Taking on the Motherhood Penalty in Women’s Sports
Breaking Records, Not Budgets:
About the study
Over the past decade, increasing attention has been directed toward the experiences of pregnant, postpartum, and parenting athletes. While important progress has been made in some areas of professional sport, many athletes continue to experience challenges related to funding, contracts, sponsorship, team selection, and broader perceptions regarding motherhood and athletic performance. Despite growing public awareness, there remains limited empirical evidence documenting the nature and extent of The Motherhood Penalty across professional sport.
To better understand these experiences, For All Mothers+ partnered with Dr. Francine Darroch, Sydney Smith, and the Health & Wellness Equity Research Group to explore how pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood influence the careers of professional women athletes. Through this work, we aim to elevate athlete voices, document structural barriers, and generate evidence that can support much needed meaningful policy and cultural change within sport.
Importantly, the findings presented in this report should be considered preliminary. Data collection remains ongoing, including future phases of this project that will include in-depth qualitative inquiry designed to further explore athletes’ lived experiences and provide additional context to the findings presented here.
Research Objectives
The overarching goal of this project is to better understand The Motherhood Penalty in professional sport.
Specifically, this work seeks to:
Gather data to quantify and examine the financial impact of pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood on athletes' careers; what we call The Motherhood Penalty in Sport;
Explore athletes’ experiences navigating professional sport during pregnancy and postpartum;
Identify athletes’ experiences with gaps in policies, protections, and support systems available to athlete-mothers; and
Generate evidence to inform future advocacy, policy development, and systemic change.
Key Findings
Among athletes who reported receiving funding, 75.6% (n=31) experienced reductions, pauses, or termination of at least one source of athletic funding.
Athletes described taking on additional work in response to reduced funding, limited income opportunities, and the financial realities of balancing professional sport with pregnancy and parenthood.
“Currently, my [athletic] contract is too low and I'm pregnant, so no prizes or appearance fees. I am taking on part-time work of online coaching, freelance writing, and putting on a camp.”
- Track & Field (Tier 5: World Class)
“I’ve had to work full time to make it work. Working full time with a baby takes a lot on the body and I believe it is part of the reason why I broke my pelvis twice. I never got injured in college and have only had struggles after having kids because of a huge lack of support.”
–Softball (Tier 5: World Class)
“I had to start [additional employment] after I had my first child because we couldn’t survive.”
–Softball (Tier 5: World Class)
Athletes’ experiences during pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood:
73.9%
agreed that pregnancy negatively affected their ability to obtain future contracts and/or funding opportunities
65.2%
did not feel comfortable disclosing their pregnancy to sponsors and governing bodies