Level the Playing Field was a national awareness and advocacy campaign launched by Cofertility, a company that helps women freeze their eggs for free when donating half of the retrieved eggs to a family who can’t otherwise conceive. Completed in partnership with &Mother, now For All Mothers+, the Level the Playing Field campaign was a result of new research they gathered on the topic of the need for fertility freedom for women in sports, with the goal to normalize conversations around reproductive health and highlight the barriers many women, athletes or not, face in balancing their careers and family-building aspirations.
Historically, female athletes have delayed or sacrificed family-building due to limited support, outdated systems and stigma. Cofertility set out to change that narrative. Level the Playing Field reframes fertility as proactive, not reactive, aiming to extend athletes’ careers, reduce pressure and empower women to compete and build families on their terms.
Since the company launched in 2022, Cofertility found that many members who utilize Cofertility’s Split program, where you can freeze your eggs for free when you donate half, are athletes who have spent years prioritizing their pursuit of sport, often without the insight, resources or support to understand how it could impact their future fertility. If elite athletes, whose bodies operate at the peak of human performance, face these challenges, what does that mean for the rest of us?
That question led the company to partner with &Mother, a non-profit founded by Olympic runner Alysia Montano that is dedicated to breaking barriers moms face in the workplace, to find out just how big these challenges were for women athletes. They recruited more than 350 women, from the collegiate level to Olympians, to complete a survey that would ultimately shape the foundation of the campaign, uncovering widespread barriers to reproductive care in women’s sports. Some of the findings include:
The findings of the study were released on National Girls and Women in Sports Day and rolled out across media, athlete networks and digital platforms. Cofertility anchored the message in original data and authentic athlete stories.
Key components of the campaign included:
As the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) states, egg freezing “promotes social justice by reducing the obstacles women currently face because their reproductive window is smaller than men's.” The campaign therefore didn’t focus on egg freezing as the end goal, but as a tool in a broader fight for autonomy. As a company, Cofertility believes that egg freezing can contribute to gender equality. They stand for reproductive choice and egg freezing is just that — a choice that a woman makes over her own body and future. Through the Level the Playing Field campaign (as well as their offerings overall), Cofertility is proud to lessen constraints placed on women by offering more accessible egg freezing options. Every touchpoint, from media to social, underscored that reproductive freedom is an essential part of equality in sports, and by proxy, in everything.
Level the Playing Field surpassed goals by raising awareness, encouraging conversation and ultimately, catalyzing cultural and institutional advances in fertility support for women athletes.
By shifting fertility from a crisis response to a choice, Level the Playing Field sparked tangible change, emerging as a powerful force for gender equity in sports. And most notably, this campaign is inciting change. Just this past June, the World Tennis Association introduced a groundbreaking Fertility Protection Special Entry Ranking Rule, allowing players to take time off for fertility procedures like egg retrieval without losing their rankings.
