Document Type

Article

Abstract

This study examines how women college athletes understand their pregnancy-related rights and protections and how institutional communication – or its absence – shapes reproductive autonomy within college sport. Guided by a reproductive justice framework, it conceptualizes pregnancy as a site of reproductive governance shaped by institutional policies, norms, and silences within performance-oriented sport organizations. The analysis draws on semi-structured interviews with 25 women college athletes from various NCAA Division I institutions in the United States, conducted between September 2023 and July 2024 in the post-Dobbs legal context, and uses reflexive thematic analysis to examine athletes’ knowledge of Title IX and NCAA pregnancy protections. Five inter-related themes were identified: institutional silence and non-communication regarding pregnancy rights; the consequences of institutional silence for athletes including fear, stigma, and uncertainty surrounding scholarship security and athletic eligibility; the prioritization of performance over athlete well-being; structural sexism reflected in male-dominated leadership and the privileging of men’s revenue sports; and athletes’ calls for reproductive health literacy and standardized education. The findings illustrate how institutional silence functions as a form of reproductive governance that constrains women college athletes’ reproductive autonomy.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1080/14413523.2026.2663410

Rights

© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

APA Citation

Chahardovali, T., Harry, M., Mann, E. (2026). Institutional silence and the governance of women college athletes’ reproductive autonomy in the United States. Sport Management Review, 29(4), 619–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/14413523.2026.2663410

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