Should Women Athletes be Paid as Much as Their Male Counterparts?
I recently watched a debate between two people asking whether or not Women athletes should be paid as much as males. The way the first debater framed the argument was that it was a pay gap issue based on sex and the way the second person framed it was that it was simply a money issue. I personally completely agree with the second person, in fact I don’t think gender should even be taken into consideration in this context, let me explain why.
Overall the issue comes down to how much money you bring in through viewers, ticket sales, advertising, ect. We need to think of athletes like a job that is based on commission. You are good at your skill so you are compensated for that level of ability. There is a reason why Stephan Curry just signed the largest NBA deal in history, it is because he is very good at what he does. If we take gender out of it and say, should AAA teams in baseball make as much as those in the MLB? Very quickly people obviously say no because they don’t get any viewers.
When it comes down to it, the issue is far less about gender. Let’s use an analogy in the business world. So you have two traders on Wall Street, one which brings in 2 million a year for a company and one which brings in 300,000 for that company. Should their end of the year bonuses be the same? Most people would say no because you get compensated for the amount of money you bring in. There is no difference when it comes to male sports, female sports, dog shows, professional gaming, ect. They all run on the amount of money that the viewing public brings in. As viewers rise, so will their salaries.
If you want to make this a gender issue the question you should be asking shouldn’t be, why aren’t the women making the same, but rather, why aren’t people watching them as much as the men? I think much of this does have to do with skill levels, but I think that the difference isn’t that great to the point where the salary difference is. Plus people love watching college basketball and many of the college basketball teams would probably get beat by WNBA teams.
Perhaps there is a deeper seeded psychological perception where it is hard for men to watch women do something better than they can. I am not a psychologist, but anything is possible. I know for some men the WNBA makes them feel like less of a man because many of the women out there exhibit more “manliness” than them. There is also the fact that many of the women in the WNBA are often believed to be lesbian or derogatorily called “dykes”. The public as a whole might not be able to accept this yet, as we saw what happens in the last few years when a few openly homosexual NFL players came out, many lost their minds.
Overall I think the money debate is not the root of the problem, but rather an effect of why more people aren’t watching women’s leagues. We all have our opinions but ultimately paying someone more for no other reason than for their gender is the same as paying them less for that same reason. It is sexist and goes completely against meritocracy, which is a system we all want. I would love to hear your opinion on the matter.
There's no real debate to be had here. Until (insert identity politics group here)'s sports can accrue broadcasting rights that make them equally profitable, they should be paid proportionately less. As you noted, this applies to College, AAA, and High School leagues too, not just gender splits. Anything else extends into lunacy, and I don't see how you implement it without communist measures. If you conclude otherwise, you infantilize (in this case, women) by implying they are unable to generate the economic merit to justify equal pay without what is effectively affirmative action.
For example, if we paid (insert identity politics group here) athletes the same irrespective of their ability to generate economic activity, then what is to stop me for agitating for comparable pay for my Magic Mike moment? Because, right now, I suspect my demographic will not be getting "equal" pay there. That's not "fair" to me if I want to shake it down at the Coyote Ugly.
As a logical consequence of my position, I support anyone being paid more than anyone else anytime it is warranted by economic merit.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/fewer-women-than-men-die-of-work-related-injuries-data-show.pdf
For example, here from bls.gov, you can see that from 1992-1994, 1453 women died on the job and 17683 men died on the job. Some of these jobs are very dangerous, like fire fighter or oil rigger. I think we can all agree danger warrants additional pay based on merit. I, for example, accept less pay so I can sit safely behind a desk. Remember this next time you hear someone attempting to use the identity politics of the debunked "Gender Wage Gap."
I think any reasonable person would agree that gender is irrelevant here, as you noted, and the only issue is one of economic merit. Anyone who thinks gender is even a tangential issue here is attempting to drag you into identity politics, likely so they can slander their way out of an argument with the hopes of securing more privilege for a group they may very well be a part of.
Now, having said all that, and without being a coach or professional sporting expert, I am as of yet unconvinced of the likelihood of, for example, a WNBA team to outplay a college basketball team.
Apologies for citing with the Daily Mail. Ick. But the Australian national Women's World Cup National Champion team (admittedly without some starting players, I did not check which) lost 5-2 and 7-0 in back to back years to boys under-15-years-old squads from the US. So, Sophomores in high school.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3609949/Matildas-lose-7-0-Newcastle-Jets-15s-Rio-Olympics-warm-up.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4389760/USA-women-s-team-suffer-5-2-loss-FC-Dallas-U-15-boys.html
PS - Here's a recent video that calls out the Daily Show for specifically pushing false narratives to exaggerate this problem in women's national soccer.
Good conclusion at the end. The political narrative of Comedy Central and the Daily Show are based on lies. I stopped watching about 6 months after Jon Stewart left.
Their reputation is shot.
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Agreed. I bet male swimsuit models don't make as much as females, and people don't wonder why.
Any time you get into the territory of what people "should" be making, you've lost your way. You and an employer should offer each other whatever deal you want and only accept it if you like it. There is no "should" besides that; nobody has any right to just decide for others what fair value is.
If this arrangement doesn't always work so well it's probably because there are more fundamental issues and injustices in the economy that make it generally tough out there.
I think you're right to take gender out of it. Often times in the name of "equality" people want to try to force specific outcomes. But when they do this, they're making it a gender issue when it wasn't in the first place.
"You and an employer should offer each other whatever deal you want and only accept it if you like it....If this arrangement doesn't always work so well it's probably because there are more fundamental issues and injustices in the economy that make it generally tough out there." which I think is an excellent argument in favor of #basicincome. Enforce that and it will be interesting to see which occupations are populated with which genders, although I doubt people will be as interested in such things in such a scenario.
I do love me some basic income! Is there a thread for that?
I edited my post with the #basicincome tag. You can check that for some interesting posts.
If you paid WNBA stars the same as NBA stars, would there be a WNBA?
nice post
Hell no, i don't think they should
I think it is very though to go against the grain on this one but that does not mean we shouldn't. I think it is a remnant of sports being performed by men in the past and one that needs to become lower over time. Having said that I also think there will remain sports which are more fun to watch when performed by men. But the same goes for some sports when performed by women in my opinion.
What a load of crap. It totally fits in the gender payment gap narrative, but this example just shows the obvious. Women are not fun to watch. I mean lets just for a moment take a step back and remember where modern sport come from - gladiators, and colosseums. Sports are competitive and aggressive in nature, and society doesn't view women that way and it doesn't want to view them, even if they where exactly the same in strength and stamina. But that another thing, men watch sports far more than women and there is a matter of identification. You can always hear fans referring to the victory of there team as if it where there owns (we won!). So pushing bigger payments on women for no apparent reason is sexist. And I totally agree with what you said:
There were absolutely gladiatrices in colosseums
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/04/12/female-gladiators-were-a-part-of-the-lure-of-the-roman-arena-too/&refURL=https://www.google.com.kh/&referrer=https://www.google.com.kh/
Money follows attention as @grantcardone always says, so if they make their respective sports as big of an attention-getter as their male-counterparts are, I see no reason why they should not be paid the same.
Very good topics here, thank you for the great reading this morning.
Yes women athletes should be paid the same if they are selling the same. I think male and female will see a trend toward parity soon. For example, it is easy to be a paying fan of the Lakers because of the early memories watching Magic and Kareem. Then Van Exel. but there weren't any Sparks until the end of the 90s. The generation that is coming up will soon have memories as magical as mine , but there's will be in a world where there was both NBA and WNBA.
So I think it is possible that with folks younger than me, there will be a larger fan base that grew up with the Sparks, Mercury, etc. and some of those will be willing to pay to see both. When the NBA ends each season, we still get NBA Summer league, WNBA, and Ice Cube 3 on 3. So I feel some sports are more diversified than when I was growing up. I don't know if WNBA or 3 on 3 can ever sell as much as NBA, but who knows...
If they were playing in the same league and some women were dominant players they'd be payed the same.
I have to disagree with the notion that an WNBA team could beat a division 1 NCAA basketball team. It wouldn't be close. The men are too big and fast. No slight on women but they'd have trouble scoring at all.
A pro woman could potentially beat a pro man in a game of horse, but who's ball would they be using?