Sports are Sports: Pay Women like Men

While a gender wage gap exists in almost every profession, there is none so obvious as the one within professional sports. This gap can be attributed to many factors and varies between sports, making it a nuanced and difficult to solve problem.

In women’s basketball, for example, players make a tiny fraction of their male counterparts’ salary. On the Women’s Sports Foundation Website, they say that a WNBA player’s maximum salary in 2015 was $109,500, as opposed to the men’s at $16.407 million. Many people argue that this wage gap exists because women’s basketball fails to attract an audience comparable to that of the men. I would put forward that advertising and marketing should not be a responsibility of the athletes, but of professionals in those industries. Paying female athletes such an absurdly small fraction of what male athletes receive fails to acknowledge the hard training that all professional athletes do on a daily basis to get to the upper levels of their sport.

A professional athlete’s job is not to be an advertisement. Their job is to compete to the best of their ability at the top of their sport. Athletes should all be paid based on personal statistics, not whether John Doe wants to buy a ticket to their game.

Another thing to keep in mind is that such a drastic wage gap discourages women from wanting to pursue athletics as a career. Working towards closing that gap may draw more women to professional sports and raise the quality of play. If America wants to see women dunk, maybe it should pay women a reasonable salary to do so.

A professional athlete’s job is not to be an advertisement. Their job is to compete to the best of their ability at the top of their sport.

In Forbes magazine’s 2015 top 100 highest earning athletes list, there were just two women: Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova. Tennis is one of few sports in which female players attract as many, or more, spectators than men. At the 2015 US Open, the women’s final sold out before the men’s. Even so, Williams, who played in that final, earned $24.6 million that year, a significantly smaller amount than male tennis player Roger Federer at $67 million. Still worse, when you discount their disproportionate endorsement deals, Williams earned more. At $11.6 million, Williams’ winning were greater than Federer’s $9 million, even though the total purse at women’s tournaments is typically smaller.

In sports where male and female athletes compete on a completely level playing field, however, there is no wage gap to be seen. In professional horseback riding for example, where men and women compete with and against one another, gender is virtually disregarded, and there is no disproportionate pay.

While the answer may not be to ignore gender, the sports industry as a whole should make an effort not to discredit the efforts of female athletes but draw attention to them and encourage more young women to consider sports careers. This would benefit the industry as a whole; it’s better to have two equally profitable organizations than one disproportionately so.

According to an opinions piece in The Atlantic by Maggie Mertens, ESPN’s SportsCenter dedicated just two percent of its airtime in 2014 to covering women’s sports. Mertens also quoted Perdue Professor Cheryl Cooky, who pointed out that perceptions of women’s sports as “less exciting” can often be attributed to the way the media presents it. She said, “[Men’s sports] have higher production values, higher-quality coverage and higher-quality commentary… When you watch women’s sports, and there are fewer camera angles, fewer instant replays, yeah, it’s going to seem to be a slower game.”

In conclusion, paying female athletes such a drastically smaller salary than men implies that a professional athlete’s primary role is to be a marketing pawn, when in reality they should strive simply to perform at their best each time they step onto the field, court, etc. You can’t force people to gain interest in something, but the sports industry places much more emphasis on men’s sports than they do women’s. There are certainly steps that can be taken to bridge the wage gap in athletics without disregarding anybody’s hard work and training.