Why the Gender Pay Gap is the Next Big Issue

A career in sports is tough. Anxiety, erratic performance, age barriers, and to top it off, wage gaps for female athletes…

We all know that income is crucial for athletes. They need a reliable source of income as they usually have to support their families and children. Even rich and popular athletes have an unreliable career; they may suddenly underperform and never be able to enter the world of sports again. But this unreliability suddenly increases when we evaluate the careers of women athletes. In their case, income is already low, and instability certainly follows.

Living in the 21st century, it should be quite obvious that men and women should be paid equal sums for doing the same job. But all around us, we can see astonishing scenes of gender pay gaps in sports. According to BCCI’s new pay structure, women cricketers only earn 7 percent of what their male counterparts do. In football, Ada Hegerberg at $1.76 million is seen staggeringly less when compared to Lionel Messi at $126 million (both being the highest paid in their respective genders). Basketball sees WNBA players paid around $116,000 and men in NBA paid about $7.5 million. The list goes on. Yes, at times men play double the number of games, have a greater fan base, sell more tickets and acquire more income, however even in those cases, critics state the pay gap is extremely askew.

It's quite prevalent; Women athletes are being denied the privileges their male counterparts get. They have lower wages, work longer hours, receive less cognizance, little esteem, and have huge barriers in their social lives (i.e. children to take care of, parents who don’t support their choices, etc.). The root cause of all this is backward thought, which still prevails all around the world. Girls are labeled with descriptions ranging from slutty to buff, no matter which hobbies they choose or what personality they adopt. In the case of gender pay gaps in sports, we need to fight for and support civic engagement and salary transparency. Only then can we help women athletes thrive.

In truth, we have achieved a lot in terms of eradicating gender discrimination and gender wage gaps. But we still have a long way to go. We need to accept others as who they are. Because in the end, gender, caste, or religion do not matter. In the end, we are all human.