Basketball's early adherents were affiliated with YMCAs and colleges throughout the United States, and the game quickly spread throughout the country.

[7] In order to keep it acceptable for women to play at all within Victorian ideals of refinement and gentility, she taught modified rules.

[1] Early basketball was played with peach baskets and soccer balls, similarly to the men's game, but women's uniforms again reflected the Victorian culture of the times and were designed to be practical, yet maintain the woman athlete's dignity and femininity.

[8] While upper-class women had been playing sports at country clubs since the mid-nineteenth century, they were able to participate in activities such as tennis and croquet in full-length skirts and corsets.

For much of the early 20th century, other coaches and administrators felt similarly, due in part to an increasing sentiment that men's college sports were becoming too commercialized and exploitive of the athletes.

The sport was also gaining attention at the collegiate level, under the auspices of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW).

Financial issues, poor marketing, and the cancelation of America's participation in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games severely impacted the league's viability, and it collapsed at the end of its third season in 1981.

The next major development in women's basketball occurred in 1982 when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) began to sponsor the sport.

Ivy Kirkpatrick of Stephen F. Austin State University coordinated the collaboration between NBC Sports and the AIAW.

The recent Iowa-UConn women's Final Four match in April 2024 was the most-watched basketball game in ESPN history with an audience peak at 17 million and is expected to feature as one of the top 50 primetime telecasts of 2024.

A new 3-on-3 league, Unrivaled, will start play in January 2025, giving WNBA players a U.S.-based competitive outlet during that league's offseason Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly with five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball through the defender's hoop.

The event, renamed from "FIBA World Championship for Women" after its 2014 edition, is currently held in even-numbered non-Summer Olympic years.

Berenson's freshmen played the sophomore class in the first women's collegiate basketball game held on 22 March 1893.

[18] The cultural significance of these college graduates exceeded their numbers, as college-educated women comprised the bulk of progressive professionals of their era.

Basketball (for both men and women) is one of the sports that the host nation of the Island Games may select for competition.

Division 1 is as close to professional as women's sport gets in the United Kingdom, with teams such as Rhondda Rebels and Sheffield Hatters bringing in players from the US and Europe.

The Nottingham Wildcats make up the trio of clubs that helped establish the women's league and remain amongst the top three or four places.

This year (2006/7) saw several new teams join the second division, showing the continual growth of the women's game.

[citation needed] These included the SevenOaks Suns, Enfield Phoenix, Taunton Tigers[28] and Bristol Storm.

The league was founded in 1981 as a way for the best women's basketball teams in the various Australian States to compete against each other on a regular basis.

Title IX was passed in 1972 to end sexual discrimination and stereotyping in admission to colleges and also in academic subjects (McDonagh, Pappano, 2008).

“Title IX is today generally viewed as having fixed the problem of gender inequality of sports, at least in educational settings” (McDonagh, Pappano, 2008, 79).

The NCAA had built up the programs and earned financial support and popularity and did not want to throw that down the drain (McDonagh, Pappano, 2008).

In 1974, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued Title IX regulations regarding intercollegiate athletics (McDonagh, Pappano, 2008).

To ensure that schools comply with Title IX, they face the consequence of losing federal funding for any violation (Sadker, 2001).

The WNBA was formed in 1996 as the women's counterpart to the National Basketball Association, and league play began in 1997.

Officially approved by the NBA Board of Governors on 24 April 1996, the creation of the WNBA was first announced at a press conference with Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes in attendance.

On the heels of a much-publicized gold medal run by the USA women's national team at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the WNBA began its first season on 21 June 1997 to much fanfare.

Leadership within the WNBA has continuously broken-down barriers for women, racial injustice, and LGBTQ community as well as other underrepresented groups.

The WNBA’s stand with diversity and inclusion across the sports world has enabled a generation of women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, and many more to believe in themselves and strive to achieve greatness.