The last few blog posts I discussed gender discrimination in medicine, business, and STEM, which are all fields that aren’t automatically thought of when the words “gender discrimination” are mentioned. This week though, I thought I would focus on a field that almost everyone knows has a very strong gender bias. Athletics. It is no secret that male athletes are treated much better, respected more, and are granted numerous more opportunities than female athletes. However, myself included, I feel a lot of people don’t know the extent of the discrimination and how differently female athletes are viewed in comparison to men. Through my research, I realized that unlike other fields, like medicine, business, and STEM, there really hasn’t been much improvement in creating equal treatment for all athletes and there is a lot of work to be done. Hopefully, if people realize the severity of the issue, rather than just acknowledging that it exists, society will be one step closer to closing the gender gap.
Perhaps the biggest issue in athletics is the fact that female professional athletes will make a negligible amount of money while male athletes will be earning quite a bit more. For example, in the professional basketball leagues, women are paid less than a third of what the WNBA earns, while men are paid about half of what the NBA earns. This means that the minimum salary for the female basketball player is about $38,913 and the max salary is $109,500. In comparison, the minimum salary for a male basketball player was $525,093 and the maximum salary was $16.407 million. Basketball isn’t the only sport where a strong divide exists. In 2015, the U.S. women’s soccer team won the world cup and only brought home $2 million, yet the U.S. male’s soccer brought home $9 million even though they only got 11th place. Any male team that was eliminated in the first round of the cup still received $8 million, a profit that’s 4 times higher than what the female champion team received.
The common argument in response to the pay difference is that female athletes don’t bring in nearly as much revenue as male athletes, for very few people will even attend a women’s game. While there is certainly validity to this argument, it doesn’t completely justify why such a strong difference exists. Many statisticians and sports experts predict that even if the differences in the number of people attending was taken into account, women should still be earning more than they are right now. Additionally, rather than accepting the stereotype that women’s games aren’t as exciting or worthwhile, sports advocates and major sports enterprises, like the NBA and FIFA, should be strongly encouraging individuals to attend both female and male games. Even if society changes and accepts women athletes and their worth, there will be very little change in equality unless the major establishments support those changes.
Tennis is one of the few sports where the monetary rewards is approximately equal across both genders.
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Not paying women athletes what they deserve has many negative effects for women and aspiring female athletes. For a lot of women pursuing an athletic career, continuing to practice and participate in the sport ends up being much more expensive than discontinuing to play. Beginning at the collegiate level, where women athletes are less likely to receive large scholarships, many female athletes feel they cannot afford the outrageously expensive college tuition and the costs associated with being on a team. Thus, many give up on the sport as early as their beginning years of college. Those that do continue fear they have nothing to look forward to, as female athletes in many sports don’t receive nearly as much money as male athletes. The high expense and low probability of hefty rewards in the future makes it very hard for the athletes to stay motivated enough to continue participating in the sport. Unfortunately, the more women who drop out of sports, the less likely it is that society will be able to close the gap.
Girls dropping out of sports increases dramatically after puberty. There are many reasons behind this steady decrease, but a lot of it has to do with stereotypes associated with female athletes.
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In almost every culture, athletes are viewed as the cream of the crop. Most kids, at some point in their life, will dream of becoming a professional athlete. However, research has shown that once a girl reaches puberty, the probability of her continuing to participate in sports and pursue a career in athletics drops dramatically. While a greater understanding needs to be developed, many speculate this shift in thinking has a lot to do with stereotypes associated with athletic women. Muscular arms and strong abs often greatly improve the way a man is perceived, but it tends to have the opposite effect for women. Muscular women are deemed as masculine or are automatically labeled as gay, and while the stereotype has certainly become less enforced by the masses, many girls fear being labeled a certain way and prevent themselves from progressing too much in their sports careers. Also, the idea that women are significantly weaker and less athletic than men continues to be an issue, and it discourages younger women from even considering pursuing athletics. If society continues to ruin the confidence of female athletes, the motivation to be an athlete will only decrease for the gender.
Female athletes like this Indian wrestler are often criticized for their muscular build, while men are viewed in a much more positive light with this body type.
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The gender gap in professional sports is more serious than often portrayed. While there have been improvements, such as women and men gaining equal monetary rewards in Wimbledon, a lot of work has to be done. Society must make a conscious effort to view women as equal in both a social and monetary manner, for it is very possible that less women will even want to be athletes as the rewards from participating continue to be minimal compared to men.
One thing that always confuses me is that gender discrimination in sports is one of the more commonly mentioned types, yet it has made hardly any progress. It’s like people acknowledge that it is a problem, but then nobody does anything about it. For the most part, it seems like everyone has just accepted it. Recently, the college from where I live has had to cut some of the sports teams and everyone was surprised that boys’ baseball and golf were the first to go. People were expecting it to be a girl’s team that got cut first. This does offer some hope for advocates of gender equality in sports because it shows that there are some places that don’t make decisions based on whether it’s a girls’ team or a boys’ team. Hopefully gender discrimination in sports gets dealt with soon. Great post this week!
Yes I agree, I see this as a problem as well. I come from a small town where both men and women sporting events in high school were attended heavily, so it is a little strange to see on a global level how little people pay attention to women athletics. I am not sure how realistic it will be that women’s sports athletes will ever be paid as much as people like Lebron James or Tom Brady, but I think if more awareness was brought forward, we can start to close the gap. Very interesting take this week, good job.
There is no denying the discrimination and bias between gender in professional sports. Many female leagues make less money, female athletes work just as hard as their male counterparts. In some cases, like the 2015 Fifa World Cup, the women’s teams are better. I think that because for a long time only males competed in sports it is hard for society to accept females competing in sports, especially for entertainment. Another point that you touched on is the treatment of athletic female bodies. Many female athletes are subject to high levels of scrutiny because their bodies do not fit the conventional idea of a woman’s body. To combat the issue of women at the collegiate level, the government enacted Title XI. This requires that female teams receive a substantial amount of funding to encourage female participation in athletic programs. In the case of some of the less popular sports, the women’s team has more spots and full-ride scholarships.