Women in sports should get paid more
The 2015 Women World Cup was a huge win for the women’s US team. They won the world cup but it also brought up a huge issue in our society today. The gender pay gap between women and men in sports. The Women World Cup winners made 2 million dollars while the men’s Germany team won $35 million for winning the 2014 World Cup. According to CNN, the U.S. men’s team finished in 11th place and collected $9 million, and each men’s team that was eliminated in the first round of the 2014 World Cup got $8 million each, which is four times as much as the 2015 women’s championship team. Why is it that male athletes get payed more than female athletes?
Genevieve Vaughan writes in For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Chapter 5. ‘The Concept of Man’, how the we have put the word “man” on this high pedestal and made man to be this strong worthy human who deserve more, while we have put women to just be nurtures.
It seems that we have been following this concept by paying men more than women in sports. It goes to show that we value men’s work than women’s. Vaughn argues that we teach this at a young age by teaching young boys to lose the giving and rewarding them more than women.
She says, “Alienating our sons into the non-giving category, we (mothers and fathers) over-privilege and reward them, give more to them than to our daughters.” She calls “The Privilege One”.
Many people believe that men should get paid more because they physically put in more work than women, but that is not true. Women put in the same amount of work that a male athlete puts in. The reason why we don’t see all the work that women put in is because there is not enough sport coverage on women’s sports. According to the University of Southern California Center for Feminist Research, between 2004 and 2008 the percentage of women’s sports broadcasted dropped from 6.3% to 1.6. %. The media is not showing women’s sports because they do not take it serious. Stephen A. Smith a commentator on ESPN made a joke about the women’s Germany team. The Germany players turned their heads while defending the goal and Smith made the comment that “they might not have wanted to mess their hair up” and then he repeated himself just in case the viewer didn’t hear him the first time. This shows how not even sports broadcaster take women’s sports serious. To make matters worse Sport Illustrated writer Andy Benoit twitted “women’s sports in general not worth watching.” These are two people that have power in what people read and watch and they are making sexist comments about women in sports. The media has a huge influence on what gets put out into the world and when people read or hear these types of things they start to believe it because the media is really influential.
So why should women athletes be paid the same amount of money as the men? Well for starters no one should get paid less than someone else for doing the same job and putting in the same amount of work. Another reason is that the pay gap is not just in sports but also in almost every other job. According to The American Association of University Women, recently published a study showing that even when both genders’ levels of education and experience are the same, the gap remains. Women are paid 78 percent of what men are paid on average. A third and final reason is that no one should get discriminated for being born a female and be paid less. The word women just like “man” should be see just as strong of a human being.
According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, there are some things you can to help end this discrimination. You can
- Attend women’s sporting events
- Support companies that advocate for women’s athletics
- Encourage television stations and newspapers to cover women’s sports
- Sign up to coach a girls’ sports team, whether at the recreational or high school level
- Encourage young women to participate in sports Become an advocate: if you are or know a female athlete that is being discriminated against — advocate for her rights.
Below i created a poll to see what your opinion on the topic.
