A Swoosh and a Miss
Earlier this month Nike released its first ever maternity line. While generally exciting, the company hasn't always shown moms, or women for that matter, a lot of love. Over the years, Nike has launched campaign after campaign showcasing their commitment to equality and diversity, but the narrative hasn’t been as pretty behind the scenes.
I will be needing these
Alysia Montaño competing while 8 months pregnant and making us all feel like absolute garbage
Baby Mama Drama
Last year, Nike found itself in the middle of a maternity leave scandal. This is familiar territory for the brand, which, in 2018, found itself in the midst of a sexual harassment and discrimination exposé.
Crikey, Nike!
After the brand launched its famed #DreamCrazy ad campaign, a few female track stars were struck with the hypocrisy of their messaging. Alysia Montaño and Kara Goucher both came out to express their difficulties with Nike, saying they were financially penalized for having a family. Outwardly, the company was spouting idealistic messaging about the power of women in sports. Internally, however, those same athletes were struggling to stay afloat during their pregnancies.
Maternity leave is a big issue specifically within track and field. As runners, track athletes aren’t paid by a league. They make money purely based on competition performance and from sponsorships, meaning they need to consistently perform to keep cash coming in. Nike is notoriously a huge running partner, offering prize money for races and financially backing individual athletes. In other words, they are a major source of income for competitors.
While these sponsorships can offer a certain level of security for athletes, injuries are still a fact of life. Sponsors know this, and are often quick to accommodate time off and financial support for stars in recovery. That same courtesy is not extended, however, during pregnancy. In fact, up until last year all of Nike's contracts allowed for a reduction in an athlete's pay “for any reason”, which mainly refers to a dip in performance.
From a sponsorship perspective, this makes sense. If I’m paying you to represent my brand, I want you to do well. Why would an elite company like Nike back an athlete that doesn't rank consistently high? Yet this language doesn't make any exception for pregnancy.
To be clear, these women are also contractors, meaning they can be let go for not upholding their end of the sponsorship deal. This is a major distinction since employees are given a certain level of security. You can't just fire someone for being pregnant, but you can terminate a contractor for not running fast enough.
Essentially, this allowed Nike to eliminate pay for pregnant or postpartum athletes who were unable to maintain their normal run times. Alas, most runners backed by the brand had no choice but to train up-until and immediately after childbirth to avoid losing their salaries. Alysia Montaño famously competed while eight months pregnant so that she could have enough money to support her family.
I personally lose momentum after sending a long email, so I can’t imagine trying to keep up an elite level of athleticism with a baby in my belly. Even worse, I can't imagine being forced to.
Moreover, most high-performing runners are insured through either The United States Olympic Committee or U.S.A. Track & Field. These organizations are not a buy-in situation. You only get to be part of the cool Olympics club if you compete well, and you can lose your status just as quickly. How do you keep up with these performance standards while expecting? The short answer is that you put yourself and your baby at risk, or you lose the money.
Allyson Felix, who presently holds the record for the most gold medals at the World Championships, blatantly asked Nike to contractually guarantee that she wouldn’t be penalized for a dwindle in performance in the months surrounding childbirth. They declined, begging the question, if one of the most decorated athletes can’t get security, who can? Keep in mind that not everyone is Christine Sinclair. Not every athlete - let alone female athlete- becomes a household name raking in sponsorship dollars by the millions. Most track athletes are just trying to make a living, with or without the fame.
After these stories came out, Nike faced a congressional inquiry about workplace discrimination. Within days the company announced a policy that guaranteed an athlete’s pay throughout pregnancy and released a statement indicating that their all "contracts for female athletes will include written terms that reinforce our policy." And now that Nike is officially on board with moms, it's funny to see them pushing out a maternity line only a year later. Though they began working on their maternity collection three years ago (well before the exposé) it does make you wonder about timing. I'm happy they are embracing their new found love of family, but it's challenging not to read it as disingenuous.
That said, I'll take whatever support for women I can get.
"Serena showed me I could win the Wimbledon"
Change is Crowning
While this is a huge step for Nike, maternity leave is still a distant dream for most leagues. The Canadian Women’s Hockey League, for instance, only starting paying their players three years ago. Female athletes still have to fight to earn a decent living, not to mention job security.
SMDH.
That said, allowing for maternity leave could help alleviate some of the wage discrepancies between male and female athletes. Creating better policies around pregnancy may actually be the key to shrinking the gap. In any industry, unpaid maternity leave puts women at a huge disadvantage for future raises and promotions, even if they come back into the same position.
Of course, in sports, they often lose rankings by the time they get back to play. Serena Williams, who won the Australian Open while eight weeks pregnant, saw her ranking plummet from Number 1 to Number 451 before her return. When pregnancy becomes the kiss of death for success, we have a problem. Male athletes are able to have robust family lives without batting an eye or dropping the ball. I'm sure many - and by many, I mean Dwight Howard - have children they don't even know about. Forcing a woman to choose between family and career is an old-school way of thinking that we can toss out with the bath water. Women can and should be able to have both, and it shouldn't be crazy to ask for it.
Luckily some leagues are starting to catch on, but it's too early to say anything yet. For example, the WTA is now protecting tennis rankings for pregnancy-related time off. A backswing in the right direction. Likewise, in January the WNBA announced salary increases and a fully paid maternity leave for their athletes. A big push toward equality in sport.
What The Doctor Ordered
Pregnancy among athletes seems like a relatively new phenomenon. Often these conversations are linked with safety and concern over the baby's health. Is it appropriate to keep training while pregnant, and for how long? With a bun in the oven, everyone wants to know the best recipe, and competing at an elite level isn't the norm. Now that sponsors and leagues are allowing athletes to take time without worrying about pay and rankings, how much time off is the right amount?
Honestly, it's tough to say.
A 2018 study compared 130 pregnant athletes to 118 non-active mothers and found ‘no significant difference in the length of delivery or pregnancy complications between the female athletes and the control group.’ Let’s also not forget that doctors have recommended some pretty wild things over the years (see above). We know that medical opinions can change with the times, and times are changing. For example, we used to strongly believe that pregnant women should never increase their heart rate above 140 BPM. Now we’re more lenient with figure. Pregnant mothers are powerful, and their bodies do things that are hard to comprehend. While historically it made sense to treat them like precious flowers, now we know a bit better.
Professional obstacle course racer Anna-Lee Markstedt puts it best, “being pregnant doesn’t mean you stop moving.” Today, we understand that everyone's bodies are different. What may work for one expecting mother doesn't work for another. If you were extremely active before your pregnancy, maintaining a high level of fitness during may be right for you. It would obviously be ill-advised, then, to decide to take up pole vault in the middle of your second trimester.
In having leagues and sponsors allow for time off, we give the agency to expecting mothers to decide what is best for their bodies. Maybe it feels right to run a race eight months pregnant, maybe that would be torture. The point is that you shouldn't have to do anything risky for fear of losing your career.
We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know, You Know?
The bigger issue is that we don't actually know a lot about what happens to the bodies of pregnant athletes. In fact, studies into pregnancy, puberty, menopause, and menstruation among athletes have only begun within the last few years. I guess if you forget that women can play sports, it's easy to forget to research them in the same way.
A great example is the myth that it's normal to lose your period when working out vigorously - a reality I thought was totally common place growing up in the gymnastics world. As it turns out, halting menstruation is often caused by nutrient deficiency and not beast-mode athleticism. An alarming realization that goes to show how little we know about safety in women's sports.
I know it’s a crazy statement, but men and women are different. Some of us, for example, are capable of housing and growing tiny humans. It follows then, that the way our bodies perform may also be different. In a world where men set the rules, coaching tactics, and training requirements, often we forget to account for these differences.
To give Nike some credit, their maternity line was created using insights from over 150,000 body scans of women throughout their pregnancies. What’s more, they conducted a focus group of 30 active women to discuss the needs they had in active wear during and after childbirth. If a clothing line is how we start to see more research, then I’m all for it, but Nike isn't a pioneer in this space. In fact, their own programs are fraught with bunk training methods and harmful science.
Mary Cain, for instance, was the “fastest girl in the world” at age 17. She was the youngest athlete to make the World Championships team, and was the next shining star in track and field. Back in 2013 she signed a deal with Nike to become part of their elite Oregon Project team, a huge opportunity for a young athlete. Instead of being catapulted into running fame, however, Cain faded away into obscurity. She left the team and came out against Nike last year to describe her harrowing experience.
While training with the Oregon team, the main focus became on Cain's weight. The mindset being 'the heavier you are, the slower you are.' She became so thin that lost her period for three years, starting breaking bones, and was contemplating suicide. The choice to leave the team ultimately became a critical decision about health, and the New York Times reports that staying could have lead to osteoporosis or infertility.
For a prestigious program, this doesn't seem like award-winning results. And other female athletes have come out about similar treatment. Skater Gracie Gold, for example, has shared stories about the same kind of fixation on her weight.
While many blame the head coach, Alberto Salazar, I see this as a much more scientific and systemic problem. The Times lays it out pretty plainly:
"A big part of this problem is that women and girls are being forced to meet athletic standards that are based on how men and boys develop. If you try to make a girl fit a boy’s development timeline, her body is at risk of breaking down."
We can't have the best interest of female athletes in mind if we don't know what their bodies need. We can't tell a pregnant woman that she should be expected to perform at peak levels months after childbirth if we've never studied the ramifications of such an ask. Chalking up losing periods to "she must be working hard" is a disgusting way to avoid understanding the safety and health women. Female athletes are not male athletes, but, unfortunately, they are playing games created, monitored, and assessed by men.
Everybody Makes Mistakes. Everybody Has Those Days
In the wise words of Hannah Montana, nobody's perfect. Companies, like people, are complex, and Nike has been toeing the line between revolutionary and problematic for years.
We can look at all of these instances as individual anomalies. An oversight by Nike for maternity leave, a lack of understanding at recovery time for postpartum women, a rogue coach obsessed with weight... but the fact the matter is that there will always be these kinds of excuses until we have systems that look out for the particulars of female athletes. This change starts with the empowered women who have spoke up about inequalities, and continues with companies like Nike admitting their mistakes.
We can’t fix what we don’t know is broken, and part of change comes from isolating problems. Without research on female athletes or pregnancy in sport, how are we meant to combat health risks? The simple answer is that we can't.
From a sponsorship perspective, I hope Nike starts looking at pregnancy as an asset and not a liability. This maternity line is a good start. Mommy blogging is a huge business, and they'd be wrong to ignore that market because it's new territory. Just look how popular Fred Vanvleet and Kyle Lowry’s kids have become. Brand that baby the second you can! And let your athlete have a healthy recovery instead of worrying about their pay. They’ll come back in full force to represent a brand that showed them support.
In full transparency, I'm writing this article few meters away from my favourite Nike sneakers. As a brand, Nike is unmatched - the swoosh is iconic, reliable, and frankly super cool. They are also masters of advertising. Every year I look forward to their new empowering campaigns.
That said, they are not above scrutiny. Being awesome doesn’t make you perfect, and pointing out flaws doesn’t mean I hate the company. We should know by now that it's possible to inspire young girls and also allow rampant sexual harassment within your walls. No one is squeaky clean, but to me it’s concerning watching Nike use advertising to support ideals they themselves do not uphold. I’m glad athletes are standing up to highlight their hypocrisy.
As a huge influencer in the sports world, I hope Nike can continue to admit their flaws and pushing for change. Hopefully they take their own advice when it comes to supporting female athletes:
Just do it.
