From Resilience to Resistance: Reclaiming Mental Health in Women’s Sport

By Lisa Pena-Sabanal– Healing Recovery Centre 

Resilience has been defined as an individual’s ability to manage and persevere despite adversity, and for far too long, it has been celebrated as the ultimate quality to strive for. After all, it affirms one’s capacity to bounce back from and work through the pressures as they arise, at any given time. It situates resilience as ‘grit’ or ‘toughness’ but in deepening our understanding of mental health and wellbeing, the definition of resilience, on its own, falls short of telling the whole story by minimizing the depth of athletes’ realities.

Harmful Narratives of Resilience

In the world of sports, men have long been praised for their resilience, and more recently, recognition has been extended to women athletes who demonstrate this same trait by pushing through the pains and pressures to perform with excellence. Yet, while this logic may sound hopeful and even inspire others to move forward, it can unintentionally reinforce a problematic narrative: that women athletes should simply endure whatever comes their way. It situates their worth not in what they did to maintain balance and protect their well-being, but in how much suffering they endured without breaking. This ideal minimizes an individual woman athlete’s lived experience of having to negotiate and navigate the complexities of life. 

In contrast, resistance is far more dynamic. It involves intentionally and actively pushing back against harmful expectations, narratives and/or systems that compromise their state of equilibrium. Resistance reframes mental health as more than just survival of the fittest, but rather as a collective act of refusing to be minimized within a male-dominated world. As women in sport, they resist by challenging systems that reproduce harm by creating platforms for women to flourish. They resist by demanding equitable opportunities, confronting sexism and rejecting excellence solely defined by endurance. And they resist by transforming mental health into spaces of empowerment, reinforcing that positive wellbeing must be prioritized over endurance. 

Moving from Individual Resilience to Collective Resistance

It’s time to move away from individual resilience to collective resistance by standing in solidarity with women athletes to speak out about the inequities and injustices experienced. Collective action turns toward structural systems to make change and directs the burden away from challenges being an individual struggle. This involves sports organizations and media platforms willingly co-creating spaces for women athletes to amplify their voices by sharing stories of resistance that prioritize rest and recovery and how they challenged narrow expectations without sacrificing their positions. This also involves reimagining measurements of success by intentionally incorporating wellbeing practices into training programs, such as regular mental health check-ups and integrating space for open and non-judgmental conversations about emotional needs. The sports industry must enforce policies that defend mental health rights and hold professionals, organizations and institutions that fail to prioritize the well-being of their women athletes. Accountability ensures that resistance is embedded in the culture of the sport. 

Conclusion 

To move beyond resilience is to reject the claim that women athletes prove their worth through pain and suffering. Collective resistance insists that well-being is non-negotiable and that mental health is not a privilege to be attained in sport; it is a right. The future of sport rests on this rejection and on the collective power of women athletes to transform the play of the game.