoll via Literary Hub on July 18, 2024
Zdeněk Koubek.

A Forgotten Athlete, a Nazi Official, and the Origins of Sex Testing at the Olympics

In 1936, the Czech track star Zdeněk Koubek became world-famous after undergoing surgery so that he could live openly as a man.
by Michael Waters via The New Yorker on June 1, 2024
University of Michigan women’s basketball team, 1977
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This Is Standby Alert

The history of the battle to keep Title IX out of college sports.
by Matthew Lindaman via HNN on April 2, 2024
Caitlin Clark celebrating on basketball court

Caitlin Clark’s Scoring Record Spotlights the History of a Forgotten College Sports Association

Before being pushed aside by the NCAA, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women governed women’s college athletics.
by Diane Williams via The Conversation on February 29, 2024
Painting of a girl with a basketball looking out a window.

Lady Vols Country

How college basketball coach Pat Summitt transformed women's sports.
by Jessica Wilkerson via Oxford American on June 6, 2023
Two women fighting
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How to Fight Like a Girl

Women have been punching each other in the face (during boxing matches) since the early 1700s.
by Randy Roberts, Ashawnta Jackson, Peter Radford, Cathy van Ingen via JSTOR Daily on April 14, 2023
U.S. Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney crying
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Title IX Has Been Spectacularly Successful And Disturbingly Unfulfilled

A lack of enforcement has blunted Title IX's transformative potential.
by Anne M. Blaschke via Made By History on June 23, 2022
"IX" surrounded by female athletes

The Pursuit of Equal Play: Reflecting on 50 Years of Title IX

How a 37-word clause tucked inside a new education legislation reshape women’s sports forever.
by Maggie Mertens via Sports Illustrated on May 19, 2022
Team photo of the Pacesetters in their uniforms.

How One Women’s Football Team Took Control Away From the Men

The Columbus Pacesetters weren’t satisfied being an afterthought or a gimmick, so they bought their franchise and the ability to make decisions for themselves.
by Britni de la Cretaz, Lyndsey D'Arcangelo via Sports Illustrated on October 29, 2021
Three women in swimsuits with medals for swim competitions.
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Policing the Bodies of Women Athletes Is Nothing New

For women who play sports, there's often no way to win.
by Martha H. Verbrugge, Jess Romeo, H. Grace Shymanski via JSTOR Daily on August 12, 2021

Wimbledon’s First Fashion Scandal

100 years ago, a tennis player shocked spectators with her “indecent” dress—not for the last time.
by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell via The Atlantic on July 9, 2019

Almost Undefeated: The Forgotten Football Upset of 1976

How the Toledo Troopers, the most dominant female football team of all time, met their match.
by Britni de la Cretaz via Longreads on February 1, 2019

How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman

Wilma Rudolph won three Olympic golds and was among the first athletes to use her celebrity to fight for civil rights.
by Kate Siber via Outside on June 8, 2018
Tillie Anderson on her bicycle.

This Seamstress Conquered Bike Racing in the 1890s

Cyclist Tillie Anderson shattered records, dominated her competition, and earned the world champion title.
by Kate Siber via Outside on May 31, 2018
Sydney Sweeney in a boxing ring as Christy Martin in the film "Christy."

The Real Story of Christy Martin, the Trailblazing Boxer Who ‘Created a Sport That Did Not Exist’

A new biopic starring Sydney Sweeney as the legendary athlete chronicles Martin’s fights in and outside of the ring.
by Mary Randolph via Smithsonian Magazine on November 5, 2025
Althea Gibson holding her tennis racket at the London airport.

Ahead of the Game

Althea Gibson, one of the great tennis players of the twentieth century, made segregation in her sport untenable.
by Sasha Abramsky via New York Review of Books on September 4, 2025
An acrobatic water skier performs during a show.
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The Wonderful World of the Water Ski

Invented in 1922, water-skiing quickly became shorthand for American ideas on beauty, athleticism, and affluence.
by Dorothy A. Mays, Betsy Golden Kellem, Stephen E. Branch, Sondra Reierson via JSTOR Daily on August 27, 2025
Drawing of a competetitve pedestrian walking in the late 1800s with spectators watching.

America’s Earliest Sports Stars Were … Professional Walkers?

Walking needs no publicist. The simplest, most accessible form of exercise has been around since humans first foraged and traveled on the ground.
by Jackie Mansky via Zócalo Public Square on October 18, 2024
Zdeněk Koubek's ID card.

Discrimination Against Trans Olympians Has Roots in Nazi Germany

1934 world champion runner Zdenek Koubek, boxer Imane Khelif, and how far we haven’t come on gender in sports.
by Michael Waters, Alex Abad-Santos via Vox on August 1, 2024
Women wearing early twentieth-century gym suits emblazoned with 1902, some women in baskets.

How Sports Clothes Became Fashion

The evolution of women's sportswear.
by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via Nursing Clio on May 15, 2024
Photo of a woman surfing

How Men Muscled Women Out of Surfing

Why is surfing still stuck in the 1960s when women have always done it?
by Mindy Pennybacker via The Atlantic on September 6, 2023
Three muscle builders pose at Muscle Beach on the Santa Monica Beach in California, 1949.
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Gay Panic on Muscle Beach

The skin and strength on display at Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach aggravated American fears of gender transgressions and homosexuality.
by Livia Gershon, Elsa Devienne via JSTOR Daily on August 26, 2022

Althea Gibson, Who Smashed Racial Barriers in Tennis, Honored With Statue at U.S. Open

'It’s about time,' said former doubles partner Angela Buxton.
by Brigit Katz via Smithsonian Magazine on August 28, 2019

The Fitness Craze That Changed the Way Women Exercise

Fifty years after Jazzercise was founded, it is still shaping how Americans work out—for better or for worse.
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via The Atlantic on June 16, 2019

Athlete-Activists Before and After Kaepernick

Kap wasn't the first, and he won't be the last.
by Louis Moore, Jules Boykoff via Public Books on May 14, 2019
People working out in bikinis in a mall.
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As Swimsuit Season Ends, Pursuit of the ‘Bikini Body’ Endures

The "bikini body" is out. But the pressure to maintain the ideal female physique lives on.
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via Made By History on August 30, 2018
Baltimore Colts' Jim O'Brien making a game-winning field goal kick in Super Bowl V in Miami, 1971.
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The Man Who Changed Field Goals Forever

A Hungarian immigrant first brought the soccer style field kick to the NFL.
by Russ Crawford via Made By History on February 8, 2024
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