As More Women Step Into Demanding Sport, Our Care Systems Haven’t Caught Up
CARE//PERFORM LAB is on a mission to change that
The Care Gap has long examined how care is undervalued across systems, from households and workplaces to infrastructure and public policy. This essay extends that lens into a less examined domain: performance. In exploring how care failures follow women into sport and high-output environments, I introduce CARE//PERFORM as a focused space for examining what it looks like to design performance systems where care is not an afterthought, but essential infrastructure.
For years, The Care Gap has examined how care is undervalued, under-designed, and unevenly distributed, in workplaces, homes, and our society. We’ve explored what happens when caregiving is treated as invisible labor rather than essential infrastructure.
What we talk about less is what happens when those same care failures follow women into spaces that demand performance.
Sport is one of them.
I say this not as a casual observer, but as a participant.
I am a mother of four.
I love CrossFit. I compete.
I’m a Level 8 athlete.
I won the 2024 Wild West ThrowDown, I am among the fittest in Nigeria.
I run half marathons. I play tennis. I train consistently. I’ve sustained injuries over the years, as most athletes do, strains, tweaks, setbacks that come with pushing your body. But nothing prepared me for tearing my ACL on a beginner ski slope, on a family vacation, while caring for four children, running on little sleep, and trying to learn a new sport in a body already carrying invisible load.
That injury forced a reckoning. Not just with my knee, but with how poorly women’s performance systems account for care. Did you know that women are 2-8 times more likely to tear their ACLs than men?
Performance Culture’s Blind Spot
In sport, fitness, and high-output environments, care is often framed as the opposite of ambition.
Rest is weakness.
Listening to your body is a lack of discipline.
Injury is framed as personal failure, not systemic neglect.
This framing is especially dangerous for women who are doing more than training.
Women who are caregiving.
Women who are sleep-deprived.
Women whose recovery is fragmented by responsibility.
Performance systems rarely ask:
Who is caring for others?
Who didn’t sleep?
Who is managing hormonal cycles?
Who is entering sport later in life or learning new skills while already carrying load?
Instead, they assume a body that is resourced, rested, and singularly focused.
That body is rarely a woman’s.
The False Binary That Costs Women Their Bodies
Modern performance culture rests on a false binary:
Either you perform, or you care.
Push harder or slow down.
Be competitive or be cautious.
Succeed or protect yourself.
This binary shows up everywhere, from elite sport to weekend fitness, and it mirrors what The Care Gap has documented across systems.
When care is treated as secondary, outcomes worsen.
In sport, the cost is often injury.
In work, it’s burnout.
In healthcare, it’s misdiagnosis.
Different arenas. Same underlying failure.
Systems Not Designed for the People Using Them
Much like medicine and work, performance systems were not designed with women as the default. Sports science has historically centered male bodies, male biomechanics, and male hormonal profiles. Training models assume linear recovery. Injury prevention frameworks often ignore biological variability, caregiving load, or life-stage complexity.
Education focuses on equipment and technique, but rarely on physiology as lived experience. So when women enter sport at scale, skiing, martial arts, soccer, weightlifting, they are expected to adapt to systems that were never designed for them.
Care becomes something you “figure out” after injury.
After surgery.
After burnout.
That is a care gap.
Care Is Performance
One of the central arguments of The Care Gap has always been this:
Care is not sentimental.
It is structural.
Care is what allows people to show up, sustain effort, and remain whole over time. When care is absent, systems may look productive, until they fail the very people they rely on.
Performance is no different.
When care is treated as optional, performance becomes extractive. Bodies are pushed without regard for cumulative load. Injury is normalized. Attrition is accepted. Longevity is rarely the goal.
But what if we rejected that premise entirely?
What if care were treated not as the opposite of performance, but as its foundation?
From Naming the Gap to Building Differently
This question has been occupying my thinking deeply, especially as I reflect on my own injury, my role as a mother, and my identity as an athlete who has no intention of shrinking her tempo or ambition.
That exploration led to CARE//PERFORM.
CARE//PERFORM is a space dedicated to examining what performance looks like when care is treated as essential structural support, not a concession. It applies the same values The Care Gap holds, evidence, empathy, and systems thinking, to sport, movement, and long-term physical health.
It is not about motivation culture or optimization at all costs.
It is about longevity.
It is about injury prevention.
It is about designing performance systems that acknowledge how women actually live.
If The Care Gap names the systemic failure, CARE//PERFORM explores one response: what it looks like to do women’s sport differently.
Why This Matters Now
More women are stepping into sport than ever before.
They are lifting heavier.
They are competing longer.
They are entering spaces that once excluded them.
But the care systems surrounding performance have not kept pace.
Women should not have to choose between ambition and safety.
They should not have to learn about their bodies only after injury.
They should not be expected to perform inside systems that refuse to account for care, fatigue, or responsibility.
Care failures do not stop at the hospital door or the office hallway.
They follow women into every space where output is demanded without support.
For readers of The Care Gap who are interested in how care can be operationalized inside performance, grounded in research, lived experience, and long-term thinking, that work is unfolding at CARE//PERFORM.
As always, this publication will continue to focus on the broader caregiving challenges shaping our world. But occasionally, it’s worth looking at where those same failures show up in unexpected places.
Performance is one of them.
CARE//PERFORM is a research-informed platform focused on women’s health, longevity, and care-driven performance in sport.
Blessing Adesiyan is a chemical engineer, climate and care economist, and the Founder and Chief Care Officer of Caring Africa, advancing care as essential economic infrastructure through systems change, policy, and investment.