Allyson Felix exposes Nike’s pregnancy discrimination

Allyson Michelle Felix is a generational talent and the most prolific and decorated track and field athlete in history. She has won seven gold medals in four different Olympic Games. Her total Olympic medal compilation is 11, ahead of legendary Carl Lewis, who has 10. She has also harnessed a sum of 20 career medals in world athletics championships.

She further dominated her rendition in the coveted Diamond League circuit, finishing first overall in 2010 in the 200 meter sprint and 400 meter endurance races. She also commanded the 200 meters in 2014 and 2015 in the competition.

In 2018, Allyson decided to start a family. Her endorsement contract with imperious, Portland Oregon's giant sports apparel company Nike, had expired in December 2017. To her dismay, Nike suggested they would deduct 70 per cent payment on her next endorsement deal, due to her pregnancy. A Nike representative informed her in a racist sexist and condescending undertone, to "know your place and just run."

The facetious hypocrisy baffled Allyson. It was increasingly disrespectful, when company officials subsequently instructed her to appear in an unpaid female empowerment Nike advert. A pretentious acrimonious public relations gimmick, while they were secretly initiating deductions on her contract.

"It was beyond tone-deaf." Allyson states.

Allyson came to the stark awakening of the sexism and the depth of the inbuilt systematic misogyny, Nike inhibited towards pregnant women and new mothers.

Pay cuts

"Nike sometimes feel you don't have another option and that you're never going to speak out," she said. "I have been one of Nike's most marketed athletes, if I can't secure maternity protection, who can?"

Queen of Athletics: The Biography of Allyson Felix, covers Allyson's personal and professional life, her elative records, exuberant achievements and pregnancy victimisation. Most female athletes are terrified of breaking their silence and contractual Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA), with sports apparel companies. They fear pay cuts and dismissal from an industry, where the rules are designed and doctored by and for men.

Thirty two weeks into her pregnancy, Allyson had to undergo an emergency caesarean section. Due to a life-threatening condition called pre-eclampsia, which also risked the life of her unborn. Despite continuous contractual negotiations, Nike persistently insisted on the 70 per cent deduction. Allyson had rejected offers from other apparel companies and signed with Nike, a decade earlier, convinced they had dignified core principles. In 2010, when she met the Nike leadership, she had been informed about a Nike sponsored initiative called the Girl Effect.

It promoted adolescent girls as the key to improving societies around the planet. Their actions towards Allyson in 2018 were, therefore, in contravention to their purported principles. She came to the heart-breaking comprehension, that Nike's empowerment of women was insincere. The institution's true beliefs were an affront on women and a stamp of approval on the status quo.

Female athletes are exhaustively coached to shut up and run. They are informed that no one cares about their politics. They are demeaned, edified and portrayed as caricatures, who are anticipated to jump higher, run faster and throw further and avoid messing up by falling pregnant.

Contractual ordeal

After her caesarean section, Allyson's daughter Camryn had to frighteningly live for more than a month in the New Born Intensive Care Unit (NICU). During post-partum, Allyson returned to training and competed in the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar. She won her 12th gold medal in the championships, as part of the US 4×400 relay team. She repeated the same fate with the relay team in Eugene, Oregon in 2022. After both victories, she jubilantly celebrated the imperative elation with her daughter Camryn on the track.

Allyson eventually left Nike and created and invested in her own lucrative brand of apparel running shoes, Saysh. Designed by and for women. The bewilderment about the sneaker industry is that shoes are engineered for men, then shrunk to smaller sizes for women. Women don't have men's feet, the shape and weight distribution isn't similar. Saysh shoes are specifically manufactured for women’s feet.

She participated in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, wearing her Saysh signature brand. Under the maxim, I know my place in response to Nike's derogatory words "Know your place and just run." Which were directed at her, during her pregnancy and contractual ordeal.

"I used my voice and built this company for you." She directs her inspiring words to women. "So that you never have to train at 4.30am while you are five months pregnant, to hide your pregnancy from your sponsor."

Following Allyson's broken silence of her Non-Disclosure Agreement with Nike, a broad public outcry ensued. Leading to a congressional inquest. Nike judiciously announced a new maternity policy for sponsored athletes on August 12, 2019. Guaranteeing an athlete's pay and bonuses for 18 months around pregnancy. Other sports apparel companies, Burton, Altra, Nuun and Brooks, also diplomatically added maternity protection for sponsored athletes. Expanding restitution and payment protection for pregnant women and post-partum recovery.

Jeff Anthony is a novelist, a Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre @jeffbigbrother