Is The Right’s Next Project Make Women’s Sports Girly Again?

Within a few weeks of the country’s highest court giving states permission to ban trans girls from nearly all school sports, the influential right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation made clear its newest target: the rest of girls and women’s sports. Specifically, as laid out in a lengthy position paper, Heritage believes that women’s sports are, in general, not womanly enough.

What do they want? The paper, authored by Boise State professor Scott Yenor—who once called career-oriented women “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome“—proclaims that Title IX has pushed girls and women’s sports to become more aggressive, against the nature of most women. Specifically, the paper says, these “male-normed” women’s sports are not “celebrating distinctly feminine virtues of service, grace, and character.”

Why should you care? There is no denying Heritage’s power in shaping Republican politics and what Donald Trump is likely to do; it’s the foundation that published Project 2025 and actively campaigned for trans bans in sports. Trump denied knowing about Project 2025, only to enact its recommendations once he took office. Whatever Heritage says it wants, there’s a good chance this administration’s actions will follow.