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Women In Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win

Rachel Ignotofsky

4.37 · Rating details · 559 ratings · 118 reviews

Women in Sports highlights notable women's contributions to competitive athletics to inspire readers young and old. Keeping girls interested in sports has never been more important: research suggests that girls who play sports get better grades and have higher self-esteem--but girls are six times more likely to quit playing sports than boys and are unlikely to see female a ...more

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Hardcover, 128 pages

Published July 18th 2017 by Ten Speed Press

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· 559 ratings · 118 reviews

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Oct 11, 2017 destiny ♡⚔♡ [howling libraries] rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned-physical, nonfiction, review-copies

I love any sort of book that caters to my feminist side (which, if we're being honest, is all of me?), and I also am a slight sports fan, so when I saw this book, I had to grab a copy! I've heard good things about this book's predecessor, "Women in Science", and while I haven't read that one, I can safely say that I LOVED this book. I'm not much of a non-fiction reader, so reading anything educational honestly usually requires something special added in the mix, and this book absolutely has that ...more

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Dec 25, 2017 Camille ☼ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The day I have children or niece or nephew or any contact with a child and I need to buy them a gift this is what I'm getting for them. ...more

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Jul 29, 2020 Susan rated it liked it

Shelves: need-to-buy

My main complaint is that I read this via audiobook and didn’t get to see the illustrations— so ig I’m just rating the audio format. If I read it physically I probs would have given it 4 stars :) I’m so grateful for these women for fighting for their rights in sports, without them, I wouldn’t be able to swim 😢 I love women omg why am I straight 😭😭😭😭😭😭

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Apr 25, 2019 Sophie Crane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, sports, favorites, women-in-h-f, giveaway

A Great book to provide girls with the back stories on how and what made women excel in sports. Role models for future sportswomen.

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Sep 11, 2017 Michelle (In Libris Veritas) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, nonfiction

4.5 Stars
Women in Sports is a beautifully illustrated look at women athletes who broke the mold, change the game, and paved the way for other women to join them on the podium.

WiS highlights fifty women who come from a multitude of backgrounds, countries, and participate in a wide variety of sports. There are women who were the first to participate, women who broke down barriers, and those who broke records. It also includes a few little infographics about things like musculature and even the pay ...more

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Jul 30, 2017 Kristin rated it really liked it

Shelves: arcs

I would like to thank netgalley and Ten Speed Press for a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Filled with lots of world leading sports women this is an important book. The illustrations are beautiful and I love the diversity of the women included.

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Jul 25, 2017 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, biography, photography-art, sports

Sports have always played a big role in my life. Whether I was playing them or watching them with my friends and family, I have loved them always. Growing up, I did gymnastics, ballet, roller bladed, biked, swam, played softball and skated like a fiend. I skiied, played basketball, and was nearly recruited to Brown University as an ice hockey goalie. My sister played soccer and tennis, my dad was a gymnast and sailor, my mom was a three sport athlete and my grandfather played four sports and for ...more

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Jul 16, 2017 Daisey rated it liked it

Shelves: netgalley, non-fiction, 2017-reads

Sports are not something that really grab or hold my interest, so this was a perfect way to read about some amazing female athletes from the late 1800s to the present. The format of the book with bright illustrations and concise one page biographies is great. I truly appreciated the diversity of the women and the sports represented. This book shares a positive message of strength and determination on every page.

* I received an electronic copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

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Mar 25, 2018 LynnDee (LynnDee's Library) rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, women-s-history, history, biographies, future-child-bookshelf, pretty-covers

Another stunning book from illustrator Rachel Ignotofsky. Featuring women sports figures from throughout history & the world, Women In Sports is definitely a must-read for fans of sports and/or women.

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Sep 29, 2019 Kelsey rated it really liked it

Shelves: reading-women-19

Really enjoyed learning about the women in this book, especially many of the early athletes who had to push at so many barriers.

Read for Reading Women Challenge 2019 #10: A book about a woman athlete.

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Jan 04, 2018 Danica Holdaway rated it it was amazing

Incredible and beautiful book about women in sports - all different types of sports, all different types of women. I am so glad I have this in my home for my girls to read.

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Apr 12, 2018 Rhea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: feminism

I loved Ignotofsky's other book, Women in Science, and this is just as good - her art is gorgeous and I learn about so many cool, trailblazing women throughout history. ...more

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Sep 02, 2018 Jessica Kennedy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: running, soccer, biography-and-memoir, feminist-non-fiction

I really loved reading every page of this.

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Mar 06, 2018 Kristy rated it it was amazing

Fantastic read with gorgeous illustrations! Thankful for all these women! Definite must read for young girls that love sports!

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Jul 10, 2018 Catherine rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-nonfiction

Lovely little introduction to some prominent women athletes and their accomplishments. The art is gorgeous and it and the text are kid-appropriate. Recommended as a good place to start.

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May 16, 2019 Laura rated it liked it

Shelves: middle-school, historical, nonfiction, young-adult, diverse, biographical, sexism, racism, sports, journalism

This book gives an overview of the accomplishments of 50 female athlete's from around the world, including sports like cricket, MMA, swimming, and motocross.

Likely to be a useful starting point for school projects, readers who enjoy learning about athletes who topped their fields, and readers who want to learn more about women's history.

Illustration/artwork was fun! ...more

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Aug 12, 2020 Courtney King rated it really liked it

Shelves: improvement, memoir, true-story

I wish I could have read this book in 5th grade when I was the only girl in my flag football league and my dream was to be the first female winner of the Heisman. There are some badass female athletes out there. Women are strong and we can do whatever we put our minds to!

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Jan 25, 2018 Catherine Raitt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018

A really interesting book. As a lover of sport and teacher of PE, I found it fascinating to read about all these fantastic women from the past and present.

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Jan 09, 2018 Tori (Book Chick) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-with-daughter

Another great, inspiring, empowering book! My 11 year old and I both enjoyed learning about the courageous women who fought their way to the top, to be the best in things that women weren't suppose to be good in at all. ...more

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Mar 04, 2017 Tara rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2017, netgalley, arc, j-fiction

I received this book from Netgalley for an honest review.

This book couldn't come out at a better time. Celebrating women in general and those who competed in sports is important to do, especially the ones in the beginning when women weren't allowed to compete. There are women from long ago that most people don't know about and there are more recent women, like Simone Biles. There are great pictures and infographics that go with each story too. ...more

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Jun 15, 2017 Andréa marked it as to-read

Shelves: arc, digital, true-biographical, netgalley-edelweiss, kids, equality-feminism, sports-games

Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

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Mar 21, 2017 Kristy rated it it was amazing

This was an ARC from Netgalley.

This was such an interesting and enjoyable book. The focus of the book was not just women in the more commonly known sports such as swimming, gymanstics, soccer, or basketball. There were women breaking barriers in everything from ping pong to shooting to BMX and also featured women from around the globe. It still leaves me dumbfounded when I hear about women being the weaker sex or playing sports will be too harmful to the female body. These women and many more pr ...more

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Sep 01, 2018 Daisy Maughan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It is a very inspirational book proving girls that they can achieve anything with perseverance and hard work.

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Feb 15, 2018 Malcolm rated it really liked it

Shelves: feminism, sport-studies

One of the welcome aspects (of many) of the recent revival of discussions of feminism has been the appearance of child-oriented publications centred on women who struggled, who broke barriers, who forced their way into social worlds widely seen as ‘men’s’ space, helping to bring about change that offered women and girls the space to be whoever they thought they might like to be. This collection of 50 women who defied the rules of grace and elegance to run, jump, throw, climb, ride, hit, sweat, s One of the welcome aspects (of many) of the recent revival of discussions of feminism has been the appearance of child-oriented publications centred on women who struggled, who broke barriers, who forced their way into social worlds widely seen as ‘men’s’ space, helping to bring about change that offered women and girls the space to be whoever they thought they might like to be. This collection of 50 women who defied the rules of grace and elegance to run, jump, throw, climb, ride, hit, sweat, strive and achieve in a world of physical exertion deemed unsuitable for them is a welcome addition.

I know from my work in the sport and exercise world that much of what we do remains powerfully gender coded and that opportunities for women remain constrained and limited by cultural codes and conventions that favour men: Ignotofsky sums this up in her entry about MMA fighter Ronda Rousey (p107) when she says “People felt uncomfortable with women fighting so aggressively, breaking bones, and punching each other in the face. Many MMA fans thought the only women near the cage should be the bikini-clad ring girls.” Leaving aside that many of us are probably uncomfortable with a ‘sport’ that relies on anybody fighting “aggressively, breaking bones, and punching each other in the face”, this comment brings out the double standard of sexualised women, where ‘fitness’ is about sexual attractiveness.

The book covers women athletes during the 20th and 21st centuries. The first entry is skating champion Madge Syers who entered international competition in 1902 when the sport’s events were not gender marked because the powers that be assumed only men would compete: four years later ‘Ladies’’ competitions were set up. It ends with Simone Biles, a gymnast who has moves named for her that rely on such strength and power that “most male gymnasts can’t do it” (p115); significant because the gender assumptions of gymnastics is that men do power (look at the rings) and women do grace (look at the floor routines with flowing ribbons).

The book is elegantly laid out and designed – Ignotofsky is designed as well as writer, and has an engaging drawing style, with cartoon illustrations and a page of text per entry. The women selected (I’m sure we’d all have our own choices) is rather US-focused, but that’s not surprising: many of the ‘pioneers’ were from the US, and it is no doubt a market question. There are, however, a reasonable selection of women from outside the Anglo-American North Atlantic world (and with that a delightful attempt to describe cricket to North Americans in the entry for Mithali Raj) and a good range of sports represented. There is also additional information on significant teams, physiology, pay and media coverage differentials and a short additional reading list.

This is a great addition to that set for our kids – boys and girls – on just what women are out and about doing, so add it to Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls and Women in Science and help our kids to keep changing the world for the better. ...more

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Oct 11, 2017 Ellen Scherer rated it it was amazing

Do you know many women in sports? How many professional women’s sports teams can you mention off the top of your head? Unless you are a sports fanatic, I am guessing you would be struggling to name more than one or two. In fact, I’ll admit I knew very little about the relationship between women and sports until opening my copy of Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win, by Rachel Ignotofsky.

This book is fabulous. I gladly award Ignotofsky a 5-star review! Not only does she succi Do you know many women in sports? How many professional women’s sports teams can you mention off the top of your head? Unless you are a sports fanatic, I am guessing you would be struggling to name more than one or two. In fact, I’ll admit I knew very little about the relationship between women and sports until opening my copy of Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win, by Rachel Ignotofsky.

This book is fabulous. I gladly award Ignotofsky a 5-star review! Not only does she succinctly compose the biographies of 50 athletes, she also includes effortless and colorfully animated illustrations of each woman demonstrating her craft. These women have proved sheer dedication to the world of athletics. For example, Ignotofsky highlights women who fought for the advancement of women in athletics by winning Olympic medals and fighting for equal opportunities and wages. She provides a timeline of women’s involvement in professional sports (8-9) which notes outstanding athletes like Althea Gibson (the first black tennis player to compete at U.S. Nationals), important legislation such as Title IX (a 1972 amendment against gender discrimination) and the development of women’s sports organizations such as the WNBA).

Ignotofsky also illustrates a breakdown of muscle anatomy and influential women’s sports teams (Did you know, 20 years before Title IX was passed, the TSU Tigerbelles trained 40 track runners who went on to become Olympians?) Perhaps most importantly, Ignotofsky includes a concise section regarding the gap in pay and disparate television coverage between women and men’s professional sports. In basketball alone, the minimum salary in 2015 for man was still $415,593 more than the maximum salary a woman in the same field.

The inequality wasn’t necessarily a discovery or revelation for me. People are more apt to watch the NBA than the WNBA due to advertising and out of habit. However, we need to change things up. In 2017 there are countless outlets through which to view and discuss sports. I see no reason as to why we cannot redirect the conversation toward women’s professional sports and female athletes as a whole. The future of sports could be a more equal playing field as a result. This is why I think every young person (woman or not, sports-oriented or not) should add Women in Sports to their bookshelves.

Author Rachel Ignotofsky is primarily an illustrator and designer from Los Angeles, California, but she is also a New York Times best-selling author (Check out her other books: Women in Science, published in 2016). She graduated from the Tyler School of Arts in 2011 with a degree in Graphic Design. Her work has been featured in media outlets such as Babble and The Huffington Post. She is an inspiration, much like the women about whom she researches and writes; she is her own boss and follows her passion spreading scientific literacy and feminism through illustration. Click here for a link to her website: https://www.rachelignotofskydesign.com/
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Oct 19, 2020 Elizabeth rated it liked it

Shelves: women-writers, middle-grade, biography-autobiography-memoir, feminist-nonfic, history

Women In Sports was a pretty solid read that provided some interesting facts about a variety of women throughout sports history. I read Ignotofsky's Women in Science a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it, so I was a touch disappointed that I wasn't quite so enthralled with this one.

The illustrations are a lot of fun and help make the book very visually engaging, and the jot note style quick facts help draw you into the larger story about each woman. One of the strongest points this book Women In Sports was a pretty solid read that provided some interesting facts about a variety of women throughout sports history. I read Ignotofsky's Women in Science a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it, so I was a touch disappointed that I wasn't quite so enthralled with this one.

The illustrations are a lot of fun and help make the book very visually engaging, and the jot note style quick facts help draw you into the larger story about each woman. One of the strongest points this book had going for it was the huge variety of sports included. Of the fifty women included, only a handful of sports were represented multiple times, so we got to see everything from tennis and basketball to skating and swimming to shooting and racecar driving. Obviously, not every sport could be included, but a great effort was made to include a diverse representation of the sports available. There was also a variety of disabilities mentioned, ranging from injuries to chronic fatigue syndrome, which was refreshing. I felt I would have loved to have access to this as a kid because, even though I was bookish, I was involved in a number of sports. While I did know quite a few of them, there were still quite a lot that I didn't know, and the information I learned was intriguing and entertaining. I was especially fond of the women featured early on, representing further back on the timeline.

There were a few aspects that held me back from enjoying it as much as I did the science one. Even though there were sports that originated within Indigenous communities, there wasn't actually any Indigenous representation that I saw (if any of the women featured was Indigenous, it was not noted and I do not recall having heard about them being Indigenous prior to reading this). The book was really American centred, with over half the women featured being American in origin (I think 19 out of 50 were not American). In terms of American WOC, there was decent representation, but WOC from outside the US was fairly limited. There was also no representation of trans women. While I was thrilled that there were multiple disabled women featured, with a variety of disabilities included, I also felt like the tone surrounding the more "obviously" disabled women (paralysis, amputee, deaf) veered into some inspiration porn territory that I didn't love.

Overall, I mostly enjoyed it and I felt like I learned a lot, I just wish the women featured were as diverse as the sports they played. ...more

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Sep 07, 2017 Savannah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, feminism, nonfiction

Sell Me in a Sentence: An incredibly cute coffee table book which features the badass women who inspire you.

Short Summary: This is a book of 50 illustrated profiles of amazing female athletes! The book begins with athletes active during the beginning of the 20th century and ends with today’s pioneers.
Review: I love, love, love this book! The writing style is OK; it is just a collection of mostly short biographies after all. It is the illustrations and graphic details that really shine and make ...more

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Oct 02, 2017 Leah Rachel von Essen rated it it was amazing

Women in Sports: 50 Fearless Athletes Who Played to Win is a beautiful book jam-packed with excellent mini-biographies of some of the most iconic and important female athletes of history. It’s an incredible new read from Rachel Ignotofsky, with each athlete getting wonderful illustrations.

This book is excellent in every day. It’s diverse—there are women of color, disabled athletes, and bisexual and lesbian athletes. Ignotofsky is careful to note the extra challenges these women athletes faced. ...more

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Apr 05, 2019 Amanda - Cover2CoverMom rated it it was amazing

You can read all of my reviews on my blog -> Cover2CoverMom Blog

Another collection of mini biographies written & illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky. This collection features 50 influential women in sports. Women have often been refereed to as "the weaker sex" throughout history, but here are 50 women that proved that statement wrong!

I appreciated that this book included such a diverse list of sports are represented here. Dog mushing, skydiving, martial arts, bowling, roller derby, polo, mountai ...more

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Mar 02, 2017 Becky B rated it really liked it

Shelves: ya-nonfiction, history, biography, sports

A collection of biographies of 50 women from around the world and in a variety of sports who set records, broke boundaries, and proved that women were just as sporty as guys. Each woman gets a two page spread, with an illustration of her, a quote, a few facts, and one full page of information with basics about her life, how she got into the sport, and her major achievements. The women are organized chronologically by their date of birth.

I like the diversity in locations these women are from and ...more

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About Rachel Ignotofsky

Rachel Ignotofsky

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Rachel Ignotofsky grew up in New Jersey on a healthy diet of cartoons and pudding. She graduated with honors from Tyler School of Art’s graphic design program in 2011. Now she lives in beautiful Kansas City, Missouri, where she spends all day drawing and learning as much as she can. She has a passion for taking dense information and making it fun and accessible and is dedicated to creating educati ...more