{"id":8874,"date":"2020-05-26T23:04:54","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T23:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/v2.mappyhour.org\/blog\/?p=8874"},"modified":"2020-06-05T16:27:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T16:27:19","slug":"caiti-donovan-of-sheis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mappyhour.org\/blog\/2020\/05\/caiti-donovan-of-sheis-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Caiti Donovan: Co-Founder and CMO, SHEIS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mappy Hour ’20 Speaker<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Athletes are working hard on the pitch or the pitch (get it?) to bring gender equality into the world of sports and outdoors. Behind the scenes, a squad of professionals work just as hard to make sure that these sports are accessible to the fans. Entrepreneur and sports enthusiast, Caiti Donovan <\/a>is currently working on bringing women\u2019s sports closer to the fans through her organization, SheIS<\/a>. Mappy Hour sat down with her and chatted about how far both she and women\u2019s sports have come, and how much farther they need to go.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you first get immersed in sports?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I have been an athlete basically my entire life, I played five different sports growing up and now I am a marathon runner. In addition, I\u2019ve always been a huge sports fan. On any given weekend you\u2019ll probably find me watching anywhere between three and five sporting events. So I\u2019ve always been immersed in what it means from a broader society perspective, and what it\u2019s meant for me personally as an athlete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Caiti running in the Boston Marathon. Photo courtesy of Caiti Donovan.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What are some of your favorite outdoor places in or near NYC?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Central Park is one of my favorite places to go running, and the environment that has been created there is really wonderful. We live on the Upper East Side, so we\u2019re a five-minute walk away from the park and from the Jackie Onassis Reservoir. I\u2019ve done most of my marathon training over the years in that park, which means that it holds a special, both love and hate (laughs) relationship with me, because as you\u2019re doing your fourth lap, you just get a little bit monotonous. But it\u2019s also a form of affection because it\u2019s a place that has enabled me to compete in marathons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we go slightly further outside of the city, I am also a huge fan of the Palisades Interstate Park. The views are really incredible, once you get up to the top you\u2019re straddling both the New York and New Jersey border, and you have these sweeping views of the Hudson Valley. It can be an easy or difficult hike, but it\u2019s generally something that\u2019s always been a really fun experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you tell me a bit about your organization? <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

My business, called SheIS Sport, is a non-profit organization formed with the mission of connecting with and mobilizing fans to grow women\u2019s sports. We do that in three primary ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One is around increasing the attendance and viewership of women\u2019s sports, getting people to actually watch. Obviously right now it\u2019s a difficult thing to achieve (because of the COVID-19 pandemic), and we\u2019re in a state of flux, but that hasn\u2019t decreased our focus on our other two pillars, which are around storytelling and centralizing resources. We really try to look at how we can centralize information and resources and we do this in a couple of different ways: one is to centralize for the \u201cSheIS\u201d collective itself, asking “how do we ensure we are helping to build stronger structural opportunities within women\u2019s sports”? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“How do we ensure we are helping to build stronger structural opportunities within women\u2019s sports”?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And how can we create opportunities for fans to engage? For example we are currently in the process of working on digital watch parties, and creating a model and a way for fans to watch a variety of different women\u2019s sports that are being streamed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that your organization is nationwide, how are you working to improve representation of women in sports? Who are you working with?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Broadly speaking, our objective is, again, to connect fans, but probably more importantly, to mobilize them. So when we look at representation within the sports community, we make sure that women and girls have the right representation, the right opportunity to see the sports world as something that they can be a part of. We look at different opportunities to connect them with various athletes, with different role models who exist already in this space. One of the ways that we\u2019ve done that in the past is through our \u201cWomen Worth Watching\u201d campaign, last year we launched a partnership with the USTA around the US Open, and in a six week period, we had 4.6 million engagements online. The premise of the campaign was that only four percent of sports media currently focuses on women\u2019s sports, but we believe that the fans can be the difference maker here. By sharing the hashtag #womenworthwatching<\/a>, fans can share their own stories about women in sports, that they believe are worth watching and sharing. That type of visibility creates a new normal for the next generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After recent sports events, like the US Women\u2019s Soccer National Team<\/a> and the SheBelieves Cup<\/a>, do you think the position of women in sport has improved, and what else needs to happen?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Women\u2019s sports were, and absolutely very much are, hitting an incredible turning point. Over the past 18 to 24 months, we\u2019ve seen a dynamic shift in society. Part of this was due to things like the 2018 US Women\u2019s hockey team winning the Gold Cup for the first time in twenty years. That was directly followed by 2019 when the USWNT won the World Cup, the first time any country has done a back-to-back win (in the Women\u2019s World Cup; in the World Cup, the title has been defended twice by Italy and Brazil, albeit almost six decades ago). Now, although it\u2019s been postponed, we are coming into 2020 with the expectation of the Olympics, which has always been a very heightened moment for women to really shine, and has always created a mass appeal and support for women in sport. We\u2019ve seen a number of key moments in the past couple of years, paired with a change and shifting societal mentality around women\u2019s participation in sports. Since Title 9 was passed, there\u2019s been a 622% increase in women and girl\u2019s participation in sport on all levels and across the board. This means that you have a strong pipeline coming into the professional level of sport. You start to feel a lot of incredible talent coming in, and now you have standout stars (i.e. Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, etc.). Now when you look at the past two years alone, there are a multitude of events that are happening consecutively, so you\u2019re starting to see this real progression and shift on how people view women in sport, and they come out in droves. That SheBelieves Cup game that I was at, there were more than 26000 people there. so there\u2019s something to be said for the fanbase and the real shift that\u2019s been happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SheIS Game with the National Women’s Soccer League. Courtesy of SHEIS.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What do you think the future holds for women in sports? Who \/ What organizations are leading the charge?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot of unknown right now for sure, but I think we\u2019ve hit a moment in time that shifts have occurred. We\u2019re seeing more people support women in general across society, we\u2019re seeing more people idolize these women in sport, and it\u2019s not just women supporting women, it\u2019s young boys dressing up as Megan Rapinoe for Halloween, it\u2019s men and decision makers sitting in rooms together and saying \u201cyes, of course, we\u2019re going to support women\u2019s sports, we\u2019re going to invest in that\u201d so there is that shift coming, and I see that coming in the future as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Caiti joined us in March 2020 for our “Women and the Science of Sports<\/a>” panel<\/em>. Photo by Shawn Austere. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What can we do to raise awareness for representation for women in sports?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There are two big ways: one is language, and the other is taking action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your language matters, what you say matters. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If you use the phrase \u201che\u2019s playing like a girl,\u201d even though it\u2019s meant as a joke, those are subtle cues that get picked up. What we need to start understanding as a broader society both in and out of the sports world is that first and foremost, a woman or a girl\u2019s proximity to compete with a man or a boy does not ultimately determine her worth. By putting that into more certain terms and telling a girl that she needs to play with and beat the boys in order to be considered a basketball player is a subtle cue that women and girls are not as good at sports. We\u2019re placing a very gendered identity in a space that will only end up constricting its future potential. So changing, shifting that language is one of the first things that we at a community level can do, just be conscious of your language. Just give that young girl space to be worthy in her own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second part to that is taking action. Changing your language is a form of taking action. But it also means that if you say \u201cI support women and girls being in sport, playing sports, being coaching,\u201d actually take action behind that. Put your money where your mouth is, buy tickets, make sure that you\u2019re going to watch women\u2019s sports, pay for the season passes. In a lot of cases the average cost to be able to go to a football game is hundreds of dollars per ticket. With women\u2019s sports, you have a much more accessible entry point, and it\u2019s not because the quality of the product isn\u2019t there. What we need to start doing is appreciate it for what it is, for its own sport, and allowing for that to be the entry point. So taking that action, making a conscious choice to say \u201cif I\u2019m going to spend money on a jersey, if I\u2019m going to support a non-profit or a cause, I\u2019m going to make sure I take an active stance and make sure that I am equally supporting things that will help improve women in sport, as much as I might otherwise support the sports industry.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mappy Hour ’20 Speaker Athletes are working hard on the pitch or the pitch (get it?) to bring gender equality into the world of sports and outdoors. Behind the scenes, a squad of professionals work just as hard to make sure that these sports are accessible to the fans. Entrepreneur and sports enthusiast, Caiti Donovan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":8876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[279],"tags":[328,2,329],"yst_prominent_words":[383,384,339,334,382,379,336,332,380,381,331,385,376,378,337,338,333,335,330,377],"class_list":{"0":"post-8874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-speaker","8":"tag-caiti-donovan","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-sheis"},"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n