For all the talk about teamwork and bringing people together, sports can be extremely exclusionary.

As of late, there has been lots of talk about the acceptance of gay players and eliminating racial discrimination in the wake of the Miami Dolphins scandal, but there is another group — the biggest group — that might still feel left out: women.

Sure, we all know some women that are huge sports fans, but considering that females comprise more than half the population, there is a huge opportunity to get more of them to pay attention. Most efforts by major leagues to get them into the fold, however, amount to nothing more than pandering.

We don’t need to look very hard for recent examples of how females are treated differently on and off the field.

Canadian tennis star Eugenie Bouchard was on a breakthrough run at the Australian Open when she was asked in a post-match interview who she would like to date. That might have been a fair question for a profile piece, but on the court after an important win?

Supermodel and actress Brooklyn Decker was rightly angered when she was approached to do a novice’s guide to enjoying the NFL for Harper’s Bazaar, which was then repurposed without her knowledge as a “girly guide”.

Last year, CBC was criticized for pairing a Sex in the City type of podcast, While The Men Watch, as a web simulcast during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

These types of things seem even sillier in the aftermath of the Olympics, an event where female viewership rises greatly and in which Canada’s female athletes had an incredibly strong showing. The women’s hockey final between Canada and the U.S. was watched by nearly 13 million Canadians and next year, the women’s national soccer team will have the spotlight when Canada hosts the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

In light of all this, a Toronto-based organization is doing what they can to help women get in on the day-to-day sporting conversation.

The Gal’s Got Game was started by Lally Rementilla and Rekha Shah, with the goal of providing professional women with a bit more sports knowledge in the hopes that it might help their careers.

“What I wanted to do was create something that would promote female advancement,” says Rementilla. “Rekha and I were talking, and I really wanted to figure out and bring a product or service to women that will help them for their careers … And she had this idea because she felt very disadvantaged by not being able to talk sports.”

This approach is exactly the same as any guy who takes up golf or learns poker so he can get some non-work-related face time with bosses.

Rementilla points to the importance of networking, especially when it comes to deals being done by attending hockey or basketball games with clients. She says they have found many women are self-selecting out of those types of events because they don’t feel comfortable speaking about what’s going on in the game.

“(What) is very important is the accessibility of sports,” says Rementilla. “It’s very equalizing. In a typical work setting, you can have a mailroom clerk talk to the CEO of the company about sports, because everyone has the same access to the information. And there’s nothing about sports that is particularly polarizing, in contrast to things like politics and religion.”

The organization sends out a short, daily cheat sheet for subscribers about the day’s big sporting news, which just might be enough to pop in to a water cooler conversation. Don’t look at it as becoming a crazed sports fan, they say — look at it as another pursuit that could advance your career.

The approach seems to be working. The Gal’s Got Game has been brought in for seminars and professional development events, including by some of Toronto’s well-known law firms, and has been sought out by other women’s groups.

Now, some might wonder how much value a blurby note might have nowadays, considering the avalanche of sports information everywhere. But one big problem with most sports coverage is that it requires a prior base of knowledge, making it very difficult for the absolute beginner to follow along with a game story or column when they’re starting from scratch.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

To combat this, TGGG is also starting Sports 101 courses; fittingly, the first one covers hockey.

There are other, more systemic problems when it comes to women and sports — the lack of professional leagues is a glaring one — but this for-women, by-women approach is smart and focused, with plans to slowly grow beyond their current target of professional women into a wider audience.