What college basketball teaches us about women’s advancement

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Progress often feels like it’s two steps forward, one step back, doesn’t it? Some days it feels more like 10 steps. Others, like we’ve entered a time machine.?

Just a few weeks ago, seemingly the entire country had turned their attention to women’s college basketball. All eyes were especially on Caitlin Clark, the Iowa Hawkeyes’ 22-year-old phenom. As a bit of a superfan, I was thrilled to see the surge in viewership for the women’s NCAA Tournament Championship. Women’s sports have often been sidelined (pun intended), and it was so refreshing to see little girls and boys celebrating these athletes in the same way they celebrate their male counterparts. It felt like progress. It still does.?

Around the same time, I read a study that knocked the wind out of me. A new report from S&P Global Market Intelligence found that, for the first time in nearly 20 years, the amount of women in the C-Suite has fallen. In 2023, women held just 11.8% of the roughly 15,000 C-suite roles assessed, down from 12.2% the year before. And when it comes to other senior leadership positions, the numbers barely budged. The study indicates that waning focus on diversity and equity efforts may be a contributing factor to the drop.

On the surface, it may seem like these two bits of news are unrelated, but to me they perfectly illustrate the whiplash that comes with being invested in women’s futures. How could these two pieces of information exist in the same universe? Whenever we open our phones and see good news, bad news is just a few scrolls away. It’s enough to make your head spin.?

No girls allowed

I’ve always loved basketball. As a young girl, I often played with my dad, brothers, and neighborhood boys—until the day I stopped being welcome. I remember it vividly. I bounded out of the house, only to be stopped and informed? that they already had an even number. I wouldn’t be able to play with them. I can still feel the heat from my flushed face, can still hear the uncomfortable silence that followed. Earlier in the day, I’d been warned that I’d “scratch the boys” with my long nails. So I’d cut them short, which I thought had solved the problem.?

It hadn’t. I stared into the wastebasket, now filled with the pink half moons of my fingernails. I was angry.?

That day, I learned that even when girls or women follow the prescribed rules, we can still be locked out. With the advancements of Title IX, the law intended to equalize opportunities for girls, you are probably thinking we’ve moved beyond stories like this… But have we??

Parallel experiences?

As it is with so many things, what happens in popular culture often mirrors what happens in our world. I’m writing this on the eve of the WNBA draft, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the parallels I see between what’s going on in the world of basketball and what I’ve experienced as a professional woman.?

As it is in most professions, a wage gap exists between men and women. However, that gap between the NBA and WBNA is staggeringly high.? In 2023, professional NBA players took home an average of over $10 million, while those in the WNBA were paid an average of just $116,500. Statista’s chart (below) allows you to see just how Grand Canyon-sized that gap really is.

And even the women at the top of the pay scale are still woefully underpaid. The minimum salary for NBA players is $1.2 million, over four times higher than the highest-paid women in the sport, who receive around $242,000. Yes, there are factors like ad revenue to consider when we look at salaries for WNBA players, but the men making nearly 100 times what the women make seems almost cartoonish, doesn’t it??

Much like their business counterparts, professional athletes also have to contend with the double-bind that comes with modern womanhood. When powerful women leaders don’t act like we’re “supposed to,” which generally means that we display traditionally “masculine” traits like confidence or ambition, we’re not “likable.” Thankfully, Caitlin Clark has been uplifted for her leadership, but many female athletes aren’t as lucky. Angel Reese, the star of LSU, has been subjected to a year’s worth of criticism. Just like male players, and, in fact, just like Clark, Reese has taunted her opponents. But she isn’t celebrated in the same way they are. The swag-her Reese displays is frowned upon, and she has received criticism ranging from reproaches for “unladylike behavior” to racial slurs to threats of violence and death. Of course, Reese isn’t just a woman, she’s a Black woman, a factor which cannot be ignored. On the basketball court and in the office, women of color are often held to a different standard of behavior, a bias that makes it much more difficult for them to rise professionally.?

With all this in front of us, how do we keep moving forward??

Envisioning what can be

The frustrating truth is that progress isn’t linear. Years of “two steps forward, one step back” can leave us waiting for the other shoe to drop, but don’t let how far we still have to go keep you from celebrating how far we’ve come.

Women’s sports have long been portrayed as “less than” by many fans. Caitlin Clark herself even appeared on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, giving Michael Che and SNL writers a (deserved) ribbing for their jokes at the expense of female athletes. But look at what just happened. The 18.1 million-person audience for this year’s NCAA national championship was up 90% over the 2023 national championship, and up 289% from 2022’s viewership. A search of the 2024 WNBA draft leads to thousands of news stories, in sharp contrast to previous years.?

That’s real progress, and we forget that at the expense of our own wellbeing.?

When women unite, we are incredibly powerful. As a team, we win tournaments, we change organizations, we decide elections, we shape policies. We uplift each other, as Angel Reese’s teammates, Flau'jae Johnson and Hailey Van Lith, did in a recent press conference. When setbacks occur—at work, at home, or on the court—keep your eye on the prize, and let the downsides fuel you. Remember that even after a step back, we are still moving forward.?

There is darkness before the light, but don’t let it eclipse all the good that is to come.?

Women helping women is how we succeed. Check out my latest article for Built In, How to Be the Ultimate Girls’ Girl in the Office to learn more!

The Mirrored Door: Break Through the Hidden Barrier that Locks Successful Women in Place is now available! Winner of the 2023 NYC Big Book award, it's the perfect gift for the professional woman in your life. Click here to get your copy!?

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