pros and cons of equal pay in sports pros and cons of equal pay in sports

As just one brutal example, 2018 league MVP Breanna Stewart ruptured her right Achilles tendon in April 2019 while playing for Dynamo Kursk in the EuroLeague women's championship. Piece together all of these revelations about how the highest level of women's soccer has been functioning and you'll notice a new horizon is looming for the sport. So let's take a look at the reasons why professional female athletes don't deserve equal pay. WNT members wore their jerseys inside out in protest. The euro is now worth slightly less than $1.02. This past March, the USSF even declared it was entitled to treat men better because of biology: "The overall soccer-playing ability required to compete at the senior men's national team level is materially influenced by the level of certain physical attributes, such as speed and strength.". Equal pay for equal work requires that a woman be paid the same as a man, or another woman, who is doing exactly the same job. And overall, viewers consumed 2.49 billion hours of coverage across all platforms, a jump of 93%. Building an. But there's no clear business reason for FIFA to keep acting like the Women's World Cup is worth less than 10% of the men's game. Decreasing pay disparities: Pay transparency is believed to be one possible way to reduce wage gaps and ensure all workers receive equal pay for similar . Salary caps have an impact on players, fans, and teams in many different ways. Maybe most important, while TV ratings were way up, promotion and marketing remained extremely limited. 2018: Twenty-eight USWNT players joined a wage-discrimiation class-action suit against U.S. Soccer. U.S. Soccer is at a crossroads: Whatever happens with the equal pay lawsuit, the USSF has to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the women's national team by the end of next year, and its long-term relationship with the National Women's Soccer League is up in the air. But that gap has virtually disappeared since the women's team won the 2015 World Cup and then maintained its global supremacy: The women's team has brought in $63.4 million since 2016, compared with $66.3 million for the men, according to U.S. Soccer's most recent financial statements. Make academics the priority. That includes outlays by committed owners with deep pockets, rather than the unstable financing that has so often plagued franchises in women's sports. While other countries focus on gender. This new reality will only be reflected in our future financial results.". The US women's soccer team has brought the conversation to the forefront over the last three years. In 2009, the WNBA started to allow sponsorship on jerseys in order to boost revenue, a move that the NBA repeated in 2017. They're not just bringing their skills to market, they're trying to make sure the market supports their skills. However, the larger, more diverse, and more complex an organization gets and the more risk and responsibility a position entails, the more the salaries can be expected to climb. Cons: It is a short-term solution for a problem with much deeper roots. THAT'S IT! Worldwide, 18% of university presidents, 11% of astronauts who have been to space and 6% of major-company CEOs are women. The athletes did want a larger share of league revenues. 26. "Have investments been equal? Analysts have noted for years that when it comes to television rights, FIFA has treated the Women's World Cup as an afterthought -- at worst a loss leader, at best a chance for media companies to use women's games to prepare for the men's tournaments. Listen, * Peter Keating joins Mina to discuss the U.S. Soccer's court victory and what's next for the U.S. women's national team. New arenas allow teams to improve their game experience, hike prices and build up adjoining land. IN THE UNITED STATES, we have now spent two generations since Title IX raising women athletes to compete on the same footing as men. And we need access to better stadiums, facilities and everything that makes a better entertainment product.". In 2019, FIFA proposed doubling the womens prize pool to $60 million in the 2023 World Cup, and announced that they would spend $1 billion on womens soccer over a period of four years. THE CHANTS BEGAN almost as soon as the U.S. women's soccer team won the World Cup last July. In 2017, ESPN stayed with a WCWS game that went to extra innings instead of switching to a previously scheduled MLB broadcast. Get Access. "FIFA wants to develop a specific commercial strategy for women's football in order to attract additional funds that can be attributed directly to the women's game. In 2018-19, the federation reported total revenue of $115,128,170, a growth of 160% over the last decade. Meanwhile, the U.S. women want more than a new pay structure. Pros of Gender Inequality in Sports: Weaves out weak female players: Because female athletes are forced to work harder with hopes of obtaining the same opportunities and rewards male athletes do, more often than not, only dedicated and gifted female athletes make it to an elite level. Also a six-time All-Star, she had a nearly identical 0.248 win shares per 48 minutes in 2019. In the case of equal and fair pay on a national level, there would be an examination of rights afforded either by the Constitution and/or the laws enacted by Congress. While MLS and the NWSL have only been around for a few decades, the United States has fielded national soccer teams in World Cups since 1930 (US Mens National Team) and 1991 (US Womens National Team). Prestige / It's a select number of people by definition. "The good news is that folks outside the federation, from sponsors to broadcasters to partners, are incredibly bullish on the U.S. women's national team and on women's football," Levinson says. As totals, these numbers are considerably smaller than for the men's game, but they are also generally growing much faster. The NBA commissioner complained publicly that the WNBA was losing more than $10 million a year, but that number said more about how the women's game was still small scale than about any significant damage to the bottom line of NBA teams. Critically, they have called on U.S. Soccer to spend more on marketing, in part by investing much more in the NWSL. 29 U.S. CONST. "These are businesses, and none of us are out there saying we want to be paid the exact same as the men," says 17-year WNBA veteran Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm. Sources: CareerTrend (NPF); ESPN (PGA & LPGA); Global Sports Salaries (MLB, MLS, NBA, WNBA); NWSLSoccer.com (NWSL); Tennis.com (ATP; WTA). Economy Apr 12, 2016 4:15 PM EST. Equal pay fixes one cog in this cycle of inequity, with ripple effects: the more female athletes are paid on-par with their male counterparts, the more women's sport is seen as a viable and acceptable option for women, the more interest there is in women's sport, the more investment in resources, infrastructure, and marketing for women's sport, The pay disparity in professional soccer exists at an international level as well. Three experts debate the issue. (Including the very greatest: From 1997 to 2000, the Houston Comets won four straight WNBA championships with a core of Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, all top-shelf Hall of Famers. Women's professional soccer was actually banned in Germany until 1970, England until 1971 and Brazil until 1979; the NWSL, its latest and longest-lived incarnation in the U.S., has now been playing for seven years. Well be updating this page regularly with news, features, commentary and more. The American squad beat the Netherlands 2-0 in the final, capping a month of dominance in which Team USA outscored opponents 26-3. At peak popularity, marketability and leverage, they are also seeking more equitable spending on coaching. But Gulati's first reason for paying them unequal rates was simple indeed: The women were playing better, so they would have earned more. Critical stories about gender and identity from across The Washington Post newsroom. In the midst of the brewing storm were the worlds top athletes who were beginning to realize their value and how their organizations, endorsers and the media had been significantly undervaluing their talents and influence. With a new decade ahead, we are taking a look back at how athlete compensation changed over the past ten years, and the obvious trends of wage equality in sports. Leaves possibility of subjectivity. But the truth is more complicated, because a league's financial data also embeds its history, opportunities and labor relations. Last season, Ogwumike earned $115,000. In September 2019, Californias Governor Gavin Newsom signed into effect Californias Equal Pay to Play Act, mandating that any organization that hosted mens and womens competitions in an event being held on Californias public lands (land belonging to the state), must compensate the athletes equally. That is a staggering gap. Today, grassroots support for the national teams seem to be at parity. 63). The act states that all women should receive "equal pay for equal work". Can you guess in which season they rested Diana Taurasi and earned the league's No. Indeed, the $30 million awarded to all of the athletes combined at the 2019 Women's World Cup would not even equal the $38 million the French national team made after winning the 2018 men's World Cup, where prize money totaled $400 million. On May 1, a federal judge sided with U.S. Soccer on most of the key issues at stake in the lawsuit. Her male counterpart, Ilie Nastase, was awarded $3,500 . Pay is so low that it has compelled most American athletes to play overseas as well as in the WNBA just to make a living, increasing their wear and tear and their injury risk. Players will also be able to earn up to $250,000 apiece from a $1.6 million pool the league is dedicating to marketing agreements and will gain free agency after five years, down from six. While equal pay for equal work has emerged as a rallying cry in the ongoing struggles of women athletes, equity doesn't always, or even often, mean literal equality across all sports. From 2011 to 2015, the Phoenix Mercury went 19-15, 7-27, 19-15, 29-5 and 20-14. Analysis by Eliza Anyangwe, Editor of CNN As Equals. Their top-ranked masters is offered online and on campus, and its flexible curriculum allows students to take a general track or choose from specializations in sport marketing or collegiate athletic administration. The threat of a boycott secured performance bonuses, increased salaries, increased per diem, improved travel accommodations and an advisory group to ensure the growth of girls hockey. Today, we will look at the pros and cons of investing in big-time sports. . People argue that since women in sports work just as hard as men, they should receive equal pay. In the 1997-98 season, NBA rookies made 176% more than WNBA rookies. Fee structure. Low pay has also warped the women's game itself. By submitting this form, you consent to receive emails and calls from a representative of Adelphi University, which may include the use of automated technology. In September 2018, the World Surfing League (WSL) announced that it would award equal prize money to male and female athletes for every WSL-controlled event in the 2019 season and beyond, becoming the first and only US based global sports league, and among the first internationally, to achieve prize money equality.