Jessica Mendoza Quotes

It's clear that women athletics are pretty far behind in every way. In terms of facilities, how much we make, everything.

Some boys accepted me, some didn't. And my family had comments made to them. Brazil is still a very macho society, and sports are mainly for boys, so people would say to them: 'What is this girl doing? Why is she always out there in the soccer games with the boys?'

I'm now the hitting the instructor with the Cleveland Indians.

If we have a situation where a man is particularly graceful in a sport that rewards grace - say, for example, figure skating - why is it that we don't say to the man, 'Well, you're too feminine to compete?'... I don't understand why we don't find it offensive also to say to a women who's very strong, 'You're too masculine to compete.'

It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.

The reason women don't play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.

I'm glad you're doing this story on us and not on the WNBA. We're so much prettier than all the other women in sports.

Ever since that day when I was 11 years old, and I wasn't allowed in a photo because I wasn't wearing a tennis skirt, I knew that I wanted to change the sport.

Every time a male coach berates his players by referring to them as “ladies” or tells them to “hike their skirts” while playing, we’re perpetuating an atmosphere where women are not men’s equals.

I remember teaching a clinic to other coaches, and a guy raised his hand and asked if I had any advice when it came to coaching women. I leveled him with a death-ray stare, and said, 'Go home and coach basketball.'

There were three football fields next door to my house. I used to walk down to the boys' team, but eventually, I was told I was going to have to stop playing because I was a girl.

I never realized how hurtful people can be. They hate me so much for being a female in a men's sport. And I'm just like, 'Really? It's 2016, people. Women can do anything.'

There is a stigma in our sport that men are the better drivers. People think that, because the men compete in two-man and four-man, they are more versatile and that the women aren't great drivers.

I believe that the sport of football has set itself up to be in a position where it shows itself in the bigger picture to not really care about women - they don't really care about people of color, but we won't get into that for NFL either - but as a woman I feel like a person who has been marginalized.

As a kid, I didn't know that 'All in the Family' was satirizing male chauvinism or that Bobby Riggs was a self-promoting put-on. Many of us didn't get the irony and went on making fun of women and girls who wanted to play sports, especially the same sports that men and boys traditionally played.

I've experienced a lot of sexism in football.

Let's face it, there's just different access that young boys have to sport and teams than girls.

I remember, even when I first started out in NXT and the girls wanted to do certain moves in matches, and I remember, our coach would tell us, 'You don't have to do that. You don't have to learn that. This is what is required of you.' And it was a lot of hair pulling, a lot of slapping. And it just wasn't seen as being taken seriously.

Before, I was a little bit skeptical about women coaching, because I don't know if maybe they are different, and not every woman can be strict to take the best out of you. I was worried about this, but so far I see that some women can be much stronger than men, actually.

Women face discrimination in sport the world over. The reason we don't have more Serena Williams is because we don't really have the same facilities and coaching for women that we do for men.

I've been really vocal about my disappointment about how the WNBA athletes get treated like second-class citizens in relations to the NBA when they're a subsidiary.

Whenever people say 'women's soccer,' I want to correct them to say 'soccer.' Every girl has had their sport diminished because they're girls.

Especially in the States, at every level - whether it's collegiate, whether it's our professional league - we need more women in coaching, 100 percent.

You have to be realistic. I'd love to be more famous, have lots of people supporting me, people knowing my name, but I need a tennis racket or a golf club or to play football. Being a female, I don't stand a chance.

I never really thought about being a woman in a man's world. Then at the World Championships in 2000 I finished 15th. I was called on to the podium just for being a woman, and I realised things were going to be different.