Number 117
Image source: Vagisil
New York Liberty, Vagisil Partner
to Empower Women's Health
Featured Focus:
Partnership for Good, Health + Wellness
Scope of Impact: Local
The New York Liberty and Vagisil are partnering to prioritize women's health. This initiative directly addresses critical, often overlooked, health issues faced by female athletes and fans. Here’s what you should know:
Health Education & Awareness: The collaboration focuses on demystifying and destigmatizing vaginal health, leveraging the platform of professional basketball to reach a broad audience with vital information.
Athlete Well-being: By providing resources and open dialogue, the partnership empowers WNBA players to prioritize their intimate health, ensuring they have the support to perform optimally without hidden barriers.
Community Engagement: This initiative extends beyond the court, fostering a supportive community where open conversations about women's health are encouraged, and providing free feminine care products to underserved communities.
We appreciate that the New York Liberty and Vagisil are leveraging their platforms to tackle a significant, often stigmatized, aspect of women's health. Their goal is to normalize conversations around intimate wellness, transforming a private issue into a public dialogue for empowerment.
This is the first time Vagisil has partnered with a sports team, and it speaks volume that they chose the Liberty and the WNBA for their first foray. It’s a savvy move to get in front of a new and younger audience. For the New York Liberty, it’s a continuation of their partnership strategy, leveraging the success they’ve had on the court, along with the popularity of their star players, to solidify themselves as a leading voice for women everywhere.
However, there’s at least one fan and journalist who believes the partnership may also have a downside — reinforcing a message to teenage girls (women’s sports’ main demographic) that how their bodies exist naturally is wrong or shameful. It’s a complicated conversation, for sure. But one that we’re glad is getting some attention.
While we appreciate the angle of self care, some of the language, “we’re thrilled to bring freshness into the spotlight as a key to confidence,” is a little off. We would have loved to see a more defined education curriculum for young girls and women to talk about self care in terms that can be less salesly and more rooted in storytelling instead.
From Vagisil's perspective, while partnering with the reigning WNBA champions is a real coup, we can’t help but wonder if aiming at the WNBA overall would have been possible to make the impact of this initiative nationwide instead of only local to the New York market.
One of the takeaways from this initiative is how sports can help bring sensitive topics to the forefront. Similar to this partnership, what can you do at your level to disturb the status quo, and use your platform to talk about subjects that are often forgotten, yet very important.
