By Will McGowan
The sports industry has always been keen on spotlighting the games involving males. Legends such as Stephen Curry and Clayton Kershaw dominant their respective sports leagues by gaining immense salaries every year.
Over 35 million dollars are paid to Kershaw alone, while Curry earns an equally impressive 34.7 million dollars. Although these numbers are staggering, at least women athletes get the same opportunities to earn as much money as their male counterparts, right?
Unfortunately, that is far from the case. Women are ridiculously underpaid in each of their respective industries compared to males. According to an in depth study regarding the paychecks of athletic women by Adelphi University, the annual income is clearly disproportionate.
The salary of an average NBA player is 4.5 million dollars. How does this number compare with female athletes? Well, with a maximum salary of 100 thousand dollars, female basketball players receive a paycheck around 45 times less than that of a man.
The MLS earns an average salary of 200 thousand dollars, while an average salary of women can be as low as 6 thousand dollars! Even more so, male golfers earn 973 thousand dollars for an average salary, while females earn only a mere 162 thousand dollars.
One of the only sports that women, on average, earn more than men is in tennis. Women earn around 345 thousand dollars annually, while men only earn 260 thousand. While women are being paid more at least in this one sport, it’s fair to say that the problem of inequality in paychecks can be fixed.
One solution could be to raise the pay of all women by thousands, or even millions of dollars, to match that of the men. Although it may seem as if a sudden increase would be detrimental to the sports industry, the industry is expected to reach a value of 73.5 billion dollars, so it’s fair to say that they’d be able to afford to pay women much more.
If the industry can’t afford that, then it would be fair to still increase the pay of women, while also lowering the pay of men so that the two sides can be paid an equal amount.
It’s fair to say that women are underpaid because their games aren’t as popular, or aren’t broadcasted as highly, and to that, I say it would be much more beneficial to women if their games were more commonly broadcasted on channels such as ESPN to gain more attention.
Therefore, although the wage gap between the two genders are extremely prevalent, it’s clear that these problems can be solved, one way or another.