Sports Equality Quotes

What happened to equal opportunity? Not just in tennis, but everything. It's something that Billie Jean King fought for and she played Bobby Riggs for that, and beat him.

On the court, Jason Collins is not a huge basketball star, but he has already claimed his place in civil rights history as the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues.

The reality is, like, women's basketball players are playing against women. And we're all in the same boat the same way men's sports is.

It's important for girls to feel strong and powerful even when they're playing sports.

The girls are working so hard to put female wrestling on the map and to make it as big as the men. To see it actually happening... I'm so grateful.

When I was a kid, the women like Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain were paving the way for female players in the States. Things like that are important so girls realise there is a future for them if they want to play. It is something they can aspire to, to be not just a hobby.

I'd love to have a chance to fight in the World Series Boxing for women, but nothing has been done about that.

Football is at least as 'gay' as rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and the film '300.'

My next project is 'Venus Vs,' which is a documentary that follows tennis star Venus Williams and her effort to get equal-award pay for women at Wimbledon. Most people don't realize that Venus fought for years to make sure women and men winners of that tennis championship received the same amount in award money.

It's 2018, and being an openly gay man and an athlete, that is part of the face of America now.

In recent generations, women's sports have been a blessing. Some of us can remember the bad old days in the '50s, when we would discover in casual schoolyard play that a girl could outrun most of us or hold her own in basketball or hit a softball - but there were no teams, no coaches, for girls.

I'm proud to say that, leading by example, I've tried from day one to help recalibrate views of women in the world of football.

Women's sports is still in its infancy. The beginning of women's sports in the United States started in 1972, with the passage of Title 9 for girls to finally get athletic scholarships.

I look at it this way: the WNBA is 13 years young. I think eventually women will get to that point, maybe in my daughter's generation, where their salaries will be similar to men's. But we're still starting off, like, where the NBA was back in the 1950s.

I join other players in calling for all teams to take a stand. We should not be subject to hate speech or racist acts at any time, and definitely not in our arenas.

When I was a little kid, I don't remember looking up and seeing so many Hispanic athletes out there.

It's all well and good having a women's Tour de France - which I think we need and I think we should have. But I think we should slowly build it in and not just go 'Bam!' with three weeks over the same course and same length of time as the men's.

In the seventies we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. We had to make it okay for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports.

I feel like the NBA, WNBA, tennis and basketball have really been at the forefront of social justice and pushing for change from the athlete platform.

I like to think I proved a wrestler's skin color doesn't matter.

They didn't have college scholarships for women. Had they done that at the time, I may have stayed on for another two Olympics, but the opportunities were not available to women that they have today.

It is important for big names such as Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri to get on board and recognise that women do actually understand the game and they can play as well.

Many people say, 'Your dad was so ahead of his time,' and he was a feminist in the truest sense, but he's very much for opportunities for all people... To him, a soccer player is a soccer player.

We want to be treated as professionals and like the male footballers.

I have often been asked whether I am a women or an athlete. The question is absurd. Men are not asked that. I am an athlete. I am a women.