Do Female Athletes Receive Unfair Treatment as Moms? 3L Isabelle Silva Weighed in On that Topic
Do female athletes receive unfair treatment when they become mothers? That’s the topic of an upcoming paper by Isabelle “Bella” Silva, JD ’26.
Scheduled for June publication in the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law, Silva’s research is grounded in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The resulting article, “The Motherhood Penalty: The Intersection of Law and Social Unrest Re: Pregnancy Discrimination of Female Athletes,” traces the evolution of pregnancy discrimination doctrine.
The 3L’s research centers on the case of Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) player Dearica Hamby, who became pregnant during the 2022 season and was subsequently traded from the Las Vegas Aces to the Los Angeles Sparks. Hamby filed pregnancy and employment discrimination claims against her former team and the WNBA. Silva also found that a comparative analysis of collective bargaining agreements in the National Women’s Soccer League, Professional Women’s HockeyLeague, and WNBA reveals uneven but evolving protections for athlete-mothers.
“These athletes are employees of the league at large and their teams,” Silva says. “So, things women would deal with in the corporate world, these athletes are dealing with, too, just on a different type of stage.”
As a college athlete who played field hockey at Colby-Sawyer College, Silva became curious about the gender-specific issues female athletes face after reading about Hamby, and eager to create more awareness. The article also includes cases from professional tennis, with the notable example of former world No. 1 Serena Williams, whose ranking suffered during her maternity leave, sparking policy changes from the Women’s Tennis Association.
A native of Danvers, Massachusetts, Silva set her sights on a legal career early on, inspired by a desire to help people. Having earned her degree in crime and legal studies, with a minor in psychology, Silva was initially interested in criminal law. But the emergence of NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) in college athletics caught her attention, and she realized a law career could go in many different directions. She chose UNH Franklin Pierce in part for its growing sports law program, under the guidance of Professor Michael McCann.
McCann describes Silva’s upcoming article as a “tour de force,” noting that it canvasses key areas of law and labor and employment protections “to scrutinize how pregnant women who play sports are treated by the law — and by their teams and leagues — and how changes are needed.”
“I’m always impressed when a student takes on a complex topic that deserves
more attention,” McCann shares, “and that is certainly true of pregnancy
discrimination in sports.”
Silva currently serves as editor-in-chief of the UNH Franklin Pierce Sports Law Review. She collaborated with the previous editor to secure academic credit for students who work on the publication, matching the policy for the law school’s other journals. Silva also works as a legal extern for her beloved hometown Boston Red Sox, where her role involves reviewing contracts for Fenway Park’s day-to-day operations.
As for her upcoming publication, Silva concludes the paper with a three-pronged aspirational solution for pregnancy discrimination: social visibility, research-based postpartum standards, and structural reform through bargaining and advocacy.
“I hope this article helps shift the conversation,” Silva says. “Too often, pregnancy in professional sports is treated as a personal issue instead of what it really is: a workplace rights issue. Existing laws already provide a framework, but they don’t always fit neatly in the professional sports world. If this piece encourages leagues, unions, and advocates to think more intentionally about how they protect athlete-mothers, then I’d consider it a success.”
