The Forbes list of the 100 highest-paid athletes has just two women. The match fee earned by the Indian women’s cricket team is just seven percent of what their male counterparts earn. The reward money for the FIFA world cup was 400 million USD for men, while it was 30 million USD for women. Male athlete’s hourly wages are 23% higher than women athletes, and for relatively high-paid athletes, it means losses of millions of dollars. The WNBA is the highest-paid women’s league in the world, and the NBA pays women athletes a maximum wage of USD 111,000, while it pays male athletes a minimum wage of USD 525,000. Male athletes receive close to USD 180 million more annually in athletic scholarships and grants than female athletes do.
There are four structural reasons as to why there is this massive wage gap unique to sports i.e. first, gender stereotypes, second, the lack of sponsorship and endorsement for women athletes, third, lack of investment by sports leagues and other important stakeholders, and finally, media coverage.
First, women have been historically excluded from sports and have often been told: “sports are for men”. Societal norms and expectations of gender roles have meant that women are actively discouraged from choosing sports as a career. Women are generally expected to stay at home and just do things like household work and chores while being actively discouraged from working or completing their education. This has meant women could not take part in sports as much as their male counterparts, and this has meant society has an image of men being the primary stakeholders in sports and being the more “exciting” part of sports.
Second, until a couple of years ago, women’s sports sponsorships accounted for just 0.4% of all sports sponsorships. There are inherently fewer opportunities for women to interact with the public and negotiate things like endorsements and sponsorships. Women’s sports experience a significantly lower amount of interest from sponsors and corporations. Female athletes also get a significantly fewer number of scholarships and grants, and just 24% of the college sports budget go to women’s sports activities. They fear fewer profits and marketing because women have not been a part of sports as much. This often means that women are relatively unknown to sports followings, attract less viewership, get cut out of potential earnings that these sponsorships and endorsements could give them, and get lesser media coverage. This lack of balance in endorsement crucially expands the income gap between male and female athletes.
For the same reasons as the previous paragraph, investment in women’s sports has always been lower on a comparative. Sports leagues and stakeholders have never viewed women’s sports and women athletes being as “exciting” or being important marketing and attracting viewership. (This also means less viewership in and of itself.) Fourth, the media cover men’s sports significantly more than they do women’s sports, (4.1%). They generally attribute this to the fact that there are less viewership and investment in women’s sports, fewer sponsors, and often means less revenue for both the league and the media company. Lesser media coverage, again, means less viewership and attention for these athletes and women’s sports.
At the point at which women are not paid as much, their reward money isn’t nearly as much as their counterparts, and they don’t earn money from sponsors and endorsements either. Leagues and corporations cite less viewership and playing time as reasons for less pay. Note that these are problems that they set out to cause. Setting aside those and even if viewing median and hourly wages, female athletes get paid 80 cents for every dollar male athletes earn. So if a man gets paid USD 50,000 a year, a woman would earn just USD 40,000 after working the same hours and with the same dedication. This gap can mean that an average woman worker loses ~USD 600,000 in their lifetime, and in high- paying jobs, like that of athletes, this just gets worse, often losing millions of dollars. This is a crucial difference for a retired athlete being able to ensure their social security and affording the very basic of necessities.
Conclusively, this means that female athletes and women’s sports end up being stuck in a vicious cycle where they are excluded from sports because of stereotypes, then put down by sponsors because they have not historically had high levels of viewership (also meaning fewer earnings through endorsements and sponsorships), their sports aren’t invested in by leagues because they haven’t played sports, and yet again, don’t have a market or attract enough viewership, the media doesn’t cover them because they don’t have as many games and investment from leagues, this again means less viewership and traction for women’s sports and athletes, and because of all this, is low income and a significant wage gap, which again leads to stereotypes claiming “sports aren’t for women”, which just causes the cycle to repeat all over again.
It is distressing that people need proof that the wage gap indeed does exist, rather than actively trying to ensure equality.
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