Women's Hockey Matters



Team Canada Women’s Gold Medal 2022 Olympics (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images).
Retrieved from an article on thehockeywriters.com


      Over 3.5 million Americans watched Canada defeating the United States 3-2 to win women's hockey gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics.  This is more viewers than any National Hockey League game televised in the U.S. this season. (Source: theathletic.com)

     Meanwhile, an average of 2.7 million Canadians watched the same game on any Canadian-based sports TV networks.  It had the highest viewership of all events in the Beijing Olympics.  

      These numbers show that women's hockey matters, even in the U.S. where hockey isn't the most watched sport.  

     Women's hockey has been growing Since it became an international competition in the 90s.  It became an Olympic event in 1998.  While Canada and the U.S. have always been dominant in this sport, other nations are catching up.  Countries like Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, and Russia have either beaten Canada or the U.S., or have been competitive against them in recent years.  Finland has the most Olympic medals behind Canada and the U.S. with four bronze.

     Since the world women's hockey championship was introduced in 1990, Finland is the constant bronze medalist with 13, as well as one silver-medal result in 2019.   

     Despite the international success, professional women's hockey leagues have struggled to be sustainable, unlike the men's leagues around the world, such as the National Hockey League.  By forming the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL), female hockey players hope to attract fans and be financially sustainable.  

     These female players also want enough resources, health insurance, training programs, and competitive salaries.  Above all, they want respect like their male counterparts, not just high viewership during the annual world championships (if it isn't cancelled or postponed, like in the last couple years), or the quadrennial Olympics.


     

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