In 2024, the most watched college sporting event — excluding football — across all major networks was the March Madness women’s championship basketball game between the Iowa State Hawkeyes and the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. It shattered records for industry networks like ESPN, marking a huge feat for women athletes who only 53 years ago were not permitted to play full-court basketball games.
Sixty years ago, when the Civil Rights Act passed, the idea of 18.3 million individuals watching women play basketball might have sounded like an impossibility. But the 1964 signing of the Act would pave the way for Title IX, prohibiting discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities. It was a game changer for girls’ and women’s participation in sports.
In 2023, the National Federation of State High Schools Association reported around 6 million high school students participated in sports during the 2022-23 calendar year. Of those engagement rates, Georgia ranked number 48 out of the 50 states for girls’ participation.
Morgan Shaw Parker, president and chief operating officer of the Atlanta Dream WNBA team, said she was disappointed by the low ranking.
“It’s alarming to me. That’s why we need to lean into this community as much as we can,” Shaw Parker said, noting that Georgia has approximately 77,000 girls playing sports, but many will fall out of participation by age 13 – a statistic similar to that of STEM. “It’s why we’ve partnered with Microsoft to form clinics that empower girls and women in the Atlanta area.”
The program zeros in on middle schoolers where, as of May 2024, 18,352 of the 43,407 girls registered in the Atlanta Public Schools system are Black and living in underserved communities. This fact resonates with the Atlanta Dream, whose WNBA league of athletes are 85% Black, according to Shaw Parker.
Visibility and access are high on the priority list for Shaw Parker. She attributes personal and professional achievement to participation in team sports.
The idea is not far-fetched. A recent study conducted by Ernst & Young found that 94% of women executives participated in team sports during their youth, either in high school or college.
“Sports impact women so differently, especially where business is concerned,” Shaw Parker noted. “Failure is mandatory when it comes to progress in business. You have to have confidence to be able to fail forward. What did you learn from the failure, and how will you make it better next time? Sports test you in these areas.”
In February, Laila Brock, the Atlanta Dream’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships and community impact, participated in a mentoring event sponsored by the local nonprofit Women in Sports and Events (WISE). She is among the many women affiliated with the WNBA team who don’t think of their role on the Dream as simply work. For some, it’s a way of life.
Head coach Tanisha Wright and guards Rhyne Howard and Haley Jones come to mind as Shaw Parker emphasizes the unsung heroism within the Dream organization. Their performances and leadership are among hundreds of women whose work is deserving of recognition that often goes unseen or garners little or no attention at all because of the stigma that persists in the sports world.
“You have to see this,” Shaw Parker said. “You have to Google the name Switzer, women, uterus, sports.”
This story is from a special collaboration between SCAD and Rough Draft Atlanta. To read more stories from SCAD students, visit our SCAD x Rough Draft hub.
She is referring to Katherine Switzer, who made history in 1967 after becoming the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. In her memoir, she describes a basketball coach at her high school telling her that women would never play men’s-style basketball because too many jump balls could “displace the uterus.”
“We aren’t far away from those days, but we are finally being recognized for the work we’ve done in the dark for decades,” Shaw Parker noted. “Sports has been a catalyst for change. If we help women continue to understand and recognize what they bring to the table, as a community we can take this moment and turn it into momentum for the future.”
