In a significant amount of sports around the world today, many are paying women a fraction of the price that men are receiving.
In the article Men Get More Prize Money Than Women in 30% of Sports written in October of 2014, Anna Thompson and Aimee Lewis from who are sports writers for BBC they bring up one of the biggest debates in sports. The discrimination women often face in prize money and salary compared to their male counterparts.
"A total of 56 global sports were looked at in the extensive study. Out of 35 sports that pay prize money, 25 pay equally and 10 do not. Fourteen sports, including rugby union and hockey, do not pay any prize money at all. Five sports did not provide information for the investigation and men and women compete alongside each other in horse racing and equestrian."
So basically in this study they took sports played all over the world and researched them to figure out differences or similarities in how they were paid. Because it is the BBC some of the sports they looked at were sports as Americans we have probably never watched or in some cases never heard of. Regardless, they prove the same point. That today in society we are still treating women unfairly in many ways. I found this to statistic to be very interesting because it shows there is still a lot of discrimination which of course is unfortunate. However, there is a bright side because it also shows that significant progress is being made and that we are well on our way to having equal pay for women and men in all of sports. When it says that five sports didn't provide information I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. In the way it is written it certainly makes it sound pretty sketchy. But it isn't clear whether or not the organizations didn't want to say because they are paying women way less than men or if the researchers just couldn't really find much information on this area for those five sports.
"For winning this year's World Cup in Brazil, Germany received more than £21m more than Japan's women did after they were crowned world champions in 2011.
This season's men's FA Cup winners, a competition watched in more than 120 countries, will secure £1.8m in prize money while the team who lift the Women's Cup will net £5,000 - the same amount as the winning semi-finalists of non-league competition the FA Vase."
Here we see one of the biggest discrepancies that there is today in international sport. When I read this little passage the first time I had to stop and read it again just to believe what I saw. It seems so crazy to me because women's soccer is one of the biggest and most popular of all sports women play. At least in the US, I suppose it could be different overseas. Just the sheer difference in numbers is incredible for these two events in soccer. I can definitely see the argument that way less people watch/follow women's soccer compared to men's and that the profits are much bigger in men's than women's. But even with that being said it seems that there is no way possible for it to be fairly justified to be making millions more in one compared to the other for winning the same thing. Even if there is a popularity difference. Another point is that making this little money most likely really hurts the sport. If a really great female soccer player sees that she would only be making thousands instead of millions she is going to be making much more money at an office job. If you pay them more the talent you would get on the field would definitely go up.
"In squash, Laura Massaro - the first English woman to hold world and British Open titles simultaneously - has been instrumental in bringing equal prize money to the British Nationals and increasing women's prize money for the British Open"
I think that women need people like this in all the sports that they are still making less money right now. I feel like it could really only take one big star in the sport to make the difference and get the pay to be equal. When a big star says something people listen. These famous athletes could use this to attempt to make an enormous difference in their sport. It has happened before in sports where a big star or two speak out on an issue and immediately changes start to take place. The same could most certainly happen in this situation, much like it did with Massaro and female squash.
Future Questions: What do most professional athletes make compared to the average Joe at a job a few years out of school?
Is being a successful pro financially worth it after all of the cost and time spent throughout their lives?
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