In 2019, the number of fans at the Men’s NCAA tournament more than doubled the number of fans in attendance at the Women’s tournament. Native New Yorker Natalie White says she grew tired of the discrepancies between men and women’s basketball. Sick of the lack of options, she decided to take the fight for gender equality into her own hands, or should we say feet. She created her own Basketball sneaker, specifically designed for the female foot. This is the story of Moolah Kicks.

My name's Natalie. I grew up here in New York City. I went to elementary school at PS6. I've been a New Yorker my whole life. 

I've really been involved with New York City basketball my entire life. I founded Moolah Kicks when I was a senior at Boston College and I felt constantly like women's basketball was seen as a J.V. version of the men's team. 

I noticed the gender inequalities growing up. Walking into a sneaker store, no matter if I was 10 or 23 and not being able to see a single basketball sneaker on the wall for me was not only frustrating, but just disheartening because that message is so loud that brands don't even think that your sport is worth giving you your own sneaker. 

It's great to have unisex sneakers, but not if there's no other option for women. And it's what led me to create a brand where our sole focus is on women's basketball — so that girls growing up now feel like there is a brand that cares about them. There's a brand that represents them. 

I'm really proud to be the founder of a women's basketball sneaker brand and a queer female founder at that, because women's basketball is the intersection of so many identities: it's gender, racial and LGBTQ intersections that make up the DNA of women's basketball. So to be able to represent two of those and the rest of my members on my team, represent some of those other identities means the world that we'll be able to properly represent and therefore understand where all of these players are coming from.

What I'm looking to accomplish with Moolah Kicks has so much more to do with pushing the needle towards gender equality in basketball than just the sneakers. But that's how we start because we need to have brands whose sole and top priority is women's basketball in order to deconstruct this notion that wen's basketball is the standard that we're to be held up against.

We have an opportunity to build something ourselves for our own community, rather than always going to a bigger body and asking them to create space. So Moolah Kicks is really here to give them that positive reinforcement and make them feel like basketball is exactly where they should be.