Gender Pay Gap for Women Athletes Essay

In today's society women are able to become anything they wish. Generations ago women did not have the privilege to become what they truly desired compared to the women of today. Although women can become anything they desire, they cannot succeed financially. Women are still underpaid in many areas, especially in Pro Sports. The disparity in pay for women compared men's pro sports is absurd. Female athletes have also seen greater success in sports as well and have been belittled and condemned of the rewards they rightfully deserve for the achievements in their sports. It is simple, gender should not define pay in pro sports, especially if they both have equal to or greater success in their respected sports.

It is true that before Title IX, any positive images of female athletes were relatively few and far between, except for the rare Olympian such as Peggy Fleming or Nadia Comaneci. Title IX has substantially increased the availability of equal resources for female athletes relative to males on campus. However, parity has not been achieved in terms of the public's interest and respect for women's sports. Even today, the main excitement is over the NCAA men's tournament, not the women's. Team sports where women are celebrated in the U.S. are in low-priority sports like soccer; while some women in individual sports have certainly received media

Women athletes are often exploited by marketers and advertisers who want to increase their revenues and bottom line sales. Advertisers focus more on the women’s “skin” and sex appeal rather than women’s athletes, leaving the impression that woman are not as talented in the sports as male athletes (Roenigk 1). Many spectators and advertisers do not take female professional sports seriously and think that female athletes play more for fun. Therefore, female athletes do not receive as much attention for their talent. Advertisers exploit women athletes by focusing on their looks and appearances. Advertisers focus on the female athlete’s sex appeal rather than talent (Julius 2). Those who are more talented can be drafted to play professionally where they receive a salary. However, marketers still focus more on male sports. Therefore, increased revenue continues as spectators buy tickets to watch professional male athletes. The female athletes continue to generate revenues from sex appeal and looks over talent. This professional salary in no way compares to the pay received by professional male athletes.

Women in professional sports fits into the Sex and Power: Global Gender Inequality class because many female athletes have experienced the inequalities in a professional sports setting. Female athletes are being put down by gender inequalities, causing less females participating in athletic programs. Women athletes are being paid less than their male counterparts. Along with being paid less, female and males are receiving unequal benefits in the form of scholarship, media coverage, transportation, and stadium conditions. The professional sport’s world is filled with the obsession of body image and sexuality. Through this obsession, female athletes have been abused from the people they trust the most. There is an increasing inequality in women’s professional sports in the form of pay, sexuality, and abuse.

“Equal play. Equal pay.” –U.S. Women’s National Team (Reiher). The gender pay gap is surprisingly still a large problem today. Not only in soccer, but in every sport women exert the most effort, yet they do not receive the credit. The U.S. Woman’s National Team should receive an equal amount of pay as the men’s team because they have won more titles, they are better soccer players, and they bring in more income.

"Gender Oppression Involving Men's and Women's Sports." : Analysis of a Scholarly Source: Equal Pay? Not on the Basketball Court" by David Woods. N.p., 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 28 Oct. 2015. .

Have you ever wondered about how women now have their own sports or how they became accepted? Well, it all started with women who had perseverance and a dream, even if they didn't get recognized for it. ***(Marcenia Lyle was an incredible baseball player and impacted the game tremendously by never giving up on her dream, being a woman playing in a men’s league, and by changing the normal way of sports.)***

Money is usually a problem with many things in life, one of them also happens to be gender equality. Colleges and universities spend an average of $1.6 million on the men’s athletics program. Yet, the women’s athletic teams receive nearly half that amount (Almond 2). Women should not be receiving half the amount that a men’s team gets just because their sports are less ‘popular’ than men’s. A school’s main objective may be to promote the men’s team first, to get out of a deficit. Then they may be able to finance the women’s team with the money they make from the men’s sporting events. That is not an equal or fair solution. It would take years to pay off a deficit and then sufficiently finance the female athletic programs. Numerical equality would take a vast quantity of public tax money in addition to the financial assistance that now pays for most of women’s sports. Universities increased its support of women’s athletics over the years but according to Ellen Voelz,

Equality between people is what makes the United States of America different from other nations. Ironically, in the United States professional soccer leagues there is a dearth of gender equality. This can be seen through the gender difference in salary. In 2013, professional women soccer players were yearly being paid $15,000 each, about nine times less than the men earned (Bloomberg BusinessWeek). Just like the United States, Australia also faces unequal pay between men and women in professional soccer. Many professional women soccer players that can’t support themselves off their salary. This not only makes the players want to quit, but also makes future generations not want to take part in women’s soccer. Sadly, for more than two decades, women soccer players have experienced unequal pay. Over the years, many players have to find another job to support themselves or they quit playing soccer. Leaders of the Women’s Professional Soccer League have made fruitless attempts to resolve this problem, by giving women the same amount of tournament prize money as the men’s team, by raising the women’s salary a few thousand dollars, and by obtaining sponsors for the women’s soccer league. The way to fix the inequality within professional soccer in the United States is to give equal pay to both genders. To accomplish that, the leaders/board members from both the Men’s Soccer League and the National Women’s Soccer League would have the men soccer players’ salary will be lowered to

Women’s equality is an issue that has been around for awhile. While women have been given many rights to increase equality, including the right to vote and go to college, the problem hasn’t completely vanished. One area that still sees this is in sports. Women’s sports do not draw nearly as many fans and are not covered in the media as much as men’s sports, pay differences between male and female athletes are large, and female athletes have to wait longer to start their professional career than men, which risks their professional career before it even starts.

In the United states females make about seventy seven cents for every dollar a male makes. This is a huge difference and is unequal if both sexes are getting paid for doing similar jobs. Even though this seems like a huge difference in wages, the difference in wage is a huge difference in professional sports. Many would argue that female athletes should get paid the same as male athletes, but there are also many that would argue the opposite. Gender equality laws call for this, but the fact that female athletes do not provide the same profit as male athletes is not noted when it comes to these laws. Next, both males and females spend the same amount of training when it comes to strengthening their teams, but at the same time male athletes do

As of 2015, there is a big gender inequality in the workplace, especially for professional female athletes. While most male soccer players have an excessive amount of money, most female sports players’ salaries put them below the poverty line in the cities they play in. Ironically, there is physical support in the number of attendance for the USWNT but there is a lack in financial support which should be fixed in the near

Women’s professional soccer players should receive equal pay to men’s professional soccer players. Right now, women’s soccer players earn much less than their male counterparts, both from their official salaries as well as corporate sponsorships (Palmer, 2015). This is still true even after just under 23 million Americans watched the U.S. Women’s National Team’s victory in 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final against Japan, setting a record for the most watched soccer game in U.S. history (Palmer, 2015). While the U.S. Women’s National Team, who have played in numerous FIFA Women’s World Cups, have subsidized salaries, and some high-profile players have endorsements deals, their salaries are low for professional athletes, which is a serious deterrent to players starting, and staying, in the game (Johnson,

The U.S. women’s soccer team filed a complaint against U.S. Soccer for wage discrimination, claiming they make roughly 40% of what their male counterparts do. This is only the beginning of a trend in wage disparity in the Major Soccer League. The National Women’s Soccer League, or NWSL, has a pay ceiling per player of just $37,800. The men in Major League Soccer make an average of more than $300,000 with a median of about $100,000. The teams in the NWSL have a salary cap of $265,000, but for the men it is more than $3 million. The extremity of the wage gap is clearly depicted in CNN Money, the report states that the “amounts female American players receiving equate to less than 6 cents for every $1 earned by the German men”. The US women’s

There as been equality in professional sports for a long time. The men are getting paid way more than the women athletes. Some would say that the men should be paid more because watching men is exciting, and women’s sports aren’t fun to watch. Also, because in some sports the men generate more attendance or revenue. Women have started to generate a bigger audience and more revenue in some sports. Women are doing the same thing as men. They work just as hard and maybe harder because they are trying to prove a point to everyone. Women should be paid the same as the men in professional sports.