Meet the Olympic Gold Medalist and advocate for preserving women’s sports for women.
Independent Women’s Forum is delighted to announce that Nancy Hogshead, an Olympic Gold Medalist and an advocate for preserving women’s sports for women, is the latest entry in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.
A world-class Olympic swimmer, Nancy was a leader in the movement to prevent Olympic athletes from gaining an unfair advantage through doping. She compares this to the advocacy needed to prevent men and boys, however they identify, from competing in women’s sports. Like the dopers, biological men who identify as women are cheating when they compete in the wrong sport category. “I’ve lived through this kind of unfairness before,” Nancy tells IWF. “And guess what? When we were dealing with the doping issue, nobody of my stature stood up for us. Nobody. I’m never going to let this happen to girls and women today. People say, ‘Oh, women should just not compete if it bothers them.’ No, they’re 18 to 22-year-olds. Some are younger, in high school. And you’re asking them to take all the risks?”
“The adults in the room, the policymakers, the heads of all these national governing bodies and international sport federations, they have the responsibility to make sure that sport is fair and safe,” she says. She especially admires the younger women—such as IWF Ambassador Riley Gaines, a fellow swimmer—who are taking risks and speaking out to save women’s sports.
Nancy founded Champion Women (we like the name, too), a nonprofit that provides legal advocacy for girls and women in sports, in 2014. Her latest focus was participating in the highly successful Our Bodies, Our Sports “Take Back Title IX” Summer 2024 Bus Tour to save women’s sports, stop the war on women, and restore Title IX. The tour was spearheaded by IWF on behalf of Our Bodies, Our Sports, a coalition of diverse women’s advocacy organizations. It lasted 30 days and covered 30 states, featuring more than 50 speakers, including Olympians, current and former NCAA athletes, coaches, and civil rights lawyers.
We know you will enjoy meeting this powerful woman who dares to swim against the stream to protect women’s sports.
