Updated March 4, 2025 at 10:20 p.m.*
A great milestone will be celebrated at this year’s Olympic Games: For the first time ever, women athletes will have as many places in the Games as male athletes. Paris 2024 will be the first Olympics ever to reach full gender parity. Still, as in virtually every other competition, the men will compete against other men — and the women against women.
It’s noteworthy that whenever a sports team composed of women plays a game, it is referred to as a “women’s team.” Their male counterparts, however, are simply considered a “team,” with no explanatory adjective needed.
She was nicknamed the “Knuckle Princess.” In 2008, at just 16 years old, Eri Yoshida was drafted by a professional men’s baseball team, the Kobe Cruise 9 in the Kansai Independent League — a first for a woman in Japan.
But the pitcher would go even further two years later, when she signed a contract with an American team, the Chico outlaws, becoming the first athlete to play professionally in two countries and only the third woman to play in the U.S. male professional baseball leagues.
She succeeded Julie Croteau, who was the first woman to play men’s NCAA baseball in 1988, and Ila Borders, a professional pitcher who played in men’s leagues from 1997 to 2000.
Charlotte Cagigos, ice hockey, France
Only one woman in France skates a professional hockey team. Charlotte Cagigos at 20 years old became the backup goalkeeper of the Drakkars, a team from northern France playing in Division 1, the second highest level of the ice hockey league, in August 2020.
“When I was little, I would have loved to see a girl playing on a top team and have her as a role model. I don’t necessarily want to become a symbol but I’d just like to show that it’s possible for little girls to play hockey,” she told France 24 television network.
Cagigos started skating at 3 (following in her big brother’s footsteps) and enrolled in a sports study program at 14 before joining the Drakkars Under-17 elite squad in 2017 and then climbing the team’s ranks step-by-step. Cagigos is now working to become the number one goalkeeper but says she still “has a lot to learn and experience.”
Ice hockey has the particularity, in contrast with other collective sports, that a female player can work her way into a male team as a goalkeeper — a position that requires more technical than physical skills. Canadian player Manon Rhéaume was the first woman ever to play in the National Hockey League in 1992, paving the way for others such as Shannon Szabados, also in Canada, or Florence Schelling in Switzerland.
Jen Welter, American football, United States
Jen Welter is not only the first woman to hold a contact position in a professional men’s American football game, she was also the first female coach in the NFL.
After playing rugby in Boston College, she played for the Dallas Diamonds Women’s Football Alliance and at the International Federation of American Football’s Women’s World Championships in 2010 and 2013. In 2014, at 36 years old, she was the first woman to play a non-kicking position in a men’s pro game. One year later, the Arizona Cardinals hired her as an assistant coaching intern.
The passionate athlete is also a sports psychologist, personal trainer, endorsement model, and motivational speaker. She follows in the footsteps of Patricia Palinkas, the first woman to play in a men’s semi-professional game in 1970.
“I’m an athlete, I’m competitive,” Walter told USA Today daily. “But the bigger thing for me is obviously for little girls to see they can do everything just like little boys can.”
Fabiola da Silva, inline skate, Brazil
Brazilian Fabiola da Silva, also known as “Fabby”, was crowned world champion in inline skate at just 18, and is today the most decorated female athlete in X-Games history. She won the competition seven times, received a silver medal in 2004 and became the first woman ever to land the double backflip on a vert ramp in 2005. Yet, only a few people outside of the extreme sports world would even know her name.
She also happens to be the only woman to compete against men in any X-Games sports, aggressive in-line vert, according to Brazilian Globo.
Da Silva was known to skate faster, harder and more fearlessly than any of her fellow female skaters. So much so that in 2000 the Aggressive Skaters Association introduced the “Fabiola Rule”, allowing women to compete in the formerly all-male vert competition.
Since then, she has placed in the top ten several times as she competed against men. “A lot of girls think girls aren’t good enough to be skating against the guys,” she reported to Los Angeles Times. “I just think different. If I see a guy doing it, I think it’s possible for a woman to do it also. Why not?”
*Originally published November 17, 2021, this article was updated March 4, 2025 with information about Pauline Payet.