Fed up with sports professionals, forced to choose between career and motherhood

“When you are pregnant, you no longer exist”. This sentence, spoken by the French volleyball player Kim Nowak of Halluin, is one of the testimonials published by Publication November 3. In this article, several top-level athletes who play team sports report the sanction that motherhood still represents in their field.

Changing mentality around motherhood

“Getting pregnant when you’re under contract is frowned upon,” says Ana-Maria Filip, a professional basketball player who became a mother on October 14. “The club never wanted me to take over. During the pregnancy they didn’t calculate me, I found myself a physiotherapist, a midwife and I trained alone most of the time, rarely with the physical trainer “, says handball player Chloé Bulleux, Olympic vice-champion in Rio in 2016 and ex-captain of the team of France. All the athletes who testify in this article are asking for the same thing: better supervision of motherhood and an evolution of mentalities.

Handball, a pioneer among sports?

In some disciplines of team sport the lines move a little. Since March 2021, professional handball players have benefited from a collective agreement which guarantees “the maintenance of the players’ wages by the clubs for one year in the event of pregnancy”. But the article of Publication he specifies that “if this adapted pension scheme makes it possible to lighten the financial burden on the companies, it does not, however, provide any guarantee of maintaining contracts or supporting sportswomen”. Not to mention the risk of discrimination in hiring that would automatically exclude players old enough (according to very narrow mindsets) to want to become mothers.

Getting pregnant while under contract is frowned upon.

Ana-Maria Filip, professional basketball player

In football, assisted, paid and compulsory maternity

Fifa has gone even further. It requires national associations to take paid maternity leave, after which the player must be reinstated with “adequate medical and physical support”. But, according to Camille Delzant, advisor to the presidency of the National Union of Professional Footballers (UNFP) interviewed by Publication, the French Football Federation (FFF) has so far not ratified any of this in its texts. However, Olympique Lyonnais proved that the approach was possible. The eight-time Champions League winner renewed and supported France’s Amel Majri during her pregnancy.

Maternity and sports career are not incompatible

Many of them have already shown that motherhood and professional sports career are not incompatible.provided that adequate support is provided. Publication quote in particular Serena Williams in tennis, Alessio Morgan in football or Melina Robert Michon in throwing the discus. We also add the sprinter Allison Felix and the long distance runner Aliphine Tuliamuk among the Americans, but also among the French the boxer Sarah Ourahmoune And Nodjialem Myaroformer professional handball player and president of the Women’s Handball League since 2013, just to name a few.