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Equal pay for female athletes
Equal pay for female athletes
Gender discrimination in the sports world
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Women have always been treated differently than men. It does not matter if it is work, school, home, or sports the two sexes are always treated in a different way. In work, women can find themselves receiving less pay than a male. In school, women are held at a different standard as men. While raising a family, a mother’s job is to juggle family and career. In sports, women will never be as good as men and will never get treated the same. In the beginning of sports coming out in schools the females were not allowed to play. Then they were allowed to play if they were good enough to play with the boys. Even if they were good enough they would find themselves being mistreated often. Nowadays, males and females are required to have the same number of sports for an equal opportunity thanks to Title XI. Somehow women are still being discriminated against in sports. National Basketball Association players make a ridiculous amount of money compared to what a Women Nation Basketball Association player makes. Female athletes are often made fun of because of their appearances. A female will have to sit out of their sport if she becomes pregnant. Female athletes are discriminated against in sports and deserve the same rights as males.
Female athletes are treated unfairly because of their pay. WNBA players do not make nearly close enough to what a NBA player makes. On the examiner website the author stated, “The maximum salary a player can earn in the WNBA for the 2013 season is $107,000 (examiner.com).” That is not enough money for the work that is being done by the female athlete. Kurt Badenhausen stated, “A look at the NBA’s top earners on and off the court puts Bryant on top with combined earnings of $64.5...
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...uture. Female athletes make an unreasonable amount less than what the male athletes make. The paycheck is discriminating against the female athletes. They are both doing the same amount of working and putting the same amount of time into their job. Another reason female athletes are discriminated against is because of their appearance. Just because a female athlete shows similar traits of a male does not mean she is a man. It is unfair that the media is gossiping about female athletes showing traits similar to men. If a female athlete because pregnant on the job they will have to miss a whole season of their sport. The athlete will only receive 50 percent of their pay for that season. That will make it hard for the athlete to get by and support the new addition to the family. In the future females should receive more pay and be treated more like the males.
Should college athletes get paid an additional salary? They are an important assets to universities and colleges, so why should they not? How else would universities justify taking advantage of these young men and women? These are questions that arise when pondering the issue. This has been a large controversy over the years of rather or not college athletes should be paid, more specifically football and basketball players. However, they fail to mention that colleges are only considering paying a select few, the stars of the sports. Every single sport in colleges is making revenue for those campuses, making colleges money hungry. Thus, if they decide to only pay a select few, would that leave out women sports all together? Why pay college athletes more on top of everything they already receive? Most college athletes receive free tuition, medical care, meal plans and room and board, which can acquaint to more than a quarter million dollars for their entire college career (Scoop, 2013). Why ask for more? What is this teaching our youth? They should appreciate their chance to do what they love and value the education they are receiving, because that education is far more valuable than a potential sports salary. Even though colleges and college athletes have a few good points on why they believe they should get paid, over all the issue is larger than that, college athletes already make their share of “money” through free education and much more.
Traditionally men have dominated the world of sports however in recent year’s women’s sports have become popular and with their new found popularity, women’s sports have evolved into marketable leagues of their own. Although women’s sports took a huge leap forward, women players still don’t receive the same financial compensation for playing the same sports in the same arenas as their male counterparts. In Purse Snatching by Donna Lopiano, she points out sexism may have a huge effect on this financial discrepancy between women and men athletes. Analyzing sports economics may point to a different reason why women are receiving such a compensation disparity.
Mark Murphy, Director of Athletics at Northwestern University, who participated in an ESPN debate on the topic of paying student-athletes, argues that these athletes currently receive scholarships, whose value, in some instances, totals close to $200,000 over four years. He stated that all student-athletes have made similar commitments to the schools, and that football and basketball players should not be treated any different than other athletes, who participate in sports that are not as popular and lucrative. Paying athletes anything beyond a scholarship, argues Murphy, would cause problems, particularly from a gender equity standpoint. What Murphy seems to referring to when he says "gender equity" is Title IX federal regulations, which cut off federal funding of colleges if those colleges discriminate on the basis of sex. Paying male student athletes more than female student-athletes could possibly be construed as discrimination.
According to the Women 's Sports Foundation, they claim that paying men more for the same sport gives women in the sport less incentive to push themselves and discourages future female participation in the sport. Which is true, why would women want to play the same sport as men and get paid less money. A good example where women get paid much less money for the same sport is a WNBA. Women’s Sports Foundation says that players from the WNBA in the 2015 season, the minimum salary was $38,913, the maximum salary was $109,500, and the team salary cap in 2012 was $878,000. For NBA players in the 2015-2016 season, the minimum salary is $525,093, the maximum salary is $16.407 million, and the team salary cap is an all-time high of $70 million. David Berri’s article on, “Basketball’s gender wage is even worse than you think,” he talks about that in 2013-14, the Phoenix Suns employed Dionte Christmas for 198 minutes. For those minutes–the only minutes Christmas has ever played in the National Basketball Association–he was paid the league minimum of $490,180. However, Diana Taurasi made the All-Women 's National Basketball Association First Team in 2014 and helped the Phoenix Mercury win the league 's championship. That season, she was paid the WNBA maximum salary of $107,500. This is huge difference between the two
Messner, showed that women’s sports took up only 6.3% of airtime while men’s took up 91.4 %.(1989,2004,p.4). And the hit show Sportscenter was showing men more than women at an astounding ratio of 20:1 (Messner, 1989, 2004, p.4). Also the coverage and the after game interviews are far less than men. They don’t get enough exposure showcase the talent and entertainment of a women’s game. If a man is highly masculine and highly skilled at what he is doing, he gains that respect and popularity so easily without really doing a thing. For men this brings money, merchandise, media coverage, and fans. More fans means more and more money. Which conclusively brings more success to the franchise, and that’s one example why male professional sports overpower female. Women have an extreme disadvantage when it comes to this because they are not popular in means of sporting events, they don’t have as many fans, don’t have a lot of people to buy the merchandise, and they don’t have the money to treat you with a higher salary. You don’t see contracts in the WNBA like you do in the NBA, for example the salary cap for each team in the WNBA is $878,000, while the NBA is $58 million. (Garland, 2012). That is a huge difference for playing the same sport in the same country. This also goes hand in hand with endorsements. Men make millions and millions extra from endorsements which women don’t usually get. For example, LeBron James at 18 years old signed a deal with NIKE for $90,000,000 just because he was good at basketball, Nike is lucky LeBron wasn’t a bust, but you would never see a company risk that type of money with a female athlete that young. (USAToday.com,
In response to watching the Women’s World Cup this summer, I read how the World Cup female soccer players were treated differently than the males. After the US Women’s team won the tournament the won $2 million for the team to split and the men whom got knocked out the in their second game were awarded $4 million dollars. It got me wondering how deep does this unfair treatment and sexism go in sports, especially soccer. After much research, I now know that…
In the United States, women have historically been treated different and unequally than men. Women have been discriminated in education, labor, and rights to vote. In 1877,
Women in sports is relatively a new thing in the U.S. Until 1972, discrimination in sports on the basis of sex was very prevalent. Title IX established fairness in regards to sex discrimination for women in federally funded schools and programs. I had the ability to interview a woman who lived and went to school during this era.
One would think that a professional player on an elite team would be making enough money to support herself and continue doing what she loves, but this assumption is sadly false. Rejzovic plays volleyball professionally and has a full-time job as though she is an amateur. According to the chairman of her club team, she is playing the wrong sport and is not of the opposite gender. Rejzovic stated, “Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming a pro. I thought it would be glamourous, but life as a pro isn’t what I imagined” (Tornkvist, 2016). The discrimination is preventing women from progressing forward in professional sports. Payment has nothing to do with performance because Rejzovic and her team has been number one in the league many times in the past ten years (Tornkvist,
In golf Lydia Ko won the LPGA’s first major and was given 390,000 check. This check was 21.6 percent! The 1.8 million dollars earned by Spieth for his master’s victory. Golf has an extremely rich history of shortchanging women in their profession. Which dates to the early 1900s. female players were getting fed up from the lack of tournaments and leagues available to them and formed their own tour, the Ladies Professional Golf Association. Females were quoted to making even less than 10% the revenue made by men. Marylinn Smith defended her back to back title and was awarded 1,300 dollars. 6.6 percent to the 20,000 Arnold Palmer won for his master’s title. Even though women earning have risen for golf in the last decade the gap is still very prevalent. In 2014 Michelle Wie won her first national title and was awarded 720,000 check in prize money. Along way from being given 1,300 dollars. But still she only earned 44.4 percent of the 1.62-million-dollar paycheck offered to Martin Kaymer. We are making strides but still have a long way to go. (Saffer,
But women and girl athletes have yet to reach parity with men. Women are still only about one-third of interscholastic and intercollegiate athletes. In addition, women college athletes receive less than 26% of college sports' operating budgets, and less than 28% of college recruiting money.
Women have been discriminated against since the beginning of time, as early as the first people, Adam and Eve. Eve was called the evil one, who ate fruit from the tree of knowledge. Once she had the knowledge to know right from wrong, she chose to do wrong and give the fruit to Adam. Examples like these can be shown all over history books, in stories, tales and legends across the entire world. Women have been subordinate to men in virtually all societies throughout history.
Most people watch some form of sports, whether it be the Olympics or the highlights on ESPN. The NBA and NHL playoffs are underway and theyit seems to be the only news on ESPN. There is almost no coverage of the WNBA playoffs or any female athletics. Tennis isone of the only big sports on ESPN for women. While during the Olympics the coverage seems to be non-stop and close to equal. Women’s participation in sport is at an all-time high and has almost become equal with men’s, however,. sSports media does notfails to show this equality and skews the way we look at these athletes. Through the disciplines of sociology and gender studies, it can be seen that despite the many gains of women in sports since the enactment of Title IX, “traditional” notions of masculinity and femininity still dominate media coverage of males and females in sports, which is observed in Olympic programming and sports news broadcasts.
Recently a major issue for women in sports is female coaches and their salaries. The salaries of the male coaches in athletics have continuously been on the rise. And on top of that, the male coaches make 159% of the money that female coaches make. Female participation in College athletics are also on the rise. However, the majority of funding in colleges goes into the men's athletic programs.
In summary, Despite opponents argue, fans want to see thunderous dunks and incredible athleticism over the lesser abilities of females, male competitions is more intense and there is more at risk, and male driven associations produce more revenue than female driven associations. It is apparent that male and females are built differently therefore they have different abilities, females go through the same types of events and often have more on the line, and female athletics aren 't given the same recognition or praise. Then, maybe one day female will receive the same amount of pay as their male counterparts. As, Vera Nazarian once implied, “A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.”