Avengers of the Week | TOGETHXR Founders Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, Chloe Kim, and Simone Manuel

42% of high school and college sports players are women, and women make up 40% of athletes on the professional level, yet they only receive 4% of all sports media coverage

Our Avengers of Week are four Olympic athletes who are determined to change that as co-founders of a media company TOGETHXR, which is focused on women in sports, along with culture, lifestyle, activism, and music: Orlando Pride soccer player Alex Morgan, four-time basketball medal winner and Seattle Storm player Sue Bird, the youngest woman snowboarding gold medalist Chloe Kim, and the first Black American woman to win a swimming gold medal, Simone Manuel.

“There has never been a place for women that exists like this”, said Alex Morgan, “We got sick of waiting for someone to build some space for us, so we did it ourselves."

Jessica Robertson, the company’s chief content officer, explained: “The company name is pronounced ‘together,’ and literally says ‘to get her.’ The X is a multiplier, as the brand itself is meant to be a collective of voices, a whole community hellbent on uplifting women. We also recognize that we are in a world without binary," Robertson noted. "We wanted to make sure that this felt inclusive, so X is a nod to being in a post binary world and celebrating that."

TOGETHXR creates short-form videos, photo projects, and other content for social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, as well as podcasts and original content for YouTube and other streaming services. Its first docuseries, Fenom, highlights 17-year-old boxer Chantel “Chicanita” Navarro, who hopes to fight in the Olympics. Also planned is Kaikaina, which follows a surfing collective of girls and women aged 13 to 21 from Hawaii.

"The paradox is coverage has gone down while more and more girls and women are playing sports," Nicole M. LaVoi, director of Tuck Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota, told CNN. "And now high profile women athletes, like those in TOGETHXR, are taking this lack of coverage into their own hands and disrupting the existing landscape of media coverage that has benefited and overrepresented men."

We salute these outstanding women athletes in their endeavor to put girls and women on the media stage where they belong. We’ll be watching.

The co-founders of @togethxr — outstanding olympians @alexmorgan13, @ChloeKim, @swimone, and @S10Bird — are the @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek. They’re putting girl and women athletes on the media stage where they belong. #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avengers-of-the-week-togethxr-founders