The gender divide is getting worse, but women athletes aren’t waiting for permission

When Angel Reese took to Instagram Live in October to reveal her WNBA salary wouldn't cover her $8,000 monthly rent, it highlighted a stark reality: While women's sports viewership breaks records, the pay gap is widening. The LSU basketball star's $73,439 salary stands in sharp contrast to the NBA's lowest-paid player, who will earn $1.1 million this season.

Last week, the launch of All Women's Sports Network (AWSN), marked the latest effort by women to claim their space in sports media. The 24/7 streaming channel will showcase live women's sports worldwide – everything from soccer to basketball to tennis to cricket.

"You name it, if a woman is playing it, we're showing it," AWSN founder and celebrity Whoopi Goldberg said on an episode of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" last week.

According to Impact, women athletes received just 0.4% of all sports sponsorships in 2020 and between 2% to 4% of media coverage. Yet viewership data shows a new wave of women's sports fandom that's surged across the U.S. The National Collegiate Athletic Association 's (NCAA) 2024 March Madness drew 18.7 million viewers, the highest viewership for any U.S. basketball game in the last 5 years, according to SportsPro . The surge in interest has brought record viewership to the WNBA and the highest total attendance in 24 years.

The growth in women's sports viewership comes amid a widening political and cultural divide between men and women in America. A recent Gallup poll showed a 30-point gap between liberal-identifying women and men ages 18-30, the largest such divide in history. According to a report last week from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue , misogynistic attacks on women have surged on social media, with phrases like "your body, my choice" and "get back to the kitchen" seeing a 4,600% increase in mentions. Yet while some sectors seem to be regressing—with online harassment of women surging and "your body, my choice" becoming a viral taunt on social media—women in sports are creating their own paths forward.

"This is the moment. We're absolutely amid the women's sports renaissance. There's no other time in history that you've had women's sports so mainstream," said Nefertiti Walker, professor and deputy vice president for Academic Affairs at the University of Massachusetts , former NCAA player and author of " Slaying the Trolls! Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong About Women and Sports ."

While women athletes face growing online harassment and institutional barriers, they're responding by building their own platforms and opportunities. Two-time Rugby Olympian Ilona Maher competes in " Dancing with the Stars ," Simone Biles' Netflix docuseries drew 4.7 million views in its first five days, and Olympian track star Sha'Carri Richardson landed the cover of Vogue. In October, college athlete Juju Watkins , of the University of Southern California Trojans, made history as the first female college basketball player to land a makeup endorsement with NYX Professional Cosmetics.

"Just to see they're so invested in women's sports makes me even more excited about it," Watkins told Women's Fastbreak in October. "I think it just goes to show that the different avenues of women's sports and what we're able to accomplish," Watkins continued. "I'm super blessed to be in this position with such a great brand like NYX."

This week Essence reported that Boston Celtics player Jayson Tatum, who recently signed the NBA's largest contract ever, placed a $200 million bid to bring a WNBA franchise to St. Louis.

The rise of women sports bars Beyond professional leagues, women are building community spaces from the ground up. Since opening in 2022, The Sports Bra , the first bar fully dedicated to women's sports, has inspired similar spaces to open in the Midwest. A Bar of Their Own saw long lines as they opened in time for March Madness this year, and Babe's , a soon-to-be women's sports bar in Chicago hopes to open in 2025. Additionally, The Sports Bra recently announced plans to franchise, expanding outside of Portland, Ore.

"Now we're seeing other women's sports bars opening up. Prior to that, really, it felt like fandom had to be found," Jenny Nguyen, CEO and founder of The Sports Bra said in an April 2024 episode of the All Things Considered podcast . "At the beginning, it was very difficult to figure out what schedules were, where to find it, what streaming service it's on and all of that. So making it accessible creates a whole other avenue for brand-new people to come in and enjoy fandom."

Pushing women's sports forward Reckon reported on the unexpected partnership between the women's U.S. Water Polo team and hip hop legend Flavor Flav, who made headlines for sponsoring the Olympians and sparked national conversation about how women athletes are paid.

As women create their own opportunities in sports, they're also tackling the persistent pay gap head-on. The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team was at the epicenter of the gender pay divide in sports after winning a $22 million lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination based on pay disparity in 2022.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, Women's soccer Olympian Ali Krieger spoke about her team's fight for equal pay.

"We understand that equal pay is a commitment to justice," she said during an Aug. 19 LGBT Caucus meeting . "When we fight, we win. In the same way we fought for equal pay in women's soccer, we fought and we won."

Walker said that while their are issues unique to women's leagues that need to be considered and addressed, child care and menstruation as examples, she's optimistic about the support women's teams will continue to garner.

"I think we have a long way to go when it comes to equity, but I think the love and respect is accelerating at a great pace," said Walker.

Nguyen expressed a similar outlook on NPR.

"This year has been bonkers for breaking records. I do not see anything turning back. Like, we're getting more teams, more leagues. More professional leagues are getting introduced. They're finally starting to get the media deals," Nguyen said in April. "All of these things are things that they've always - women athletes have always deserved. You know, people say it's not a moment. It's a movement, and the movement is just skyward."