Equal outcome is not same as equal opportunities: The gender pay gap in sports
Recently, the football associations of Brazil and England announced equal pay* for their men’s and women’s football teams in order to further their pursuit of gender equality.
This topic has since sparked a debate within the footballing communities. Is this really the right way to bridge the gender gap? Let’s discuss.
*Equal pay, in this scenario, means the equal dollar amount base pay and variable performance bonuses.
Why are women athletes paid less?
Firstly, it is important to note that women athletes are not paid less for all sports and all national teams.
- Women’s sports bring in lower sponsorship revenue, advertising revenue, and broadcasting revenue* for their federations.
- Consequently, chances for women athletes to earn money from endorsements also plummet, as they hold a lower social profile than their male counterparts.
*Does not hold true for all teams — US Women’s football teams brought in higher revenue than the men’s team.
Why are the revenues low?
- Low participation: Women have poorer access to infrastructure such as grounds, stadiums, coaches, causing women athletes to not receive an equal amount of exposure as male athletes. Women participation is also lowered due to societal pressures around marriage and family responsibilities.
- Audience engagement: It is also possible that audiences don’t enjoy female sports as much as male sports. Do formats for female sports need to be changed? (Think 5 sets and 3 sets for male and female tennis respectively).
Is the new pay structure enough?
Unfortunately, no. Paying international level athletes the same amount does not help mitigate any of these causes.
The current structure has its pros and cons.
Pros: It allows international level female athletes to concentrate on their sport with finances not being an issue and incentivizes women across the board to not drop out due to financial difficulties.
Cons: It is a short-term solution for a problem with much deeper roots.
A better structure
A fairer structure would’ve been to pay the same base salary to male and female athletes and to link performance bonuses (as a percentage*) to sponsorship revenues and broadcasting revenues.
It’s better than providing equal dollar pay because it reflects the realistic fact that a part of sports is still business. Associations, federations, and teams depend on sponsorships and broadcasting revenue to sustain their activities, along with government grants. Players that attract more viewers, hence, must earn higher pay.
Which begs the question — how do female sports attract more viewers?
*The percentage would be the same for male and female athletes.
Increasing accessibility
Equal pay is an outcome. Equal pay should be the result of increased opportunities for women’s sports to generate as much revenue as men’s sports. We need to make sport more accessible to women by:
- Investing in infrastructure — stadiums, practice grounds, coaches.
- Organizing more competitive tournaments for women — for example, an IPL for women cricketers.
- Broadcasting the above-mentioned tournaments to wide audiences, even if initial viewership is low.
- Normalizing the pursuit of sports by women at early ages — we need to change the deep rooted mindset that has resulted due to sports being male dominated up until now.
These initiatives, although not exhaustive, will help increase viewership and participation rates in female sports. It will also help female sports develop by providing more exposure.
Equal pay is an outcome. Equal pay should be the result of increased opportunities for women’s sports to generate equal revenue.
Our efforts should be directed towards providing a conducive environment for females (and even males, for that matter) to pursue the profession of their choice, and receive access to the facilities that allow them to be good at it.
Rather than do this, we often pursue equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity when trying to equalize gender and other differences.
This often makes for good headlines, but does little to develop sport at the grassroots level. And world cups and championships are won with strong grassroots programmes, not fancy headlines.
