With the National Hockey League, or NHL, Stanley Cup playoffs starting on April 18 to 20, going through mid-June, and the end of the regular Professional Women’s Hockey League, or PWHL, season, women’s hockey is on the table.
According to the Hockey Hall of Fame, women began playing hockey in the late 1890s, with the first all-women’s game played in Ontario, Canada. Ever since, women’s hockey has steadily grown, with the addition of all-women tournaments and organizations created for women’s teams.
But, conversations and attention towards women’s hockey haven’t always been positive. In 1910, Albertine Lapensée, a young female star hockey player, had to complete many involuntary gender checks by opposing teams as she was deemed “too good a player to be a woman.”
Later in 1990, the first International Ice Hockey Federation, or IIHF,-sanctioned women’s world championship took place, despite a lack of funding and players forced to wear pink.
1998 was the very first year women’s hockey became an Olympic sport, and the women’s USA team won gold against Canada in the final match.
After this transition to including women in the Olympics for hockey, the USA women’s team has dominated the event far more than the men have in the last 30 years, medaling in every tournament they’ve participated in, winning gold three times in the past eight Winter Olympics to the men’s three medals in the last eight olympics, with only one being gold.
Despite this, women still haven’t gotten as much recognition as their male counterparts.
Throughout the inclusion and exclusion of women in sports, women have been undermined and sexualized during their entire careers. The latest Olympics in Milan, Cortina, were a key example of this when both the women’s and men’s teams won gold for the USA.
At an after-party, the men’s USA hockey team engaged in a controversial phone call with President Donald Trump. He spoke to them about inviting the women’s team to the White House along with the men’s team, but used sexual and undermining language regarding the women’s team. The USA men’s hockey team didn’t call him out on his behavior, and others cheered.
The men’s team later apologized profusely, but only after receiving a lot of backlash on social media, calling them out on their actions. This recent case shows that women continue to face disrespect in sports and hockey, not changing much since Lapensée’s case in 1910.
Gabriella Kazarinoff, a freshman forward who plays for the Jr. Winterhawks Rose team and attends IBW. “My reaction was pride, because the women were like, ‘I’m not going to interact with you. I’m not going to the White House, I’m gonna boycott this whole thing,’” she said. She looks up to them as role models.
In 2024, the PWHL announced its arrival with six new teams. Since then, it’s been expanded twice, growing to Vancouver, BC, and Seattle, WA and expanding its reach even farther into the West Coast.
The PWHL has been growing in popularity, with some saying they enjoy watching it more than the NHL “When I watch professional women’s basketball and professional women’s hockey, I actually enjoy watching it more. I think that they work harder. It’s a different level of play,” says Holli Prohaska, a physical education teacher at IBW.
These PWHL hockey teams are known for their positivity and LGBTQIA+ friendliness, with many players identifying as queer, which is nothing short of a very warm, love-is-love community.
“I think women’s sports is really growing, and there’s a lot more awareness being brought to it, but they’re still not treated equally, as far as recognition, as far as pay goes,” said Prohaska. “Even though you see stadiums that are sold out with people coming to watch them, there still isn’t the equity there for them.”
Kazarinoff hopes that conditions for female athletes will change and that new generations will learn to be better. “I wish boys had more grace, like being willing to understand that perspective, instead of just listening to the things that they hear from their parents or on TV and just copying that, be willing to understand,” she said.
