In recent months, we have various female sports teams both the at the national and club at odds with their federations or administrators about the pay inequity that exists between male and female national team members. US hockey and soccer are the two stories that were most evident in North American media coverage, but this dispute is going on across the glove. With the rise of professionalism in women's sports and the increased media coverage and marketability, female athletes are demanding their fair share of the compensation.
As an example the US women's soccer team has been a top team on the international scene since the inception of women's international competitions. However, regardless of their ongoing success, the players receive a small fraction of performance based compensation and salary when on national duty with respect to their male counterparts. The men's team, while regular participants in Olympics and World Cup have not performed any where near the women's program. Add to this fact, the reality that the men are getting compensated for their national team duty on top of their salaries as full time professionals , the gender salary gap is even greater. One can't even argue that the compensation is relation to revenue since the success of the women's program has generated significant revenue of which the women see a very small portion even on a pro-rated basis of compensation to revenue. Women’s treatment in sport has always been a manifestation of wider gender inequality and, as sports evolved and professionalized, became self-perpetuating. The huge funding disparity between male and female sport means that women have had fewer opportunities to play sport, have suffered from inadequate coaching and facilities compared with those enjoyed by men, and have been paid meager sums, even for playing international sport. This has damaged the quality of sport – and therefore the attractiveness of the product to fans and broadcasters – in two ways. Those that have played have often not been professional, so had less chance to hone their skills; and the lack of financial rewards mean that many leading players have retired prematurely. Women’s sport has been shaped by administration being almost exclusively a male preserve. This explains why, from 1928 to 1960, women were not allowed to compete in races of more than 200 meters, because it was felt that running for longer made them too tired. It took until 1984 for women to make up one-fifth of competing athletes in the Olympics. The gender pay gap is in large part due to the lack of seriousness that women's sports tend to receive from their male administrators. Even when their is the appearance of support, often times it is merely lip service for the appearance of being politically correct. The lack of suffiicent recognition of female sports is not limited to one or a few of the more traditionally male driven sports but fairly present to some extent or other in many sports. “Let's get women to play in different and more feminine garb than the men,” Sepp Blatter, who was president of FIFA for 17 years, said in 2004. He wanted women to play “in tighter shorts,” because “beautiful women play football nowadays, excuse me for saying so”. World wide many tennis, cricket and golf clubs had until recently and still have access restrictions for woman membership and participation. Some tentative progress in gender equality is now being made off the pitch: More women are moving into positions of leadership within sport and while the process is slow, it does allow for the needle to move when it comes to gender bias and eventually pay equity. On the field, equal prize money is becoming more common. The World Athletics Championships equalized prize money in 1995 and all grand slam tennis tournament have paid male and female champions equally since Wimbledon begun doing so in 2007. Globally, 25 out of 35 major sports pay equal prize money to men and women, found a BBC survey in 2014. Olympians are still not paid prize money by the Games, although most countries offer their medal winners prize money, and sums are equal for men and women. Yet the most lucrative sports remain far away from equalizing remuneration. Even in sports with equal prize money for marquee competitions, there are often huge discrepancies lower down. Tennis,is the prime example where the men’s number one, will earn twice as much the women's #1. While winning majors is lucrative, the less prestigious men’s tournaments pay far more than the women’s events. In terms of soccer, the difference in prize money for the World Cup is staggering where it can reach as much at 25x greater one the men's side. The differences are far greater in club competitions, in which women’s teams have struggled to gain a following. Of course TV coverage and lower attendance affect revenues, but the relative comparable of revenue to salary for the most successful men's and women's franchise in different sports in tough to fathom. The greatest cause for optimism is in the rising quality of female sport: the gradual increase in spending on women’s sports is now being reflected in a product that more spectators want to watch. Global coverage of women's sports is growing and the reality is that the anyone wanting to attract new viewership to sports would realize that women's sport and attracting women to follow sport are areas where their is the highest potential for growth. And while there remains a dearth of females who coach men, Andy Murray’s appointment of Amélie Mauresmo as his coach two years ago was a seminal moment: never before had a professional men’s tennis player appointed a woman as coach. "Have I become a feminist?" Murray later wrote. “Well, if being a feminist is about fighting so that a woman is treated like a man, then yes, I suppose I have.” Yet, despite such heartening developments, some hard-won gains are at risk. Greater gender equality in the funding of US sports has actually led to a huge decrease in the number of female coaches. As men have increasingly sought jobs coaching women, the number of female coaches of intercollegiate women’s teams has dropped from 90 to 40 per cent since 1972, when Congress passed a law mandating gender equity in every educational program that received federal funding. But the logic of pay being determined by market forces only seems to work one way. Even when women raise more money than men, they can also be paid less. In the US, five female football players recently filed a complaint against US Soccer over wage discrimination. They are ranked number one in the world, 30 places above the men, and generated nearly $20m more revenue last year – but are still paid significantly less. In many ways the Olympic Games in Rio represented a growing trend of women taking a bigger stage in sport, with over 45% of competing athletes being women, a record for a summer Games. Yet true pay equality in sport is still far away. While there is progress, reaching a respectable pay equity reality still seems far off, if not a pipe dream.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|