Alysia Montaño Wants Better Maternity Protection For Athletes
Alysia Montaño Is Fighting To End The Motherhood Penalty in Sports — ‘Your Body Is Your Business’
Olympic runner Alysia Montaño wants to make sure female athletes never have to deal with the complicated barriers that come with choosing motherhood and their careers in the sports industry.
In an interview with The Cut published Feb. 10, the track and field star opened up about her new non-profit, For All Mothers (formerly known as &Mother), a campaign aimed at dismantling the potential “career-shattering consequences” that professional athletes face when they choose motherhood. Motherhood can come at a cost for many female athletes, as the challenges they face may result in losing out on paychecks, lucrative sponsorships, or having their health insurance terminated altogether.
“We’re seeing an incredible surge in women’s sports, and we deserve to be celebrated. But when women walk into motherhood, they often face the motherhood penalty,” Montaño told The Cut, which refers to the concept that mothers tend to earn lower wages compared to both women without children and men once they become pregnant. This unfair “tax” on working mothers is largely driven by workplace biases and societal perceptions that mothers are less committed or capable in their careers. As a result, they often miss out on promotions and face fewer opportunities for advancement.
“In sports, when your body is your business, the penalization is that much greater. Motherhood is a value add, and we need to see it that way,” Montaño continued. “We started the organization to create a landscape where women in sports can continue their careers, and we have a lot of work to do.”
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Montaño has experienced the “motherhood penalty” throughout her career.
The 38-year-old runner experienced the challenges of the motherhood penalty firsthand in 2014 when eight months pregnant with her first child, Linnéa, she won the 800-meter race at the USA Nationals. After defying expectations with her remarkable achievement, Montaño shared in a 2019 op-ed for the New York Times that she had to battle with her sponsor behind closed doors to ensure she kept her paycheck, all while being labeled as “the pregnant runner.”
“When I was 10 weeks pregnant, I walked into a conversation with my manager at the time and a woman who worked in PR. I thought it was a powerful moment with those two women, so I held my breath and told them I was pregnant. My manager told me to focus on myself and my baby. But because the words pregnancy, maternity, and postpartum were not in my contract, after this woman left when I was about seven weeks postpartum, two men took her place and decided I would be financially penalized. They did not pay me for that first quarter the year after having my daughter,” she revealed.
“I knew I couldn’t rush the process after giving birth to a whole human being, so I followed my plan. I went out and did the very best I could. I won Nationals at six months postpartum. I hadn’t done half of the workouts that I would have done if I wasn’t postpartum, and it proved fruitful for what my body needed then. I got my pay reinstated. I won Nationals again at 10 months postpartum while still breastfeeding. I broke two American records, won two gold medals, two silver medals, and figured out how to pump my breast milk at competition and get it back to my daughter. These proof points are not what we need to be protected; we should just be protected. Not every athlete is going to be able to come back and win medals and break records and make the world championship team postpartum.”
When she asked her sponsors to send her paycheck and revealed that she was planning to have another child in the future, they allegedly “responded by not continuing” her contract saying they wanted “someone more dedicated.” Montaño refused to let the setback hinder her pursuit of greatness. Three years later, she became pregnant with her second child, a son named Aster. She competed in the 2017 USA Nationals Championship while five months pregnant with him.
“I didn’t get paid for two years, but it gave me an opportunity to talk about it. After two years of no opportunities in sports, I realized I had nothing to lose. But the landscape for women in sports had everything to lose. You have to do 10 times more and do it 10 times better to get the respect you deserve.”
She’s fighting for better maternity protections for athletes.
Now, through her For All Mothers campaign, Montaño is advocating for significant policy changes. One key effort is establishing a gold standard for contractual language, encouraging agents and brand sponsors to adopt best practices that include terms like pregnancy, postpartum, and maternity, words that were previously absent from contracts. This ensures that athletes aren’t expected to perform at championship levels while nine months pregnant or penalized for not winning a championship during such a time.
“We have to ask ourselves, How are national governing bodies and players associations supporting mothers in sports? And how do we create opportunities for affordable access to child care?” Montaño said. “At the same time, we’re creating a playbook with subject-matter experts and we want it in the hands of everyone in sports. We’re making a pathway of access to policies and contractual language that includes maternity leave and pregnancy deferrals, lactation accommodation, and ways to store and transport breast milk when you’re competing and need to get it back home to your baby.”
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