Unequal Pay in Women’s Sport

Two linked stories, here, worth reading and contrasting. Both are about how much female athletes get paid. One is about tennis, and the other is about soccer. Interesting to note that the pay discrepancy noted in tennis is tiny, percentage wise, compared to that in soccer. One consequence of that is that the discrepancy in tennis seems more clearly arbitrary, and hence unfair — a difference of 4% or 5% isn’t likely due to some deep, underlying economic factor. But the 40-1 difference cited in soccer is much more plausibly rooted (as the author of the linked article suggests) in the huge difference in viewership and sponsorship. >>>

LINK #1: The inspiring story of how Venus Williams helped win equal pay for women players at Wimbledon (by Anjana Sreedhar in Women in the World)

…In 2005, Venus Williams clinched the Wimbledon title after battling it out against top seed Lindsay Davenport in the longest women’s final in history.
…That same year, Roger Federer won the men’s championship game against American Andy Roddick in straight sets, collecting $1.13 million in prize money. But his female counterpart, Williams, won only $1.08 million. ….

LINK #2: Here’s why it’s fair that female athletes make less than men (by Shane Ferro in Business Insider)

…The total prize pool for the women’s tournament was $15 million. Of that, the US women’s national team took home $2 million for their victory. That’s less than a quarter of the $9 million the US men’s team got last year for getting knocked out in the round of 16. The total prize pool for the men’s tournament was a whopping $576 million — 40 times the women’s haul….

What do you think?

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