Winning the Fight
USA women’s hockey team has recently fought for equal pay and benefits, and they won. Before they won their fight they were told that they should just be grateful that they are playing the sport and that they don’t deserve to get payed more. The women knew that if they weren’t payed more they were going to have to stop playing the sport that they love and get a job that actually provided for them.
They are now receiving an annual salary of 70,000 and above a year. Before the women were making 6,000 every 4 years. USA hockey is now going to provide programming, marketing, promotion, and fundraising to help develop the sport.
They wouldn’t have won this fight without threatening to sit out of games and boycotting USA hockey. When they told USA hockey that they would not compete in this years world championship they tried to get around it by finding new players from several different youth national teams. All of these players refused to play helping the boycott, ultimately making USA hockey have no choice but to give the players what they rightfully deserve. Many other sports Supported them through including the women’s US Soccer team and the NFL league.
These women have set an example to all women’s sports that if you fight hard enough you can get what you deserve.
Women’s tennis is the only female sport that has women athletes placed on Forbes “Worlds Highest Paid Athletes” in 2016, and there is only two of them. Out of 100 Athletes only two women have made the list. Honestly though without Billie Jean King those two women wouldn't have even made the list. Because of what King did in the 1970’s players like Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova are earning nearly the amount of money that the men are earning. Most of the tournaments that the women are playing in now will give out the same amount of prize money for the men and the women.
For years now men have been getting paid way more than women in all categories of work but especially in sports. The women aren’t receiving the pay they deserve. It’s not always the fact that the men are just paid more its when the men are receiving a bigger chunk of the league revenue then the women are for doing the exact same work. Its when they find ways of paying men more than the women. That’s what I see that is unfair.
Equality in pay is going in the right direction, but there is still a lot that needs to be done in order to make the pay for men’s and women’s sports equal. Women deserve to make the money that they earn. The women soccer players deserve just as much money as the men soccer players. Women’s basketball players deserve to have the same cut of their revenue as the men do with their revenue. Together we can make the wage gap disappear.
If you are interested in helping this issue and want to do more here are some websites you can check out.
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