There are many stories of how female athletes are mistreated in professional sports. Nike cutting contracts because their athlete gets pregnant. WNBA players getting paid just a fraction of what NBA players get. Body shaming in track programs leading to countless eating and mental disorders. These are just some of the examples of what happens in the professional world, but there are many more disparities.
While pushing for change is tough considering the gender stereotypes in sports, female athletes still try and succeed every day. In 2022, the national women’s soccer team sued U.S. soccer for giving unequal pay compared to the men’s team. Stars such as Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe originally filed a complaint against the organization in 2016, which then turned into something bigger with 28 members of the team filing the lawsuit in 2019. Eventually, the USWNT and U.S. Soccer settled on a commitment to equal pay between the men’s and women’s teams. In the early 2000s, Venus and Serena Williams both fought for equal pay in prize money in tennis tournaments and succeeded in 2007 during Wimbledon.
A lot of these successes have to do mostly with equal pay, but what about the other disparities that women face in their sports? Unequal pay is one of the causes of these disparities. If the athlete was rich enough, then they wouldn’t have to get in bad situations in the first place like having to sign deals with sports equipment manufacturers that have sexist policies and having to stay in toxic team environments. They would get to live the lavish lifestyles their male counterparts do.
While sometimes unequal pay is caused by misogynistic policies, other times it is caused by revenue factors. Revenue is the amount of money generated from exposure (people viewing games or matches on TV, going to the games or matches, buying merchandise from the team, etc.). The more revenue there is in a team or league, the more likely athletes are to get big paychecks. This is why in some male counterpart leagues they get paid much more.
People are more likely to watch men’s sports because they are advertised like crazy, while women’s sports are barely advertised at all. This causes low revenue generation for the teams since no one is motivated to come to their games or matches.
In the past few years, there has been a shift in exposure for women’s sports. Last year the women’s NCAA March Madness title game between Iowa and South Carolina out-viewed the Men’s by about 5 million average viewers. This was in large part because viewers wanted to see Iowa’s record-breaking player, Caitlin Clark, play against the team of one of the greatest coaches of all time, Dawn Staley.
The exposure of the March Madness games also helped with other women’s sports too. People realized how cool the games and matches are and have started to flock to watch them. NCAA volleyball games had to be held in packed football stadiums, viewership and attendance records were broken in the WNBA and NWSL, and the 2024 Paris Olympics had over a billion viewers for women’s competitions. And the possibilities for improvement don’t stop there. It goes on with the idea of expansion and creating a large fan base like the men have. All of these stimulate revenue growth and therefore shorten the pay gap and dissipate all the disparities.
Last year was a crucial year, marking the end of the dark age and the beginning of many years of prosperity to come in women’s sports. If people keep flocking to them, then the prosperity will continue, and the glass ceiling in the sports world will be gone forever.
